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The Man Who Ate L.A.1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Itinerary | Home
After a night hanging out at the Frolic Room in Hollywood, there’s no real virtue in ordering a grilled cheese at the Beverly Wilshire (a treat Avril Lavigne named as her fave). When carbo loading is a delicious necessity, you will be forever grateful for the ridiculously cheap Hollenbeck burrito at El Tepeyac: a saucy, porky pocket of goodness roughly the size of an anchorman’s head. At these moments, El Tepeyac could save your life. In a town where the Industry has inculcated in its citizens a certain cynicism, it’s a lack of exclusivity that brings some street cred to those who all seem so beyond it anyway. The Olsen twins aren’t chowing down anywhere, so you might as well forget about bringing your camera to the Santa Monica bistro you read about and head straight to Koreatown, the most exciting frontier in L.A.’s cheap eats scene. Los Angeles is home to the world’s second largest Korean population outside of Korea, and the ever-expanding K-Town offers the most classic and satisfying dining experience here: sitting at Soot Bull Jeep, a restaurant still festooned with some conquistador kitsch from whatever its previous incarnation was. As soon as you sit down, somebody is shovelling live hot coals into the grills right at the table. It is true that you will leave Soot Bull Jeep smelling like you’ve been to a bonfire celebrating smoker’s rights, but you will not care, because after some of their grilled short ribs or squid, you will be, in San Fernando parlance, all omigawd. That aroma is more authentically L.A. than a spritz of Britney Spears’ fragrance. Elsewhere, very late at night, in a place that actually did seem to care about California’s rigid ethos of no smoking anywhere, I had my first taste of what may be the most talked-about snack of the city, Korean fried chicken – like most delicious fried chicken, yes, but with a much greater likelihood of pickled radish on the side. The Colonel himself would be impressed at this great West Coast improvement on such an American standard. Somewhere back near the Roosevelt, I spotted a place featuring “burgers and wine,” which struck me as the kind of pitch aimed at those people who like burgers but just can’t consider it a meal unless they’ve spent $200. You can’t get wine at In-N-Out Burger, where it would be hard to spend more than $20, but it is, I believe, the best fast-food product in the United States. Unlike other sauce-laden drive-thru burgers, each bite of the In-N-Out standard bearer tastes like the proper proportion of ingredients. Whether it’s quality chili in Burbank (Chili John’s) or pot pie in the Farmers Market (Du-Par’s), this kind of inexpensive food couldn’t be replicated in a glam kitchen at any price. Cheap food is not about price but authenticity – a valuable commodity in a city obsessed with appearance. Walking into Philippe the Original, a sawdust-floored sandwich shop and putative birthplace of the French dipped sandwich, I immediately knew I fit in. At Philippe’s, when you want your sandwich completely immersed in gravy, you have to know to ask for it “double-dipped.” But when I was there, on a hot Los Angeles afternoon, the waitress just looked me in the eye and asked, “Do you want me to double-dip that?” “Yes. Yes I do.” Write to us: letters@enroutemag.net |
