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Tom yum noodles from Wat Thai in Los Angeles, Calif.
Soleil Ho / The Chronicle
For this past week’s review, The Chronicle sent me to Los Angeles to check out Alice Waters’ splashy project, Lulu. You can read the review here. I spent a week in the city — the better to space out my three visits to the restaurant — and [insert original quip about traffic here].
There’s a lot to love about Los Angeles: its seemingly infinite textures, the papery crinkle of swaying palm fronds, the beans of searchlights stretching up into the night sky. I would have loved to spend another week just in the San Gabriel Valley, and maybe I will when some other Bay Area luminary opens a spot over there. One can dream, anyway.
When I wasn’t walking the halls of the Hammer Museum to digest my meals at Lulu, I found other good places to eat. While I travel, I try desperately to relax and quell my urge to optimize — to make every meal the BEST meal I could ever eat — but, well, it tends to work out that way anyway. (It helps that my friends and family there have great taste.) Here are some of the highlights, if you happen to find your way over there soon.
Country Style Jamaican Restaurant
This Jamaican spot in Inglewood got in my crosshairs while I was scoping out a place to eat before my flight back to San Francisco, and it made for an incredible goodbye meal. (A tip of the hat to LA Eater’s Mona Holmes on this one!) Its business is primarily takeout, so I’m not too proud to admit that this was a meal eaten off the trunk of my rental car. Even so, the decor of the restaurant has a heartfelt atmosphere: The green, black and yellow walls are hung with portraits of Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama and Bob Marley. Outside, diners like me expertly dig fingers into ore-like blocks of braised oxtail, mining the crevices for succulent shreds of meat.
I was tempted by the whole fried snapper escovitch, which looked entrancing covered with slivered peppers and okra, but since it was just me, I grabbed a combo plate with jerk chicken and curried shrimp. While my intention was to go light, it came piled with starches, just like a plate you’d make if you were at a cookout and fully intended to pass out on the couch after: deep-fried festival bread, rice and peas, plantains. A pineapple-ginger drink, with an aftertaste that sizzled with the spiciness of fresh ginger, was an essential accompaniment to all that.
10:30 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday-Sunday. 630 N. La Brea Ave., Suite 111, Inglewood. 424-227-6915
Sonoratown
Flour tortillas are the backbone of Sonoratown, a taqueria with two locations in Los Angeles. The restaurant is an homage to the cuisine of San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora, the hometown of co-owner Teodoro Diaz-Rodriguez, Jr., as well as a shout-out to a historically Mexican neighborhood of Los Angeles. Sonoran food, also known for its bacon-wrapped hot dogs (and burritos!) and mesquite-grilled carne asada, isn’t incredibly common in the Bay Area, though there are some small businesses here that do focus on it and other regional Mexican cuisines.
It’s worth it to pause before you eat your tacos to give the tortillas themselves a sniff to take in the aromas of toasted wheat and pork. The gauzy tortillas, crosshatched with grill marks and made with Sonoran wheat and lard, would be good eaten simply brushed with butter. But the shop’s fillings, and the piquant chiltepin salsa you can drizzle over the whole package, are just as satisfying. Definitely try the burrito, which I think really showcases the flakiness of the tortilla when it’s folded over itself. And consider also ordering a taco, splashed with creamy, pastel-green avocado sauce and salsa roja — think of it like the “dessert” slice at the House of Prime Rib.
11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday; 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. 208 E. 8th St., Los Angeles. 213-628-3710 or www.sonoratown.com
Wat Thai Temple
A great place to walk around aimlessly is this Thai Buddhist temple in North Hollywood, which hosts a bustling open-air food market in its parking lot on the weekends. You’ll find a wide variety of Thai street food here: smoky grilled squid skewers, deep-fried mussel fritters, pandan jellies swimming in fresh coconut milk and bamboo shoots dusted with toasted rice powder. Prices for entrees hover at around $7, and there’s plenty of seating on the premises.
While I’d generally recommend staying away from the fried stuff, which turned out pretty soggy by the time I got it, the soups and desserts are really something special here. The tom yum noodle soup sparkles with chile pepper spice and citrus, while shrimp balls, a bubbly fried wonton chip and coarse ground pork add body to the broth. To finish the meal off, even though we were deliriously full, my companion and I picked up mango sticky rice. Paired with slices of mango that vibrated with a floral aroma, the rice was pleasantly green, tinted by pandan leaf, and scattered with crisp mung beans. If I had more time, I would have certainly gone back to try even more.
8 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. 8225 Coldwater Canyon Ave., North Hollywood, Los Angeles. 818-780-4200 or www.watthailosangeles.com
Yangban Society
In late 2019, Katianna and John Hong left Wine Country, and their jobs as head chefs at Charter Oak and the Restaurant at Meadowood, to start a family and open a casual Korean American restaurant in Los Angeles. What diners got was Yangban Society, the restaurant the couple fantasized about for years: where matzoh ball soup is bulked up with confited fingerling potatoes and hand-torn sujebi noodles, and the deli counters are filled with kimchi breads, chilled acorn noodles and blueberry cobbler. Since it opened in the Arts District this past January, the Korean-Jewish hybrid has gained national acclaim and landed on multiple best new restaurants lists.
That’s a lot of hype to live up to, but I think it’s truly earned it. That phenomenal matzoh ball soup, redolent with the refreshing flavor of dill, was as rich with chicken bone essence as paitan ramen. The Hongs’ team also have a special way with flaky doughs, as showcased in the restaurant’s crisp biscuits, draped in curry gravy, and the crust that covered the congee pot pie. You don’t usually expect to come out of a Korean American restaurant singing about biscuits and pie crust, but that’s the truly fun part of this place.
5:30-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday; 5:30-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. 712 S. Santa Fe Ave., Los Angeles. 213-866-1987 or https://yangbanla.com
