Newsletter: The importance of Locol, and of Hainan chicken rice

It’s almost May, which means it’s time for cherries, for planning your Cinco de Mayo parties — and for the beginning of Food Bowl, our month-long food festival. To celebrate that, we spent Thursday night celebrating Locol, the revolutionary Watts “fast food” restaurant from chefs Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson that is the recipient of the first-ever Los Angeles Times Restaurant of the Year Award. Congratulations to the entire crew! After you pull up a screen to read what Jonathan Gold wrote about Locol, maybe pull up a chair at the actual restaurant.

Where else have we been pulling up chairs? At the Westfield Santa Anita mall, where Jonathan found some pretty great Hainan chicken rice at Side Chick, the subject of his latest review. And at six very different restaurants, where I talked to chefs about what it means to cook for Angelenos these days. This week, we also check in with Fäviken chef Magnus Nilsson about his photography, with chef April Bloomfield about burgers, and with Evan Kleiman about Italian cooking.

— Amy Scattergood

In praise of Locol

Thanks yous, greeting and photos are tacked to a wall at Locol.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

As Jonathan put it: “One might not expect the first Restaurant of the Year award to be won by a burger stand, but the choice was inevitable – no restaurant in years may have made more of a difference than Locol, Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson’s skater-themed fast-food spot in Watts.”

Way more than mall food

Johnny Lee, the chef at Side Chick, where the signature dish is the Hainan chicken and rice.

(Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

This week Jonathan considers chef Johnny Lee’s restaurant Side Chick, which specializes in Hainan chicken rice, the cultish dish that Lee, an alum of Ramen Champ, Sticky Rice and Rivera, has perfected. It’s a tiny shop, in an Arcadia shopping mall, with only a few tables and a window into the kitchen, where you can often see Lee and the magic he works with all those organic chickens.

What does it mean to be a chef in L.A.?

It’s a pretty great time for Los Angeles diners these days, with so many great restaurants opening, joining the zillion terrific restaurants that have been doing business for years, or decades. But what does that mean for the folks who cook that food and run those restaurants? We asked the chefs at six of those restaurants: Badmaash, Salazar, Cassia, Nickel Diner, Kismet — and the one in chef Dave Beran’s head.

Nordic food photography

Walk into downtown’s Union Station during the month of May and you’ll see a pretty remarkable photography exhibition — not of local beaches, but of snow and the home cooking of Scandinavia. They’re Fäviken chef Magnus Nilsson’s photos, from his celebrated “The Nordic Cookbook.” I talked to Nilsson before he came, and will be doing so again in person tonight at the Last Bookstore. (Fur hats. Hot dogs.)

A burger crawl

The classic burger, fries and strawberry and chocolate milkshakes at Cassell’s.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

April Bloomfield (chef of the Spotted Pig, cookbook author) is in town for Food Bowl, and also to check in on her upcoming restaurant here. So Deputy Food Editor Jenn Harris took her on a burger crawl, because, well, wouldn’t you? They went to Petit Trois, Cassell’s and Belcampo, which is pretty epic if you think about it, especially if you consider the milkshakes, the fries — and Ludo’s foie gras bordelaise sauce.

Italian home cooking

Evan Kleiman’s pasta all’Amatriciana

(Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)

Evan Kleiman talks about classic Italian dishes, “authentic” Italian cooking, and explores the great dish pasta all’Amatriciana — and gives us her recipe. “If you long to make it with pancetta and garlic, but no onion, black pepper or white wine, well, that’s your prerogative. I won’t think any less of you.”

The Los Angeles Times Food Bowl: Want to spend 31 days exploring the food of this city through a Night Market, forums, dinners, films, pop-ups and more dining and drinking? Join us in May for our month-long food festival. Check out our cheat sheet and stories about the chefs and restaurants featured, including Roy Choi, Massimo Bottura, Magnus Nilsson, April Bloomfield and Fergus Henderson and more.

The Daily Meal, the food and drink website under the editorial direction of Colman Andrews, is now one of our partners. Check out their 101 best pizzas in America and other stories, recipes and videos.

Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants, the authoritative annual guide to local dining, is online for subscribers and now features his 2016 Best Restaurants. If you didn’t get a copy of the booklet, you can order one online here.

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