Yak is the enlightened meat. It’s lean like buffalo but juicy like beef. It’s raised at high elevation in the Himalayas and in Colorado, this mystical creature that exists, in my experience, in exotic children’s books and adventure tales, up among the clouds, both divine and a bit awkward – like a god in a Miyazaki film, or the transferred spirit in a Murakami novel. It’s healthy, it’s tasty, and it’s definitely different.

The unexpected thing about Tara’s Yak Chili is an emphasis on the chili. The meat is tough, like jerky, but the texture is almost necessary – because it’s spicy. It’s really, really spicy, and the ensuing endorphins do nothing to subtract from the lightheaded, wondrous feeling of a yak-eating ritual that cannot feel anything but holy.

Tara’s Himalayan Cuisine
10855 Venice Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90034

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That’s not the case in San Diego, where the next best thing is right at your fingertips, on the next aisle over. La Salsa Chilena is available in select stores across Southern California, and San Diegans and Angelenos should count their blessings that they should be so lucky. Doubting shoppers pass by, believing all those so-called pico de gallos in the refrigerated section are the same. Most salsa fans grab the spiciest one they can find and call it day. Next time you get chance, grab the La Salsa Chilena mild, experience how bold a mild salsa can be, and enjoy enough cilantro to cure a third degree bout of salmonella. It’s that delicious.

La Salsa Chilena
La Salsa Chilena on Facebook

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Then there are times when everything that makes diners great intersects with everything that makes food great. Diners by their nature cut quality for convenience, but every once in awhile there’s an exception, like Jodie’s, like Lois, like Tokyo 7-7 (R.I.P.), and it’s those kinds of exceptions that keep me trolling the eaten path instead of learning how to cook. It’s those kinds of exceptions that I live for, and one of those exceptions can be found in a corner diner in a corner bowling alley at the corner of Mar Vista in West Los Angeles. Pepy’s Galley is like any other of L.A.’s Mexican-American breakfast greasy spoons, though it’s better than most, an unlikely quality of cookery for a place that you might walk into wearing bowling shoes.

But on Wednesdays Pepy’s can be more than just an above average breakfast spot, because on Wednesdays, the special is Corned Beef Hash. Soft, large chunks of corned beef laugh in the face of the word diced. Blackened edges add just enough crisp and charred flavor to balance the fatty meat with gooey egg. Round it out with coffee and potatoes – I’m sure it doesn’t get any better.

Pepy’s Galley
12125 Venice Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90066

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A burgeoning exception these days are gourmet food trucks, especially in Los Angeles, where over the last five years there’s been a significant change in the urban landscape of middle-to-upper-middle-class neighborhoods. Every time I return for a visit, these trucks, tattooed with cutesy graphic design and culinary puns, seem to multiply like tribbles. Driving past Sawtelle Ave. or Abbot Kinney Blvd. gives me a double take, because a traffic jam of brightly colored boxes on wheels is a spectacle. On my latest visit, I noticed that private property off Santa Monica’s Main Street had become home to a weekly event called Food Truck Tuesdays. Initially shut down for zoning issues, it returned with a vengeance, free bike valet included. Don’t mind the restaurants begging for business on the next street over.

While the trending trucks hit the nightlife nodes of West Los Angeles, taco trucks, the original beacons of American street food keep returning to those pockets of wasteland nearby Home Depots, storage facilities, Smart & Finals and construction sites. Even in West LA, this old school breed of mobile Mexican cuisine is not yet extinct. Maybe those three buck burritos from my childhood are five dollars now, but not much else has changed in the last fifteen years. The lines are still full of tired construction workers and hungry teenagers, leaning on sagging chain link fences, eagerly awaiting their numbers.

Between Santa Monica’s new food truck lot and Abbot Kinney Blvd. is the intersection of 4th and Rose Ave., where a truck called La Isla Bonita awaits in the same parking spot every day except Thursday. Despite the increasing gentrification of Venice and development of Santa Monica, the truck often known only as “Fourth and Rose” continues to be a neighborhood favorite as well as a dining destination for fans of Mexican food all over the 310 area code.

The food truck I remember most growing up in Venice is the wheeled extension of my favorite taco shop growing up in Venice, Mariscos Guillen La Playita. La Playita is only a few blocks away from La Isla Bonita, and it’s impossible not to compare the two, especially when it comes to the mixta tostada. Like La Playita’s, the mixta at Fourth and Rose is a combo of imitation crab, shrimp and octopus, topped with lime and avocado. La Isla Bonita shreds the crab and includes only a few pieces of shrimp, but the shrimp is delicious and plump with the perfect snap. It promises to also be a great ingredient for the menu’s seafood cocktails and ceviches.

For nostalgic reasons I still prefer La Playita, but if anything could change my mind it would be La Isla Bonita’s salsa, a delicious, fresh, red sauce that turns everything it touches into fantastic Mexican street food. Its deep red tastes like a freshly made and spicier Tapatio, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. Whether it’s drizzled over a pile of shredded imitation crab or cooked into a carne asada taco, the hot sauce might be the highlight of the meal.

After spending a year in San Diego, beans on a street taco are a surprising sight, but there are other little differences between Tijuana-style tacos and La Isla Bonita’s buck-fifty treats. For one, the al pastor is relatively unseasoned at Fourth and Rose. The carnitas is flavorful despite its crispy, lean texture, and the tortillas are double-stacked and doughier than usual. But despite these slights, La Isla Bonita’s tacos are worthwhile orders, even at the neglect of delicious mariscos.

Despite being on wheels, La Isla Bonita can compete with any taqueria in Los Angeles, and that may be the difference between taco trucks and the mobile kitchens that meet up in Santa Monica every Tuesday night. The gourmet food truck trend is a useful interpretation of American street food, a missing link in Los Angeles’s dining spectrum where geography is too often limiting. But they are what they are – exercises in convenience – and most are not destinations in themselves. Few of these gourmet trucks can match up to a good restaurant in L.A. that serves the same dishes. They are not like hot dog stands in suburban Chicago, by-the-slice pizza in New York, or permanently parked mariscos trucks in San Diego, places where convenience and quality aren’t mutually exclusive.

Even fewer can compete with La Isla Bonita, and no amount of graphic design and twitter accounts can change that.

La Isla Bonita Taco Truck
4th St & Rose Ave
Venice, CA 90293

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That said, it would be impossible for me to pay a visit to my hometown in San Gabriel Valley without indulging in its edible bounties, and I could think of no better destination than the Taiwanese breakfast table. While I’ve written about Shanghainese/Taiwanese breakfast in New York, the weekend trips that my Taiwanese American friends would make to places like Four Sea Restaurant were not etched into my appetite until now.

The mascot of this meal, you tiao, was done right here; our crisp, fluffy, dog-bone-shaped doughnuts lacked the slick of grease that comes with a regrettable plate of fried dough. Their true potential, though, was fulfilled in Four Sea’s fan tuan. Tender, chewy grains of sticky rice, scrunched, crispy-not-oily you tiao, and strongly flavored shreds of dried pork that moisten like meat-based cotton candy hit the elusive balance that makes any food greater than the sum of its parts – a good case for “perfect food” if I’ve ever tasted one. A dessert option, substituting powdered sugar for pork floss, was also available, though not quite as divine.

Savory lou bo gao (steamed and stir-fried radish cake), could have been a dense, starchy letdown, but Four Sea’s cooks delivered these cakes to us entirely crisp on the edges and just thick enough for us to enjoy their creamy consistency without chewing through a mouthful of radish paste.

Other staples of the Taiwanese breakfast menu were more of a mixed bag. Beef-filled shao bing (pancakes) were downright decadent in their flakiness, much more of a puff pastry than the more flat-bread-like renditions I’ve come to expect. The joint’s dan bing, even given a sloppy spatula flip that left the pancake-to-egg ratio severely lopsided, was a solid choice. Meat-and-veg-stuffed baozi (steamed buns) were comparatively lackluster, as was Four Sea’s xian dou jiang, a sloppy take on salty soy milk that muddled delicate flavors and textures into a mainly soggy soup.

The surprise hit of our breakfast feast was Four Sea’s “fried meat filled” pancake, a pork-and-chive pastry with impeccably alternating layers of crispy, chewy and tender dough. I admittedly have limited experience with the world of daikon-based hash brown patties, double-starch sandwiches and all-encompassing breakfast miracles like this pancake, but I can only dream of a world where morning meals get any better than this.

I suppose that world is Taipei, but until I can afford a flight to the hungry island, San Gabriel Valley will do just fine.

Four Sea Restaurant
2020 South Hacienda Boulevard
Hacienda Heights, CA 91745
626.330.3088

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Every time I’m handed a bowl of chips at a Mexican restaurant, I get the feeling that my life is a series of salsa verdes, each more addictive than the last. The distinctly tart, immensely spicy salsa verde that greets diners alongside a hefty bowl of fresh corn tortilla chips at Mariscos Chente is the newest rey of my tomatillo kingdom.

A regional seafood restaurant between Marina Del Rey and Culver City, Mariscos Chente holds to its coastal Sinaloan roots by serving nothing but fish, shrimp and ceviche, much of it imported from the western edge of Mexico. Boykji and I would have liked to order much more than our stomachs could afford on the afternoon we paid a visit – Chente is known for its camarones aguachiles (raw shrimp with chiles, onions and lime juice) and pescado zarandeado (open-grilled whole fish, whose seasoning is informed by Mexico’s coastal trade with China).

We ultimately settled on the relatively tame filete a la diablo. Little more than a grilled fillet of sea bass plastered with a thick salsa roja, the dish was gratifying in its simplicity. Lightly crisped edges and a moist, flaky body made the fillet a winner on its own. The rich and smoky salsa took a tiny bite into the heat scale, but was clearly not meant to overpower the clean, mild flavor of the fish; with a squeeze of lime juice and a bite of freshly grilled rajas, each bite was a demonstration of cooking at its basic best. Even Chente’s rice, a small pillow of fluffy, buttery grains, was a standout.

Great salsa verde might be a constant, but whenever I come across a place like Mariscos Chente, I’m reminded of how easy it is to reduce “Mexican food” to what are rarely universal terms. I’m also reminded of exactly why Mexican food, with its regional diversity of ingredients and recipes, is more exciting in California than in New York, and I can’t wait for my next visit to Los Angeles for a proper taste.

Mariscos Chente
4532 S. Centinela Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90066
310.390.9241

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Exactly what the hell is “California pizza?”

A casual glance at my home state offers glimmers of hope, but only amidst a tasteless slurry of industrial-grade delivery chains, “New York” style pizzerias that are woefully anything but, and California Pizza Kitchen, which is an insult to California, Pizza, and Kitchens. And though standouts like the Cheeseboard present a slice of salvation, they are quite far from imprinting a bona fide style on the Golden State’s pies.

I attribute my ability to care this much about California’s pizza personality to the Barros, a family from my hometown who, when I was growing up, owned the best pizzeria for miles around. One of Diamond Bar’s four sports bars and an ideal location for high school pizza parties, Barro Brothers’ calibrated my taste for pizza with their memorable take on a depressing, middle-of-the-road template. The quality of the pizza here has gone downhill since I set off for college, but the decline is a small one. Whenever I visit my parents, pies and pitchers at Barro’s are more than justified – especially on Monday nights, when a large pie still costs only $8.95.

Hand made pizza crust here is as deceptively good as ever – a thing of wonder, considering that it’s essentially a very thoughtful take on Boboli. There’s no wood-fired brick oven behind this blonde-colored specimen, but the results are still downright appetizing. Its edges are crusty, hearty and just slightly puffed (more like fresh bread than classic crust), its underside is firm and crisp to the point, and its body hits the sweet spot between chewy and fluffy that toss-off pizzerias always overshoot. The closest I’ve had to this style anywhere is the pizza at Dino’s in Burbank – and from what I’ve tasted, Barro’s does it better.

Barro’s pies are remorselessly carpet-bombed with California mozzarella, always served slightly burnt and instantly stretching to drape each slice as it’s cut. The thick tomato sauce beneath is tart and hefty (gone are the days when this sauce packed some serious spice), backing this blanket of cheese with an undercurrent of bright flavor. And Barro’s toppings are still top notch, if not as generously applied as they were back in the day: Fresh vegetables are thinly sliced, chunks of Italian sausage are torn from the genuine article, and every addition to the pie is submerged into the mozz in perfect distribution.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that this strain of pie can’t be endemic to the suburbs of Los Angeles. I’ve seen photos of pizzas elsewhere in the country with the same mediocre aura – crust, cheese, sauce and toppings that by the numbers must be guilty until proven innocent. If “I’ll believe it when I taste it” is par for the course when it comes to California pizza, then I volunteer Barro’s for an entry in the pizza encyclopedia – if not as a case of style, then as proof that quality trumps category when it comes to good food.

Barro Brothers’ Pizza
21000 Golden Springs Dr.
Diamond Bar, CA 91765
909.598.2871

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There’s a bar in Long Beach that recognizes what every pickled egg in this country is missing: chilies.

Rather than submerging its hard boiled eggs in beet-tinted brine, Joe Jost’s imbues them with the heat of Santa Fe Grandes. The result is a poor man’s caviar with one hell of a bite: The comfort-food quality of each hard-boiled egg rides a neon yellow wave of tartness and spice, and a quick dusting of black pepper and service on a bed of pretzels turns this classic bar food into a bar food classic.

That’s not the only thing classic about the joint. The oldest operating bar in Long Beach, Joe Jost’s has been serving for almost a century. The house’s $3.50 “schooners” of cheap American beer (formerly East Side Old Tap, then Pabst Blue Ribbon, now Busch), $3 Polish sausage sandwiches on steamed rye, hot dogs, liverwurst, and freshly roasted Virginia peanuts join its pickled egg to create a bar menu that will never go out of style. My spell at Joe Jost’s is best cast on a weeknight, starting with a pickled egg and a schooner of Shiner Bock, following with Joe’s Special sandwich, and finishing with pints over a game of shuffleboard.

Joe Jost’s
Joe Jost’s pickled egg recipe
2803 E. Anaheim St.
Long Beach, CA 90804
562.439.5446

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My first hour in California runs like clockwork: Get off the plane. Find a restroom. Pick up my baggage. Drive to In-N-Out.

Plenty have followed this routine for years, and plenty others have scoffed at how we Californians cling to nostalgia-infused fantasies about America’s most overrated burger. Nick Solares has best headed off that discussion, so I don’t have to justify my ritual in too much detail here.

I’ve said before that comparing In-N-Out to places like Shake Shack is an irrelevant exercise. Point-by-point comparisons of two clearly different products easily reduce to the maxim “you get what you pay for,” and on that line, In-N-Out kills the competition pound for pound in terms of pure value. Yet, if I were offered a choice of my favorite burgers for free, I would certainly leave In-N-Out’s at the bottom of the list. These are considerations of context – as long as my stomach empties at the end of the day, the entire idea of a head-to-head burger showdown (I’m looking at you, overzealous Five Guys fans) is something of an insult to the ridiculous variety of great burgers available in this country.

I like to test my dining loyalties in more extreme colors. Whenever I see the words “In-N-Out is overrated” or hear some New Yorker gushing about the latest monumental restaurant burger as the best he’s ever had, I ask myself if I would rather live day in and day out in a society that decided to eliminate In-N-Out from the face of the earth or in a world without Minetta Tavern. Which one could I eat every day if I needed to? Which one could I always come back to without having to think about things like wait time, monthly budget, and palate fatigue? Which one would save me in moments of supreme hunger, penny pinching and unreliable travel food? Which one is the clearest and most direct experience of the American hamburger? I’d vote high end burgers out of existence without a second thought.

I guess what I learn every time I touch down in California is that when it comes to burgers, I’m a fast food idealist. I want the comfort of a consistent and universal burger that surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together. I want a plain toasted bun, an unremarkable hunk of iceberg lettuce, two slices of nondescript, conventional California tomato, and a thin, well-done patty that gets the job done in the simplest way possible. I want cardboard cups with freshly cut fries, I want clean-tasting milkshakes, and I want to know that the people making my food are treated right.

And I want it all for under $5.00. An In-N-Out burger is real food, real fast, real cheap, and real proof that fast food can do right by everyone – what other establishment so uncannily gets everything right at prices to move? There is no comparison, and there is no way to overrate such a perfectly realized icon of American cuisine.

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As seems to often be the case, it goes back to my experiences in Russia, where drinking heavily is not only a requirement of friendship but a foregone conclusion. I can cherish those memories all I want, of standing knee-deep in snow, swigging from a vodka bottle, or sitting at a table on a train for five hours, toasting to the nth degree of humanity, but there will always be the lamentable fact that I’ve never shared any of those experiences with JDC, the one person with whom I would have most liked to. Now that I’m stuck stateside, I suspect I’m the person with whom he’d most like to share a night out in Japan, chasing magic sheep or breaking into kitchens to make omurice or whatever people do over there.

Now I’m wondering why JDC and I didn’t go to an izakaya joint while we both lived in Los Angeles, instead of wondering why we were at Norm’s at three in the morning or how we got there. Every culture loves combining drinking and eating in some fashion, whether it’s wings and beer or soju and anju, but I think it’s safe to say that Russia prefers to consume its daily bread as a chaser to vodka, and if there is one aspect of Japanese drinking culture that most resembles the eat-plus-drink experience in Russia, it’s izakaya (and not sushi bars, not matter how much central Moscow insists).

Looking back on 2008, JDC and I just weren’t hip enough, and we definitely weren’t rich enough for most of LA’s small plate and big price culture. Sushi and tapas bars were out of our league, Korean and Russian lounges were out of our ethnic jurisdiction and most izakaya places I’d seen were more fancified import culture than dive bar. Too many charge entree costs for appetizer sizes and leave little room for sake-saturated bonding. Where were you, Terried Sake House, when I needed you?

Terried Sake House wasn’t exactly a dive bar, but it was cheap enough, and it had an absolute casual atmosphere that made you forgot what you were wearing and how you looked. A small TV played the Dodgers game in one corner, and the rest of the walls remained relatively blank aside from the day’s specials or beer ads. The chefs and waitresses never changed, politely and calmly taking order after order into the night, and the well-lit if tiny space was perfect for both early dinners and late night snacks, when West LA’s dining options were rarest and limited to a mere combination of Norm’s, Denny’s, Swingers, Benito’s and fast food.

Terried was best for long evenings. There’s something to sitting at the table for hours, ordering small portions of food as you go, re-upping on booze at a steady pace over the course of an evening, staying at an even, hungry and happy keel for hours. That’s the key behind Eastern European hospitality and that’s when izakaya is at its best, a mutually beneficial relationship between bar and customer. The execution of that ingenious plan is why Terried Sake House was such a perfect place to spend an evening despite it being otherwise unspecial. To put it plainly, Terried Sake House didn’t need no stinking gimmicks. It was just a great place to spend five hours.

Unfortunately, I never did. I never got drunk at Terried, and now I’ll never get the chance to. Terried Sake House closed shop a couple months ago and the only memories I have to cherish there are markedly sober. Fortunately, they’re also plenty delicious, because even if the cheap beer and sake only served to wash down quick dinners, at least those dinners were also cheap and oh so oishii. At a couple bucks a pop, the extensive menu was a foodie’s playground, whether you wanted sushi, seaweed salad, chicken gizzard or short ribs.

The yakitori cost even less. You needed a few to get your grill fix, but the taste was there no matter which part of the chicken you chose. The same goes for the tempura, where your options went far beyond the usual Japanese restaurant selection at a fraction of the price. I love okra, a love that extends from Indian curry to succotash, but it was only at Terried Sake House that I realized okra’s true potential, because the gooey nature of okra plus the crispy texture of well executed tempura was a match made in deep-fried heaven.

As I continue to live away from my hometown of Los Angeles, I realize which LA dining spots I miss most, and Terried Sake House is one of those places that carved out a home in my heart. In much the same way that Tokyo 7-7 Coffee Shop became one of my favorite morning known-secrets in La La Land, Terried became the evening equivalent, my Tokyo 5-Midnight, where zen of purpose made up for lack of flare and kitchen shortcomings. Terried didn’t need flare, nor did it share Tokyo 7-7′s lackluster menu, and the kitchen never disappointed.

My years as a vegetarian has endeared me to tofu, but as someone comfortable eating meat, I’d like to propose that Terried’s tofu steak with miso sauce is worth ordering regardless of your gastric orientation. The insubstantiality of soft tofu is a plus when you want to order even more, and the flavor is far bolder than tofu has any right to be. Possibly better might be the gyoza, the quintessential shared Asian appetizer by which most places are judged by the masses. Terried survived the challenge time and again, and the gyoza were are an absolute must-order.

Terried Sake House was an unknown local eatery in the West L.A. restaurant landscape, too far on the outskirts of Sawtelle to earn a spot in the westside J-town, and too small and quiet to draw attention between insomniac hangouts Cacao and Cafe 50′s. Now that it’s gone, replaced by some place called B.A.D. Sushi, Angelenos should light a candle for their late night options, because they lost a good one.

Even at an American-style izakaya, the real point is the booze. Terried Sake House’s beer and sake selection was cheap enough to keep the carafes pouring, and the comfortable atmosphere was conducive to long stays. I don’t want to suggest that my memory of Terried is tainted by my never taking full advantage of it, but the unpoured sake will always feel incomplete. Neither would an evening there spent with JDC have replaced a night out in Moscow or Japan, but I believe it still would have been a meaningful and memorable experience. If anything, Terried will continue to serve as a reminder to an evening not spent.

Terried Sake House (CLOSED)
11617 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90025

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