Flickr/Lauren Manning

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

• "If, however, you have neither a backyard nor a grill, you can participate in another great American tradition of finding someone else do the work for you." BBQ Flowchart: Where You Can Be Up to the Grill in Meat.
• "Noodle making is a dying art form; chefs who can properly make a bowl of mian stand out." 10 Best Handmade Chinese Noodle Restaurants in Los Angeles.
• "The glorious San Fernando Valley. Spatially vast, heavily populated, and wildly lacking in proper places to drink. Or so we thought." 8 Craft Beer Bars in the San Fernando Valley + Happy Hour Specials.
• "My original idea was to wear a Donnie Darko bunny head, or to have changed disguises every time the camera came back to me." Welcome to Los Angeles: YOU'RE SO UGLY!!!
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Amy Scattergood, Short Attention Span Dinner Theatre, Week in Review

Flickr/alenlin

Lindy and Grundy

Where's the beef? It's at these Los Angeles meat shops, which will most certainly be bustling in preparation for this weekend.

We've outlined a few recommandations for what to get a several of the city's most respected butchers -- locally sourced, organic, all that good business -- but we also name-dropped a few off-the-path places you might not of tried yet.

As Homer Simpson once said, "All normal people love meat. If I went to a barbeque and there was no meat, I would say 'Yo Goober! Where's the meat?' I'm trying to impress people here, Lisa. You don't win friends with salad."

Just kidding vegan friends, we made enough gazpacho for everyone. Turn the page for 6 great Los Angeles butcher shops, listed alphabetically.

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D. Solomon

Mo-Chica's kitchen

Ricardo Zarate wants you to know something before checking out his new Mo-Chica. Slated to open Wednesday, May 30, it replaces an earlier version of the same name that closed yesterday. "Peru. It's in South America," says Zarate, mock-serious. "Its limits are Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile." He recalls how one guest had thought Peru bordered Spain. "The point is, I'm trying to introduce my country through my food."

Mo-Chica, a few doors from Bottega Louie in downtown L.A., is poised to become an excellent ambassador. Zarate describes the menu as "comfort food," with cooked foods in large portions -- think stews -- rather than tiny tapas of, say, raw fish, as at his other restaurant, Picca. And the visual style -- red walls, gold accents, a graffiti mural -- is vibrant and fun. "We want to introduce Peruvian food, so we need to be trendy, no?" says Zarate.

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A. Scattergood

Brooks cherries at Avila & Sons Farms

If you're a fan of farmers markets -- and, heck, why wouldn't you be? -- it should come as exciting news that L.A. is gaining yet another market in the coming weeks, this one being an after-hours affair located on West Hollywood's Sunset Strip. Beginning June 14 and every Thursday night thereafter, the Sunset Strip Business Association will host a nighttime certified farmers market and community festival from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the West Hollywood public lot (8755 Sunset Blvd.).

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A. Scattergood

David Chang at UCLA

So what did David Chang pass around at last night's UCLA science and food lecture? After Rene Redzepi handed out seaweed ice cream at the previous lecture, expectations were perhaps higher than they'd be at a normal university event, where people do not generally get experimental snacks. The Momofuku chef, who gave a talk entitled "Microbes in My Ramen?" with fellow Momofuku cookbook author and Lucky Peach writer Peter Meehan and Momofuku lab's Daniel Felder, instructed the crowd to eat samples of pistachio miso and powdered MSG.

"You basically ate the same thing," Chang told the audience, then launched into what might best be described as an apology for MSG, or monosodium glutamate, the oft-maligned ("I just think it's psychosomatic") stuff that is held responsible for "Chinese restaurant syndrome." An evening with David Chang is many things, but sedate is not one of them.

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courtesy Tony's Darts Away

The glorious San Fernando Valley. Spatially vast, heavily populated, and wildly lacking in proper places to drink. Or so we thought. Today, it's time to put your ignorance to bed and minimize the attitude long enough to see the truth -- that from Burbank to Agoura Hills you can always find a decent beer.

From properly sanctioned establishments pushing the envelope of the beer industry, to dusty dives where you can still drink quality beer cheaply, to burger joints that perfect craft beer pairings, there are no excuses for being thirsty. Turn the page for eight reasons why you should stop complaining about being in the Valley, listed from east to west.

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Kevin Scanlon

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2012 issue. Check out our entire People 2012 issue here.

Growing up in a Korean-American family in Hawaii, Paula Daniels had a precocious awareness of the natural environment. When her 12-year-old friends made "slam books," soliciting salacious opinions about their classmates, Daniels focused her book's questions on water conservation. "Mine asked, 'Do you turn off the water when you brush your teeth?' " she says, laughing. "I have always, always cared about water."

Daniels majored in broadcast journalism at USC but was dismayed after graduation to find few opportunities for environmental documentary work. So she went to law school. She'd already made partner when, in 1989, she saw a reminder of her 12-year-old activist self: a Heal the Bay T-shirt. "They had this very hip message about ocean water quality," she says. "I knew I wanted to help."

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Screenshot from the Food Network website

Duff Goldman

July 2 will mark the emergence of a new platform for food television, thanks to former Food Network and Cooking Channel veteran Bruce Seidel. The Associated Press reports that Seidel, the creator of Food Network Star and Iron Chef America, will spearhead the launch of HUNGRY, a specialized YouTube interest channel that will feature one- to three-minute how-to and celebrity-driven food videos. The programming of HUNGRY is part of YouTube's $200 million plan to create about 100 niche channels.

HUNGRY also will star Duff Goldman, Food Network's former Ace of Cakes host, who will focus on food culture in "Duff's Food World." So far, two other series are mid-production. "Brothers Green" features two Brooklyn brothers who are both musicians and "underground caterers." Two women from Austin will cook retro food and entertain in "Casserole Queens." Also expected to come from HUNGRY are series on pork, gluten-free cooking and Italian desserts.

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R. Ritchie

gathering for the Urban Food Crawl

Unless you live in some sort of vegan utopia where all your friends are herbivores (or Portland), it's almost a guarantee that dining out with meat-eating friends is going to be a disappointment for at least one of the parties involved. Either the vegan eats a bland salad at a steakhouse or the carnivore pretends to enjoy kale, seitan and carob. Whatever the case, someone ain't happy.

This conundrum is exactly why the weekly Urban Food Crawl tours are successful, fun and most certainly worthy of the $65 tab. Operated by Jen Bardekoff and Sheri Wheeler (with the help of two tour guides), the L.A.-based company began last August as a way to showcase restaurants with vegan options and spirited ambiance. As crazy as this sounds, these two attributes aren't always a given when dealing with veggie-friendly joints.

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Vertigo

Get Jiro! cover

Over a year after our first glimpse at the Anthony Bourdain/Joel Rose (Kill Kill Faster Faster, The Blackest Bird) comic collaboration, Get Jiro!, the release date is finally set. Amazon is now accepting preorders for the July 3 release of the book once described by one of its authors as "a gourmet slaughter-fest." (Can you guess which one?)

Luckily, they've expanded on that description:

In a not-too-distant future L.A. where master chefs rule the town like crime lords and people literally kill for a seat at the best restaurants, a bloody culinary war is raging.

On one side, the Internationalists, who blend foods from all over the world into exotic delights. On the other, the "Vertical Farm," who prepare nothing but organic, vegetarian, macrobiotic dishes. Into this maelstrom steps Jiro, a renegade and ruthless sushi chef, known to decapitate patrons who dare request a California Roll, or who stir wasabi into their soy sauce. Both sides want Jiro to join their factions. Jiro, however has bigger ideas, and in the end, no chef may be left alive!

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