Los Angeles Food Blog

In which we highlight the past week in food, either at home or abroad.

• "My friend called me distraught. 'I just ate Iggy!'" Straight Outta Chocolate's Rock N' Roll Cakes: Joy Division & Iggy Pop, In Chocolate.


• "Cooking for me is a game. My life isn't boring, trust me!" LudoBites Returns: Ludo Lefebvre Pops Up At The Royal/T in Culver City In December.


• "Taking this ride through neighborhoods that many people associate more with '90s Gangsta rap and riots than much else, eating the Blue Line is a great way to explore a large stretch of the city and fill up on some great eats--and a few drinks--along the way." Top 10 Metro Stop Eats: Eating On the Blue Line.


• "You can order shrimp at KFC? Yes, you can, if you're in Korea." 5 American Fast Food Items You Can't Get in America.
Continue reading " Short Attention Span Dinner Theater:"...
Tags: Amy Scattegood, food news, week in review

It's time for another installment of Staff Meals Today, where we find out what ten different restaurants around town are serving their staffs.

Staff meals are interesting, a kind of culinary voyeurism, a window into the inner mechanism of a restaurant. Do they tell you anything about that kitchen? Maybe, maybe not. Last week Nobu served corned beef and cabbage. The week before, comme Ça served beef stroganoff. Accident, experimentation, leftovers: it depends. But remember, Josef Centeno (Opus, Lot 1, Lazy Ox Canteen) invented the bäco for a staff meal once at Meson G.

Picasa user Keith

Chefs eat too.

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Here's a fun game. The next time you're in the company of a wine buff, toss out a few challenging in vino veritas one-liners. Something like "How's your Tsitska?" usually does the trick (the response should involve white wine grape varietals native to the Republic of Georgia, not an update on sister so-and-so). Wine has been made in the region for more than 7,000 years - longer than France and Italy - but we're only now getting a taste of their sparklers. The first to hit the U.S. are from Bagrationi, the reigning sparkling wine giant in the region. And just think how much fun it will be to wave a bottle or two in defiance the next time the Russians get a little too close to the Georgian border. Tipsy protest locations after the jump.

www.hdforindies.com

Open Sparkling Wines With Caution

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Last night's 15-course feast at RockSugar Pan Asian Kitchen--16-courses if you count the surprise Singapore butter lobster chef Mohan Ismail snuck in--was enough to feed a small village. A village with a very sophisticated palate. The feast was orchestrated to introduce next year's new menu items.

Despite the restaurant's palatial (literally) space in the Century City Westfield mall, Ismail (Spice Market, Tabla, Blue Hill), makes you feel like you're sipping tea on his living room couch. "My mom thinks I work in a cafeteria," he says, on the difficulty he has communicating with his mother in Singapore. It'll be a big surprise when she visits in winter and walks through the palace doors (see the picture after the jump). Ismail had no trouble learning her cooking skills, and incorporates many of the ingredients she once used into the RockSugar menu. And Ms. Ismail must have a strong affinity to soy sauce, as the pan-Asian kitchen carries 20 different kinds.

Rock Sugar

Chef Mohan Ismail in the kitchen

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This LA Weekly Flickr pool photo, of a bowlful of green curry mussels, comes to you courtesy of photographer My Last Bite. Where's the bowl from? As if you have to ask. Jitlada. Yes, Suthiporn Sungkamee and Jazz Singsanong's Thai restaurant, in Hollywood, is open for lunch.

LA Weekly Flickr pool/MyLastBite

Jitlada's green curry mussels

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While America may be known around the world as a fast food paradise, there are actually some menu items you can't get stateside. Here are our Top 5 oddities from abroad.

1. McDonald's Spaghetti and Fried Chicken (Philippines)

Fried chicken with a side order of spaghetti? Yes, please! McDonald's Philippines puts two great tastes that taste great together into one handy-dandy combo. Who wouldn't want to be asked, "Would you like spaghetti with that?"

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Amazon.com

Ad Hoc At Home

​It's Thomas Keller month in Los Angeles (and everywhere, really). The famed chef (The French Laundry, Per Se, Ad Hoc, Bouchon) is in town the next two weeks, to open Bouchon in Beverly Hills, which premiers November 18th, and to do a few book signings. His new Ad Hoc At Home cookbook, a rather more accessible book than his previous cookbooks, is now available. Keller will be signing books at the Williams Sonoma in Santa Monica on Monday, at the Torrance Borders the week after that, and at the Williams Sonoma at the South Coast Plaza. (Check below for specifics.) Williams Sonoma will have Ad Hoc At Home, as well as Bouchon and The French Laundry available for sale; Borders will have all four books (Ad Hoc At Home, Bouchon, The French Laundry, Under Pressure) for sale. And if you haven't already made your Bouchon reservations, get in line with the rest of us.

Keller book signings: Monday, November 9th, from 12:00 - 2:00pm at Williams Sonoma: 1600 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica. Tuesday, November 17th from 7:00 - 9:00pm at Borders: 3700 Torrance Blvd., Torrance. Thursday, November 12th from 11:00am - 1:00pm at Williams Sonoma: South Coast Plaza, 3333 South Bristol St., Costa Mesa.

If you've been web-surfing recently, you may have seen the trailer for the new movie from Sony Pictures titled Salt. No, sadly, the studios have not seen fit to make Mark Kurlansky's epic book Salt: A World History into a movie. Although it would make a fantastic film--if you're a CAA agent reading this on your phone at Craft right now--set in salt mines and fishing boats and pre-Christian cities, with recipes for preserved frog and whatnot. This is a spy movie (release date July 23, 2010) with Angelina Jolie as a CIA agent accused of being a Russian spy. Okay, so it's not exactly food-related--unless some of the Russian spying is set in a borscht restaurant--but it's cool, particularly as the cast includes Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Happy Friday.

Some food for thought from local, national and international news sources from this past week:

-- "100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do," part 2. [NYT]

-- Pets on plates! Elizabeth Kolbert reviews Jonathan Safran Foer's lastest book Eating Animals. [New Yorker]

-- After Gourmet: where do we go from here? [LAT]

-- First Lady Michelle Obama to do a cameo on Iron Chef in January. [NYT]

-- Pasadena faces an unforeseen fork in the road. [PSN]

-- The Italian-based coffee company, Illy, takes on Starbucks. [WSJ]

-- Daniel Pauly, professor at the Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia, on the consequences of overfishing. [NPR]

-- Traditional Mayan horse race marred by moonshine. [Reuters]

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Apparently, donuts really are seasonal. At least at Wilshire restaurant, where pastry chef Jen Shen fries up several variations throughout the year.

"I'm definitely more fruit-driven," she says, prying a rather ornery lemon-mascarpone cream tart from its ring mold (an impressive feat involving a blow torch, Cirque Du Soleil-style balancing act and a pint glass). "But what I really love are breads and doughs."

You can dress up doughs with all kinds of expensive ingredients like vanilla beans, artisan chocolate, or one too many pounds of nuts. But it's a plain old tuber -- the humble sweet potato -- that wins Shen's heart.

Jenn Garbee

Better Than Beer Bongs: Jen Shen's Pint Glass Party Tricks

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