Eat the World Los Angeles

Friday, 22 September 2023

Mochomitos Asador

🇲🇽 MÉXICO (Sonora)
📍 12252 Whittier Blvd., Whittier, Southeast Los Angeles
🅿️ Street parking plentiful
💲 Cash or Zelle Only
🥤 No Alcohol

When you park your car and walk up to the relatively new Mochomitos Asador truck in Whittier, you will immediately notice the smiles on everyone's face, and the anticipation in their eyes. Families who have been here many times sit at tables and wait for their number to be called under the harsh lighting of street lamps. Others speeding by on Whittier Blvd. might see the big "Sonoran Tacos" written on the truck quickly turn around, park, and look over the laminated menus.

After the truck showed up on LA Taco, there were some grumpy diners complaining about wait times on forums. The truck is making flour tortillas to order and everything else is fresh off the grill, so those coming right after a positive write-up in local media might expect a decent wait to be normal. At dusk two Thursdays ago, you could basically walk up to place your order and it was fulfilled in 15-20 minutes.

Two tacos and two lorenzas, with a charred rib laid across the tacos

The boldest image of the vendor, and what probably drives the influencers wild, is the charred beef rib that comes thick and standard with any order containing that choice of meat. Most of it has been cut off into the taco it comes with, but you can grab it to nibble more. Interestingly, the excessive (intentional) char might make you like this option least of the many available.

Despite the aesthetic qualities of the rib, the two other asada meats enjoyed with this order (sirloin and arrachera) shined brighter. The only other quibble is the healthy dollop of guacamole on every taco and lorenza, possibly an ode to Los Angeles and its Baja influences rather than a nod to Sonora? On a follow up visit, this could probably be requested on the side so you can focus on their three wonderful salsas. If you are taking your order to go, make sure to get a bit of all three.

What does shine through from Sonora are the fresh flour tortillas that are made for each taco, which even remain more than edible if you over-order and have to resume a meal a couple hours later. They are the perfect tasty vehicle for those grilled meats, and are strong despite their translucency and thin nature. The truck also makes corn tortillas, but there is no report on those as they did not seem to be a part of anyone's order on this night.

For tacos ($3.25-3.75, above), the sirloin is probably the choice that wins the meal and pairs perfectly with the salsas and flour tortilla. The meats are not marinated with more than a standard salt rub, allowing the good cuts to shine through in each bite. Since they are not using the cheapest cuts from the butcher, there is no need to mask the flavor, but do expect a slightly higher cost for each taco than at a typical truck. Well worth the upgrade.

In Los Angeles the multiple styles of vampiros from Sinaloa to Baja have been getting a lot of love these days, so Mochomitos Asador has offered a Sonoran specialty that is similar: Lorenzas ($4-4.75, above). These are special, and should not be missed if you have the ability to digest dairy. Cheese is melted over crispy, fried flour tortillas and then topped with the meat of your choice.

While you may want to stick to the meats of the asada on your tacos, a lorenza offers a good opportunity to try out the truck's serviceable chorizo if the mood hits. But the sirloin and arrachera (skirt steak) work just as well or better. Again, pour enough of their beautiful salsas on top so it comes dripping down on all sides, and look up towards the heavens to thank your lucky stars for being at the right place at the right time.

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Monday, 28 August 2023

Hokey Pokey LA

Exterior facade within Westfield Century City mall

🇳🇿 NEW ZEALAND
📍 10250 Santa Monica Blvd., Century City, Westside
🅿️ Mall has private garage, one hour free
🥤 No Alcohol

EDITOR'S NOTE: Inside Westfield Century City mall, unit #2625.

In the United States when ice cream is around, the term "hokey pokey" has generally meant some form of corrupted Italian terminology and has plenty of origin stories. In New Zealand, it means something very different and very specific, referring to a flavor combining vanilla ice cream and honeycomb toffee chunks.

Near the end of 2022, a New Zealander-owned shop opened up in the Westfield Century City mall and three brothers started offering Los Angeles their hyper-regional treat. Their take continues the soft serve trend in the city, with a base of ultra-creamy vanilla either on a waffle cone or in a cup. They have turned the usually larger chunks of toffee into a homemade crumble that gets spooned onto the ice cream when you order.

Hokey pokey (above) sounds like a simple dessert and it kind of is, but that first lick proves what a luxurious treat you have actually ordered. The ice cream itself is very rich, while the sweet crunch of the toffee rounds out the flavors and energizes the textures of the experience. The temperature is on the low side to maximize the creaminess, so start licking fast before it drips down your hand!

While hokey pokey is an important and popular flavor in New Zealand, their ice cream shops are also well-known for having long lists of options on their menu. Hokey Pokey LA keeps their menu quite tight, but there are other flavors to choose like hazelnut hokey chocolate (below left), which uses a delicious Italian hazelnut soft serve and adds soft chocolate to the toffee crumble.

Hokey pokey crunch for sale in a glass jar

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Friday, 14 July 2023

Aunty Maile's Restaurant

🇺🇸 UNITED STATES (Hawai'i)
📍 19106 Normandie Avenue, Torrance, South Bay
🅿️ Ample parking in plaza

🚌 Torrance bus #2 and #6 🚏
🥤 No Alcohol

If you happen to come during a busy lunch rush at Aunty Maile's, when the weather is the right type of beautiful and sitting in the sun is still enjoyable, it might come as a surprise just how hopping the place can be. Just southwest of the busy 110/405 interchange in a fairly industrial section of town, the aloha you can enjoy when the sliding doors open also is a pleasant surprise.

If the wait is greater than normal, they will warn you at the counter, but grab a pre-made musubi or start with cake to hold you over, then grab a seat inside or out. If you are near the kitchen, which is open to the space, you will see a busy but untroubled whirl. One of the chefs has a University of Hawai'i hat, which tilts upward only when he glances at the more than a dozen hand-written tickets still waiting to be fulfilled.

A view to the kitchen with over a dozen waiting tickets

As you enjoy a serviceable spam musubi ($3.25, below), you can take in the restaurant's atmosphere. At least half of the patrons seem to be islanders, groups of older Japanese women from Honolulu amongst many other Hawaiians. Despite being technically in Torrance, this feels more like Gardena when you are inside, the ohana is not just a sign on the wall.

In addition, there is a beautiful painted wooden Hawaiian flag up there as well as many photos from the many paradises the eight islands offer. Even if you were warned about a wait, the order will probably arrive in less time, unfortunately all in styrofoam even when dining inside.

While there are a few places around the South Bay that make better poke, the offerings here are still enjoyable. This Hawaiian style ahi poke ($10.95 small, above) is a sauce-less version that has kukui nuts, dried seaweed, onions, and Hawaiian salt. Aunty Maile's serves five styles, which are also available as bowls with rice and macaroni salad.

The loco moco ($13.95, below) fills about all the volume available in the container it is served in, rice, a burger patty, and two eggs served any style completely drowned by brown gravy. The patty has the charbroil taste from the grill, which really transports you into the moods of O'ahu diners like Liliha Bakery. If only they had counter seating here in Torrance.

For a transport straight to the Chinese-Hawaiian lunch counters of the islands, try a bowl of Hawaiian style saimin ($12.95, above), which does a fair replication. Noodle lovers that frequent the San Gabriel Valley and have not yet been to Hawai'i will probably not understand the allure of this simple dish, but you can tell it is enjoyed by those that call The Aloha State home.

While you are waiting for the order, and indeed while you are eating, the call from the dessert case is quite strong, with full cakes beautifully displayed. You can finish off meals with slices like haupia (coconut), guava, and lilikoi ($6.50, below), with whipped and sweet passion fruit frosting.

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Friday, 7 July 2023

Habuya Okinawan Dining

🇯🇵 JAPAN (Okinawa)
📍 14215 Red Hill Avenue, Tustin, Orange County
🅿️ Ample parking in plaza
🥤 Beer, plum wine, sho chu, awamori

If it happens to be your first time opening the door to Habuya, tucked into a corner of a Tustin plaza anchored by a Stater Bros., you will immediately chastise yourself for not becoming a regular much sooner. Open since late 2010, the small Okinawan izakaya is obviously popular with a regular following, the restaurant is normally full and can require a wait even on a weeknight when you have not made reservations ahead of time.

No matter how long it turns out to be, it will be worth waiting for this special cuisine. Once you sit down your senses are bombarded, first with color on every surface. This is followed by the swooning Okinawan voices and three-stringed lute known as a sanshin that really defines that island's music. Soon your nose and tongue will join in this bombardment as the kitchen's small plates start arriving quickly after an order goes in.

Like any good izakaya, Habuya excels in their alcoholic beverage offerings, with ice cold Okinawan Orion draft beer ($8.50, below) served in even icier mugs, as well as Japanese sho chu and Okinawan awamori. This last offering is unique to Okinawa, made from long grain rice distillation and ancient trade patterns that connected Okinawan and Thai drinking cultures.

Even before anything hits your table, smiles across your face will be unavoidable. It is an absolute joy just to be here, and the friendly staff only make it better. They seem to be doing one hundred things at all times but also treat each customer as if they were a longtime regular that was there from the very beginning.

Most plates are small but the appetizer section has the smallest dishes, so order an array of them to get as many flavors on the table as possible. A plate of tsukemori ($7.80, above) works to get the taste buds active and the flavorful homemade pickles can be popped in between courses when necessary throughout the meal.

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, an order of jimami ($6.50, below) is smooth and slightly sweet. This Okinawan specialty is a tofu made from peanuts and on its own just has a hint of sweetness from those groundnuts. A side of sweetened soy sauce comes with it though to satisfy the sweet tooth and bolster the natural flavors.

$7.80 Ika geso (fried calamari).

$6.80 Mimiga nira (pig ear with chives in spicy sauce).

$7.80 Beni imo (fried Okinawan purple yam).

$7.50 Sausage & shishito.

A bowl of Okinawan soba should be a part of any meal here, and they will bring small bowls to share if you come as a group. The soki soba ($15, above) is a terrific way to try both the Okinawan-style wheat soba and the beautiful stewed pork rib that can be ordered a few different ways. The rib itself is tender and fatty and lives in a rich broth that has taken on a lot of its flavors, and the soba itself (suba in Okinawan) might resemble a cross between udon and egg noodles.

While often a divisive vegetable, a dish with bitter melon is also a necessary part of an Okinawan meal. If you have had bad experiences in the past, give it one more shot as the Okinawan preparation is usually a bit more mild because it is combined with meaty flavors. The goya chanpuru ($8.80, below) is a sauté of bitter melon, spam, egg, and tofu, and gets topped with dried bonito flakes. None of the dishes shown here, even those without a paragraph to describe them, were disappointing. This restaurant is highly recommended.

Goya chanpuru (sauteed bittermelon, spam, egg tofu)

$8.80 Nasu miso (eggplant and pork).

$8.50 Saba (fried blue mackerel).

$16 Hamachi carpaccio.

$16 Yuzu sea salt ramen.

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Friday, 23 June 2023

Quán Mii Restaurant

🇻🇳 VIETNAM
📍 16031 Brookhurst Street, Fountain Valley, Orange County
🅿️ Ample parking in plaza
🥤 No Alcohol

To pronounce the word xèo in Vietnamese, try to get as close to you can to the sound the rice flour batter makes as it hits a hot pan, for this is the origin of the word. If you sit far enough back towards the kitchen inside of Quán Mii you might hear this yourself, but the restaurant is constantly doing brisk business and is full of conversations so do not expect to be reminded of this sensual pleasure you may know from street vendors in Vietnam.

The origin of bánh xèo is on the street, it is a working class food that could always be found quick and cheap. Like anything delicious, rich people eventually found out and restaurants started preparing the dish for them. In Vietnam, the experience of a street stall is still hard to beat, but in Orange County you usually need to find a table indoors.

Quán Mii specializes in the "smaller" version and style found along the central coast rather than the larger ones around the Mekong Delta and now in Cambodia. There are many even more local variations within these groups which do not all make it to Southern California, but it is a privilege to have such a good purveyor of the specialty. This location on Brookhurst in Fountain Valley is the second of the franchise, the original is located on Bolsa in Westminster.

The folded rice flour wrap is nicely crispy and heavy with the sweetness of coconut milk. The bánh xèo đặc biệt ($17.95, above and below) has a bounty of bean sprouts inside as well as shrimp, squid, and ground pork, a symphony of flavors even before you start adding lettuces and fresh herbs to each bite. A rice paper wrapper holder with warm water is brought to each table after you order, and the combinations for DIY wraps are almost limitless.

The other central Vietnamese specialty that is hard to pass up at Quán Mii is a tray of bánh bèo "Huế" ($10.95, above), which come out in a tray of nine rice flour cakes topped with shredded shrimp. A piece of crispy fried pork and chopped scallions join the shrimp, but be sure to add a spoonful of their spiked nước chấm before eating each in one bite.

Also from Huế, try the mắm tôm chua "Huế" ($7.95 small order, below), a fresh and spicy fermented fish dish that is sometimes used as a condiment. Before fermentation, the shrimp have been marinated in rice wine, then combined with chili, galangal, and garlic. The sour final product is the perfect accompaniment for savory and sweet dishes.

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Thursday, 15 June 2023

Tasty Yerevan

🇦🇲 ARMENIA
📍 1802 E. Washington Blvd., Pasadena, San Gabriel Valley.
🅿️ Ample parking in plaza
🥤 No Alcohol

After you go into Tasty Yerevan, place your order at the counter, grab a homemade kompot ($4, above) from the fridge, and sit down, you will look back out the windows and notice the beautiful San Gabriel Mountains rising sharply past the streets of Pasadena. It sets a dramatic scene for eating a shawarma sandwich, easily better than heading home with what will be a somewhat soggy meal.

Spits of slightly charred chicken and pork rotate in the kitchen, making the view away from the mountains pretty beautiful as well. With a counter full of fresh salads and vegetables, sandwiches stuffed with everything are definitely the move here. Watch the slicing, the piling, the toasting, all making your mouth water as the smells drift into the dining room.

Do not be afraid to answer "yes" when they ask you if you want your sandwich spicy, as the hot sauce is not that hot but does add a great flavor. The small, rotating spit of chicken is well marinated and taken care of, so each piece in a wrap is tender and juicy. With the fresh vegetables and delicious sauces, the chicken lavash shawarma ($12, below) is quite the experience.

Both meats are available in a pocket of bread too, but the thin lavash is worth the $2 upgrade. The Armenian version of a shawarma sandwich is also guaranteed to have a bushel of chopped parsley, and Tasty Yerevan does not disappoint. The sauces are less garlicky than the Lebanese and Palestinian versions found around town, but the overall flavors of each fresh bite are really wonderful.

Bite-away view of chicken shawarma in lavash

You can get both of these shawarmas as a plate with buttery rice and a choice of hummus, vegetables, or salad, as well as an array of kebobs that are grilled to order. Plates also come with a few pieces of lavash, so they are good value, although the hummus and the kebobs themselves are fairly average if still enjoyable.

With so many delicious Armenian kebob purveyors in nearby Glendale and beyond in the San Fernando Valley, it would be wise to stick to the well-above-average shawarma sandwiches here at Tasty Yerevan. That being said, both the beef kebob plate ($15, below left) and chicken kebob plate ($15, below right) were devoured completely later at home.

Two kebab plates with salads, vegetables, hummus, and rice

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Thursday, 25 May 2023

Ramen Josui 如水

🇯🇵 JAPAN
📍 2212 Artesia Blvd., Torrance, South Bay
🅿️ Ample parking in plaza
🥤 Beer, sake, and shochu

If you have ever traveled to Nagoya, it is almost a certainty that you sought out the small ramen shop known as Tokugawacho Josui Honten, a chukasoba-style purveyor that specializes in simple shio bowls but dips its toes into many others. It was almost stunning when they decided to open a branch in North Torrance in the spring of 2019, and even more stunning that besides local South Bay communities this opening went fairly unnoticed.

Just over four years from their grand opening, Ramen Josui is still crafting delicious bowls of their signature dish and has other reasons to visit as well. The shop is usually full of a good mixture of patrons from all over Gardena and Torrance, with mixed families, non-Japanese, and always a few solo male diners at the bar coming after work nearby.

The 6 piece order was a "mistake" the first visit.

The 10 piece order is necessary ever since.

Even those customers that have never been to Nagoya or heard about this ramen shop will immediately see the connection, which is alluded to in a few spots on the menu. The large city in central Honshu is often passed over as people go between Tokyo and Kyoto/Osaka, but it has culinary treasures all its own and should not be skipped if given the time. Thankfully residents of the South Bay and Greater Los Angeles now have access to good renditions of the famous shop's food.

If you are debating a chicken appetizer, skip the karaage (a much better version is available at nearby Hakata Ikkousha Ramen and other locations) and go straight for the fried chicken wings ($6.75, above). More than other starters, these are a specialty of Nagoya and prepared in the style most popular there: full of white pepper and garlic and dipped in a seasoned, citrus-y soy sauce. These will beat 99% of wings in the area and are the real finger-lickin' good chicken.

The namesake Josui ramen ($10.80, above) has the pork and chicken stock the shop is recognized for, and is almost always the bowl underneath the Japanese men who come to solo slurp. This is a good indication that it should be your starting point on the menu, despite its very simple look and presentation. Plenty of extras are listed on the menu if you desire, but the bowl without additional toppings is just as good as anything.

The menu describes the stock being "finished with fish," but one sip will reveal a well-balanced niboshi depth. This complexity works very well with the shio characteristics, and the noodles are always skillfully cooked. Two pieces of very thin, buttery chashu are layered over the finished product, and are good enough that you might consider an extra order when you come again.

There are other worthy appetizers if you want more on your table besides the fried chicken wings, like the takowasa ($4.50, above), fresh raw octopus covered in zippy wasabi. This izakaya classic is especially good when paired with some of the shop's more rich and creamy bowls of ramen.

The gyoza ($5.50, below) come in an order of five and are quite small, leaving plenty of room in the stomach for the full bowls of ramen to be finished. They will likely not be the show-stopper of any meal, as gyoza never really are, but they do have their place and will not let you down.

When you come enough you might want to venture to other bowls, which other customers seem to be enjoying next to you. A bowl of miso ramen ($11.50, above) is supremely rich and creamy, combining their signature stock with miso and adding ground chicken, bean sprouts, and sweet yellow corn. A chunk of butter is laid on top and can be mixed in for an extra chance of heart attack, but really this can be removed if you feel the broth is rich enough.

The tantan men ($13, below) seemed especially popular with reviewers online, and comes nicely un-spiked with spice as it should. Many random ramen shops load this style with too much heat to cover up the lack of flavor, but this is more along the lines of the much more tame version that first arrived in Japan from China (filtered through notoriously mild Shanghai flavor palates). The bowl is heavy with sesame creaminess and a good depth of flavor, so it could use a touch more spice if you please.

Ventures to these other options unfortunately left a longing for the namesake bowls enjoyed on previous visits. When the shoyu is eventually ordered someday it will be added to this space, but if it were not clear already any first order should be the Josui ramen.

The overcast days and misty mornings of May in Los Angeles are perfect weather for ramen. Before endless summer arrives and other foods are more desired, get in a few trips for Nagoya-style noodles before it gets too hot.

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