T. Nguyen

Huevos rancheros at The Alcove

​Fried eggs and buttered toast is the Tim Duncan of breakfasts in that it's generally very reliable, if not a little boring. Give us fried eggs on top of fried tortillas topped with rancheros sauce and salsa on almost any morning though, and it's a whole new ballgame. Thankfully, huevos rancheros are standard fare on most breakfast menus across town; for this Food Fight, Team Alcove Cafe squares off against Team El Huarachito to see which restaurant makes the better version of this classic Mexican breakfast.

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Steven J. Baule

Sticky Toffee Pudding at Animal

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Sticky Toffee Pudding just sounds like an awesome dessert, doesn't it? While it's actually steamed date cake moistened with a hot butter-sugar sauce (hence the stickiness) that's served with vanilla ice cream; calling it something more evocative is a smart sales move. Not that it needs it. It's already on most sweet-lovers list as a contender for the best dessert in the history of ever. No matter what it's called though, a truly authentic -- read: good -- serving will test of the limits of sugar an adult can endure without requiring a trip to the dentist.

A standard of British Sunday dinners for the last hundred years or so, sticky toffee pudding is a winter menu staple. Thankfully, there are several restaurants in L.A. that offer it for when the chill sets in or the mood strikes. The two that piqued our interest were Animal in mid-city and downtown's The Gorbals. We assumed their versions wouldn't be basic or boring. They boast the same $7 price tag and offer the dessert year-round, making it a fair fight from the start. Indulging in both in one night --because we're gluttons -- we compared and contrasted to bring you our STP food fight.

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Foodforfel/Flickr

Bacon wrapped hot dogs on the grill

​There is so much fuss over new baconized products (bazookas, salt, alphabets) that we sometimes forget that street vendors were outfitting hot dogs with bacon long before anyone knew how to tweet or Instagram. The vendors wheel out their carts like clockwork, punching in just as you're punching out, leaving a concert or staggering out of a bar. For this version of Food Fight, we set out to see whether the street hot dog can hold its own against a slightly more refined version at The Stand.

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T. Nguyen

Garlic knots at Pizzanista!

​Most fast foods have their natural sidekicks: burgers have their fries. Fried chicken has its mashed potatoes. But pizza? Pizza usually flies solo, content with committing crimes against calories all by its lonesome. Every once in a while, though, it is nice to see pizza partnered up, and we personally enjoy our pizzas with warm garlic knots riding shotgun.

Like a good sidekick though, a good knot is not easy to find: they are only as good as the pizza dough that forms them. In this Food Fight, then, we match homegrown Pizzanista! against New York implant Joe's Pizza in a battle of the have-knots.

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Barbara Hansen

Beef noodle soup from Won Won Kitchen in Temple City.

​The San Gabriel Valley is really souped up, that is, if you're thinking of Taiwanese beef noodle soup, which is everywhere. How do you know which version is the best, or at least really good? You check with people who come here on business but are based in Taiwan. They know the taste, and it's fresh on their palate.

My consultants recommended two restaurants for a Taiwanese beef noodle soup fight. They are Won Won Kitchen, a home style place in Temple City so small that some equipment has to be stored in the dining room. The other is Liang's Kitchen in Arcadia, part of an ambitious chain that extends from San Diego to northern California and over to Forest Hills, New York. A giant and a puny contender, in other words, but in matters of food, size doesn't always count.

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T. Nguyen

Spice Table's "Cold Cut" Banh Mi Sandwich

​We take the inexpensive bánh mì for granted. This wonderful Vietnamese sandwich isn't supposed to cost more than a few bucks. Almost any bánh mì in the San Gabriel Valley -- with any number of meats, pâtés and pickled vegetables stuffed in a freshly baked baguette -- will set you back three paltry dollars. As if that weren't enough, Bánh Mì Che Cali offers a buy-two-get-one-free deal every day of the week. When someone makes a bánh mì for over $5, some people are skeptical. Angry, even.

As our mother likes to remind us, the upper classes in Vietnam have been known to feast on sandwiches slathered in foie gras pâté and other luxurious meats, while the poor make do with cold porridge and colder phở. Closer to home, a small but growing number of restaurants are reaching beyond the traditional bánh mì, using higher quality ingredients and non-traditional stuffings. Cases in point: both The Spice Table and ink.sack's bánh mì are well over $3. For this edition of Food Fight, we see which of the two serves the better bánh mì for its price.

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B. Mesirow

La Cabañita's Cochinita Tacos

​The versatility of the taco is well-documented, on these pages and countless others. There are as many potential taco fillings as there are kinds of food in the world, but not all of them are equally wonderful. (We know that Korean BBQ works but Taco Bell's 88% beef 12% secret recipe doesn't.)

When done right, cochinita pibil in a taco is one of the crown jewels of the taco empire. The best versions of the Yucatecan slow-cooked pork, marinated for hours in orange juice, achiote and spices, are the definition of succulent, juicy and tender. The marinade, which doubles as a sauce, is bright and flavorful without overpowering the essential porkiness of the meat. For this week's food fight we pitted against each other two renowned cochinita champions, Chichen Itza from downtown's own Mercado La Paloma and La Cabañita, the pride of Montrose.

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T. Nguyen

Ruen Pair's Morning Glory

​Morning glory, hollow as a reed and as deeply green as Robin Hood's cap, grows bountifully throughout the waters of Southeast Asia. Most Southeast Asian dishes, then, make ample use of morning glory in their cuisines in some way or another; one of the more popular morning glory dishes is Thailand's version, fried and tossed with copious chunks of garlic, chile, and any number of sauces (fish, oyster). For this edition of Food Fight, we set out to see whether Ruen Pair's famed fried morning glory dish stands supreme over next door neighbor Crispy Pork Gang & Grill's decidedly more crispy-porky version.

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whysarah/flickr

Fish tacos at Best Fish Taco in Ensenada.

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The ideal fish taco is a time-sensitive collision of hissing-hot battered fish, a shell puffed up around mild, sweet flesh; a tortilla or two; crunchy cabbage; and cool, slightly sour crema. It is time-sensitive because, if the diner doesn't scoop it up quickly and put it away, the crema melts, the tortilla becomes gummy, and the fish's shell deteriorates. There are many variables, the most precarious of which being the freshness of the fish itself. In our day, we've encountered plenty of specimens we would not feed to a cat.

Between half-hearted shopping and a show last weekend, we doubled up on fish tacos at two reasonably well-regarded institutions: Best Fish Taco in Ensenada, a local micro-chain based in Los Feliz, and just a five minute-drive away, El Siete Mares, a Silverlake stand with outdoor seating.

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T. Nguyen

Tater tots at Fab Hot Dogs

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The tater tot means an an awful lot of things to many people. Advocates for change in public school lunch programs, for example, tout the tot as a symbol for all that is wrong with cafeteria food ("We don't serve Tater Tots," a Central Valley school district official sniffed, proudly). Napoleon Dynamite, on the other hand, loved his tots so much that he kept a handful nearby for when the craving struck; subsequently, his home state of Idaho passed a resolution commending the filmmakers for, among other accomplishments, featuring the bite-sized potato pellet, "thus promoting Idaho's most famous export."

Idaho's most famous tot-sized export was born in 1953 to one Ore-Ida. It was conceived as a profitable way for the frozen foods company to use the potato scraps leftover from cutting spuds into French fries. The tater tot has come a long way since then, from freezer aisle to curious plaything for chefs and pub grub for a nostalgic hipster generation. It also found a place alongside the hot dog: both Fab Hot Dogs in Reseda and Dog Haus in Pasadena offer tater tots as complements to their dogs. In this Food Fight, it's tot-à-tot as we pit Fab's taters against Dog Haus's version.

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