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Dining in Los Angeles


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On 1/30/2006 at 10:28 PM, Joe H said:

The Border Grill is the restaurant from the two who were featured on the Food Network for several years. Worth a visit.

We have enjoyed ourselves at Border Grill so much over the past few years that we watched both the Friday and Saturday night World Series games at the bar in downtown Los Angeles.  The Happy Hour menu is a bargain (don't miss the brisket taquitos).  Might not be the best Mexican you can find, and certainly LA is blessed in this department, but it is still pretty darn good.

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My hubby and I were in LA for a few days this past week.

Most meals were disappointing including a dinner at Lucques (more on that later). 

If you're in the City of Angels, you need to eat at Revolutionario North African Tacos. 

We had lunch there Wednesday afternoon after our studio tour at Paramount, and that was the best meal we had the pleasure of experiencing during our L.A. vacation. I wish I could eat my way through their menu; it's that good.

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Pickled vegetables and kimchi.

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Chicken tagine, preserved lemon, olives.

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Pozole tagine.

The spices were doing somersaults in B's mouth. I'm getting hungry just typing this.

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Plantains and mojo.

Oh, man! I wish there was a branch in San Francisco but that's not going to happen in my lifetime.

 

Revolutionario North African Tacos
1436 West Jefferson Blvd. (Raymond Avenue)
Jefferson Park

 

Full disclosure - I'm friends with one of the co-owners and know both of the owners via several Internet food fora.

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Unfortunately the food at Lucques didn't exactly rise to the occasion. You would think otherwise, especially since I'm a fan of farm-to-table. Well, that's true except that I don't like farm-to-table-and-the-kitchen-sink.

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Ricotta gnocchi, leeks, pancetta.

This bowl of food had three other ingredients which completely obliterated the delicacy of the gnocchi - Parmigiano, mustard greens and almonds.

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Slow-roasted pork, cornbread-chorizo stuffing, romesco, quince, marcona almonds.

For those of you don't know me well, I prefer dishes that don't feature a kitchen sink's worth of ingredients in order to convey a chef's point of view.

I would have been happy with two of four accompaniments and the pork. Oh well - this was merely "fine". The plating sucked though.

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Halva phyllo cake, yogurt whipped cream, pistachio brittle ice cream.

One thing I'm noticing - Suzanne Goin (or perhaps her chefs) are fans of nuts. Three of nine main courses featured nuts (hazelnuts with sea bass; pine nuts with swordfish; and almonds with pork); two of six appetizers (walnuts in an apple salad, and the aforementioned ricotta gnocchi had almonds). And she has a plate of olives and almonds served with the bread.

It makes for a rather boring palette, no?

Oh, you want to know about the dessert. It was just "ok".

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Grapefruit vacherin, crème fraîche ice cream, grapefruit sorbet and meringue.

Sorbet was refreshing, ditto for the fruit sauce. Presentation left a bit to be desired.

Unfortunately the lighting in the restaurant was extremely dim so my photos of B's dishes didn't come out as good. But you get the idea anyway: charitably speaking, Lucques is a wonderful restaurant....if the year was 2006.

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Interesting article from the LA Times on the changing tastes for Chinese food in LA: The vanishing old-school Chinese restaurants of the San Gabriel Valley.  It seems that we are losing many of the larger, banquet hall-style places, including, according to the article, Ocean Star, Empress Harbor Seafood Restaurant and Lincoln Seafood in Monterey Park, Embassy Kitchen in San Gabriel, and East Gourmet Seafood in Rosemead, which all closed within the last year.  These are also among the places that you could get the dim sum on carts, which also seem to be going the way of the dodo (anecdotal experience only). 

David Chan (basically THE nonprofessional guy eating and writing about Chinese food in mostly LA but also throughout the US for the past decade) weighs in for the article.  Incidentally, his writings on Chinese and possibly other food can be found here, on his blog, and here, through Menuism.

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