Jessica Koslow

Ray's and Stark Bar

Cooking octopus can be tricky. But when done right, it's tender, delicious and loaded with health benefits (low-calorie, lean, vitamin-rich). Japanese and Mediterranean diets are swimming, as it were, with octopus options -- as is this town, where many restaurants have the dish on their menus. According to a sampling of chefs, the Spanish and Portuguese seafood are generally favored, and most cooks have a specific size they prefer -- from one to seven pounds -- for reasons ranging from tenderness to plate presentation. Some eateries serve octopus with spices from Peru, while others experiment with the flavors of North Africa. Turn the page for 10 of our favorite octopus dishes around town.

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Rick Poon

The Mothershucker at Fishing With Dynamite

Seafood has been a large part of David LeFevre's life, beginning with childhood summers in Virginia to his repertoire as a chef at Charlie Trotter's in Chicago and Water Grill in downtown L.A. It was such that when he opened Manhattan Beach Post he noticed there was a very definite expectation for it to be a seafood place.

"Everyone was wanting me to open one, but I wanted to do something different," LeFevre says.

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fishing with chef Sal Marino

Chef Sal Marino (Il Grano, La Bottega Marino) likes to get up early. Which is a good thing, since most of the chefs who trek downtown to International Marine Products routinely get there around 5 a.m. to pick and choose among the pristine fresh fish that comes in daily to the downtown market and wholesale supplier.

As IMP isn't open to the public, the chef recently gave us a tour. A very early morning tour. Turn the page.

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Rachael Narins

Crab Cakes at Tony P's Dockside Grill

Recipes for delicate cakes of minced and bound seafood are as old as, well, maritime cooking. The crab version we mostly eat today -- crab, mayonnaise, breadcrumbs, eggs, seasoning and some onion, gathered up and pan-fried or broiled -- is a colonial American recipe that hasn't changed much since it was created.

The perfect crab cake should include large, lump-meat pieces and be loosely packed with a minimum of bread-crumb binder. The best versions are less a disk than a scoop, lightly broiled, allowing the flavor of the crab to come through. It should be served with citrus, and the sauce -- mayonnaise, aioli -- should be a welcome flavor addition, not a way to mask dryness or sub-par crab.

While we didn't find any spots that were cooking, cracking and picking their own, what we did find was that places using a single variety -- Dungeness and Blue (Callinectes sapidus or "beautiful swimmer that is savory") -- made sure to note it. Happily those two are also Monterrey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch approved. The meat is delicate, sweeter than larger crabs, and soft. Snow and King crab -- while abundant -- are both chewy and tend to be watery and less flavorful. Trying to figure out what type of crab you're being served can be tricky. Most menus don't say because so many species are used -- and 75% of crab meat is imported, so looking for locally sourced crab cakes is a major challenge.

Normally with our top ten lists we attempt to find a wide range of prices so everyone can get something great no matter their budget. That just doesn't work here. High quality crab is rare and should be expensive until we stop over-fishing and efforts to rebuild habitats and populations fully succeed. Sorry, there's no hidden $5 gem out there -- but there are some really terrific crab cakes. Turn the page for ten of them.

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Rachael Narins

New England Clam Chowder at Santa Monica Seafood

Today is National New England Clam Chowder Day, which, if you're a Patriots fan, probably couldn't come at a better time. After all, a very good clam chowder can be remarkably comforting, as Ishmael discovered in Moby Dick:

... a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the apparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends! hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt. Our appetites being sharpened by the frosty voyage, and in particular, Queequeg seeing his favourite fishing food before him, and the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we despatched it with great expedition.

There are other similarly fantastic meditations on food throughout the book (i.e., "The Whale as a Dish"), but if you would prefer not to read Herman Melville's 500+ page tome just for the food-related bits, there are a few other ways to celebrate this great day.

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Jo Stougaard/MyLastBite

Ceviche Mixto at Mo-Chica

Only in Los Angeles could you get away with two ceviche dinners at the start of December. Fresh off recent events such as the Fried Chicken Fest and the Beer Float Showdown, Food GPS' Josh Lurie is teaming up with chef Ricardo Zarate and business partner Stephane Bombet for two chef-stacked nights of inspired ceviche dinners at downtown's Mo-Chica.

Zarate will debut culinary inspirations for his upcoming Marina Del Rey cevicheria Paiche, which could include anything from duck to lobster to rare Amazonian fishes, while other guests chefs -- Josiah Citrin of Melisse, Bryant Ng of Spice Table, and Night + Market's Kris Yenbamroong -- will each serve their own interpretation of the Latin American standard (Yenbamroong hinted at koi soi on his Facebook feed, a kind of Isan-style ceviche made with raw beef).

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Felicia Friesema

A very fresh oyster

If you, like some of us, were in the vicinity of Point Reyes in Northern California last week and did not enjoy some fresh oysters, you, like us, will be kicking yourself. And possibly U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, too. Salazar just announced that he is shutting down a historic oyster farm along Point Reyes National Seashore, designating the site as a wilderness area. As of tomorrow.

"After careful consideration of the applicable law and policy, I have directed the National Park Service to allow the permit for the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. to expire ... and to return the Drakes Estero to the state of wilderness that Congress designated for it in 1976," Salazar said in a statement. Salazar visited the oyster farm last week and said he did not make the decision lightly, according to the Associated Press. Point Reyes National Seashore was added to the national parks system by Congress in 1962, including protection for more than 80 miles of California coastline in the area.

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A. Scattergood

water-boiled fish at Chung King

Celebrating this year's Best of L.A. issue -- now out in print and online -- we're counting down, in no particular order, 100 of our favorite dishes.

7. Water-Boiled Fish at Chung King.

There are many excellent reasons to head down San Gabriel Blvd., although maybe not if you're former U.S. Commerce Secretary John Bryson. Probably the best reason of all is to eat at Chung King, the much-lauded Sichuan restaurant that looks more like a tiny laundromat than it does the best Sichuan restaurant in America, at least according to a recent somewhat emotional -- who knew "tonguegasm" was a word -- story in The New York Times.

You may or may not agree with that accolade, but I'm certainly not arguing against it, having last year eaten at Chung King roughly eighteen times over a 6-week period, or the duration of a severe cold when the only thing that tasted good, or really tasted at all, was the Sichuan peppercorn and chile-laced cuisine dosed out at this particular restaurant.

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Jo Stougaard/MyLastBite

Ceviche Mixto at Mo-Chica

10: Ceviche Mixto at Mo-Chica

When Ricardo Zarate moved his inaugural restaurant Mo-Chica last year, from a tiny food court space in South L.A. to a hip industrial space near downtown (from 37th and Grand to 7th and Grand, technically) it was a cross-town move worthy of Weezy Jefferson.

But for all the changes -- a swank bar program populated by tart pisco sours; walls full of colorful graffiti murals and a bumping hip-hop soundtrack -- Zarate still stuck to his guns in the kitchen. On the menu were many of the same dishes which had brought him to prominence at Mercado La Paloma, none more so than his succulent Peruvian ceviche.

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Flickr/My Last Bite

Green Curry Mussels at Jitlada

Celebrating this year's Best of L.A. issue -- now out in print and online -- we're counting down, in no particular order, 100 of our favorite dishes.

17: Green Curry Mussels at Jitlada.

If there is one menu in town that has the best chance of being written about by cultural anthropologists twenty years from now, it's undoubtedly Jitlada's collection of Southern Thai specialities, whose epic range of toxic-smelling curries and fiery salads has become a firm part of L.A. canon.

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