Postalakis - LA by mouth: the essential guide to eating in Los Angeles

For Mom,
who still makes
the best spaghetti.

Guerrilla Tacos

The primary requisite for writing well
about food is a good appetite.

A. J. Liebling

L os Angeles by Mouth is about the experience of dining out in Los Angeles, written from the perspective of a person who very much likes dining out in Los Angeles, and has been doing so for years now. By no means do I claim to be an expert in the culinary arts, but Im an adventurous, endlessly curious and discriminating food lover, obsessed with the vitality and eclecticism of the prospering Los Angeles restaurant scenethough in Los Angeles, as youll see, the word restaurant has taken on a certain elasticity to encompass the variety of venues at which you can sample the finest provender on offer: food trucks, pop-up restaurants, French dip joints, tree houses... the list of food-purveying venues goes on. Although tree houses are not actually a thing. Yet.

Think of this as an informed enthusiasts guide rather than a compendium of snobbish judgments handed down from on high by a jaded pro who hasnt paid for a meal since college. Much like Nabokov, I have strong opinions, and I love sharing those opinions. But theyre still just opinions. My advice would be to use this book as a kind of explorers guidea starting point for adventurous eaters to develop their own opinions. Its possible that you may disagree with one or two of my assessments. Youll be wrong, but that is your right as an American, or at least is at the time of writing. (Im taking nothing for granted.)

There are a couple things you need to know about the food scene in LA. By food scene I mean something roughly analogous to music scene, in the sense that the music scene in LA went through a really bad and prolonged hair metal slump in the late 80s but has since rebounded to produce a dizzying number and variety of good bands, most of which moved to LA from Brooklyn to take advantage of the low rent. The same thing happened to the food scene! For a whilethrough the 80s and 90s and even the early aughtsmost foodies thought of LA, if they thought of LA, as a wasteland populated by once-adventurous but now rote and uninspired fusion restaurants. Much like the over-simplified history I just presented of the Hollywood music scene, that was never actually true. LA has always had its culinary treasures. The difference now is that, well, there are a lot more of them, and people are starting to pay attention.

Jon & Vinnys

I was queuing for food trucks before it was cool to queue for food trucks, so I like to think that my length and breadth of experience exploring the many facets of Tinseltown gastronomy gives me an edge when it comes to guiding newbies to the cornucopia of delights that await in unexpected places, whether youre visiting or have just moved here, or have lived here for twenty years and dont go anywhere more wild and crazy than Canters. Not to knock Cantersits one of my favorites, and its open 24 hours, a rarity in Los Angelesbut there are other places to go.

A typical scene: I stand, by myself, in the nearly empty Vons parking lot on the north end of Alvarado Street, waiting patiently for the Taco Zone truck (technically a trailer) to open up.

From my vantage point, I can see a murderers row of different meats simmering on the grill. When these have reached tender perfection, one of the cooks will grab a spatula and separate the meats into different metal containers.

Im here thirty minutes early because its Friday night and I have no plans, except to enjoy an al pastor burrito for dinner. Why so early? Because once the order window swings open and the scent of cooked meat wafts through Echo Park, an enormous, snaking line of human mouths with stylishly dressed bodies attached will form. I hate waiting in lines. But waiting in line before the line starts is totally cool.

71 Above

By the way, when I say this burrito is for dinnerthats not entirely true. In fact, Ive already had dinner. Three hours ago, high above the city in a swanky restaurant situated at the top of the tallest building in LA. The meal was great. I left completely satisfied. Youll read about it later in this very book. Nevertheless, even before I finished my meal, I had this burrito on my mind.

For those keeping score at home, in a roughly six-hour span I will have dined at a posh eatery where the chefs wear those big white hats, a food truck where hipsters congregate to devour tacos, and, finally, several hours later, I will plunk my butt in the booth of a diner thats been serving grilled cheese and onion rings (and pie!) since before your parents started dating.

That, dear reader, is dining in LA.

Los Angeles is a city of spectacular diversity. For the last hundred-plus years, people from all walks of life, including more than a few paperweight manufacturers and balloon artists, at some point in their lives heard the call Go West, and listened to that call, and acted upon that call, and headed west with hopes of finding fame and fortune, or a psychiatrist who could help them stop hearing voices. First came the gold rushers, panning for days in raging rivers, talking to each other in funny, high-pitched crazy voices, according to a movie I saw. Then came those lured by the siren call of the silver screen; in the seventies, Laurel Canyon drew the longhairsmusicians, aspiring drug addicts, often both, who spent their days strumming a six-string and takin it easy. Recent years brought the Revenge of the Nerds, responsible for the tech boom, which helped create the Segway, skateboards that explode, and the magical word machine with which Im writing this book.

Birdies

Nowadays the City of Angels has proven irresistible to a new generation of bold, daring, zeitgeist-attuned chefs. And my belly is all the better (and bigger) for it!

Sqirl

A.O.C.

But theres a lot more to this city than the new generation of chefs. LA has a rich food history to discover. Before starting this book, I hadnt the foggiest notion of who Philippe Mathieu was, even though I had eaten his signature creation dozens of times. Mr. Mathieu is credited with two things: starting the first brick-and-mortar restaurant in Los Angeles way back in 1908 and, seemingly by accident, creating the French dip sandwich. In that same year, Henry Cole opened his own saloon, complete with a 40-foot mahogany bar and tables pieced together from old trolley cars. He, too, claimed to have created the French dip. Not only did the two restaurants open in the same year, blocks apart from each other, but they also served the same delicious sandwich. A rivalry was born that is still alive and well today. Heck, now you can get a French dip in easily a hundred restaurants in this city. But those are still the only two that matter.