Hey, friends, this is @nana2018
The food in Los Angeles feels like the desert it is located in. The small neighbourhoods interspersed between long highways is hardly a place that is worth remembering. The food is hardly worth remembering either. There are restaurants and cafes, but they all seem to be suffering from the same condition: drought. Everywhere I go, the food is tasty, but they have skimped on one essential ingredient, water. In Los Angeles, it is wiser to use oil than water.
A Korean and a Vietnamese fast food joint sell sautéed meat with rice, both very dry, and needing soda to digest. Irony. A 24 hour grocery shop has a buffet counter with chicken legs swimming in oil, and beef ribs floating in its own fat. Cafes sell sandwiches, others sell pizzas, and even more sell the same meat and rice combo, using different spice mixes claiming to originate from different parts of the world. But all need to be consumed with fluids. The irony I hope, is clear.
Vietnamese food joint - Shop House
Korean fast food joint - Bibigo
In a dry land with the sea on one side and desert on the rest, ‘water’ is obviously on everybody’s lips (puns intended). A taxi driver of the non-Uber kind told me in a reluctant way that water needs to be saved up in LA. He didn’t want to give me a bad impression of his city, but he wouldn’t lie for it. I believed him, of course.
The fact that the only hope of rain are the fleeting clouds that appear every morning and disappear in the afternoon speaks volumes for the acute shortage of naturally occurring fresh water in this region. A stranger from San Diego whom I met in the UK, mentioned that he liked the British rain very much. At that moment, I had thought he was off his rockers.
It is not surprising that far from being a lively, tropical environment as a lot of TV might have you belief, LA is more akin to a desert, pulled out of it by the sheer determination and human desire to inhabit the place. Might have something to do with the gold rush.
Even though the Pacific coast is simply breath-taking and driving up the Pacific Coast Highway is actually a thing to do before you die, shifting your gaze by a mere one hundred and eighty degrees to the east will find yourself face to face with the craggy face of drought. The vegetation is stunted and the trees are mainly palm trees, and the view of the hills against which the Pacific coast leans against is marred by a dearth of greenery. The view is barren and there is no chance of wild animals living in it, making it thorny but safe to hike in, yet lacking in any charm or mystery.
The general environment can be compared to the typical run of the mill Hollywood blockbusters we so enjoy over a tub of popcorn, dry, senseless and lacking any charm or mystery.
Faces of people are stiff, even at a comfortable 20°C. To them, the desert wind blows at all times, and they have to keep their orifices closed to stop the sand from entering. But atmospheric warmth nearly always translates to warmth in attitudes. Thus there is greater emotion on tap, and a relaxed mood because the pent up emotions are vented into the dusty air, as words. Of course what happens to pent up emotions in a few happens anywhere in the world, and how those twisted emotions manifest themselves due to the free presence of firearms is something that need further discussion another time perhaps.
But I must discuss the food here which appeared to me to be rather lacklustre, contrary to expert opinions. Agreed there is free use of spices and chillies, but does it not matter how they are used? The most impact that any food had during my stay here was at a Bangladeshi restaurant in Koreatown.
The restaurant, aptly named Little Bangladesh, is a namesake to the smaller embedded community (within Koreatown) of Bangladeshi immigrants. It sold ilish, beef, goat and biryani! They all tasted very authentic, with only one typical LA ingredient used, oil. The other place that I really liked was, wait for it, a burger chain!
This burger chain, unlike any burger chain, is a speciality of California. It sells super cheap burgers, using the same recipe since 1948, and does not exist outside California. Its burgers, otherwise, are pretty ordinary, and so are its fries, except if you know about its secret menu, which involves covering the fries with Thousand Island dressing and fried onion. Another well-liked sandwich place is the Fat Sal’s Deli which has a huge list of glutton-inducing sandwiches, and is often considered a secret midnight snack place in a health-conscious California.
A run-through of LA’s great fast food joints is incomplete without a mention of tacos and avocados. Del Taco (unrelated to Taco Bell) is a good Mexican chain restaurant, and their beef tacos with avocados are simply great. I blame the chains for the world’s health crisis, but after eating here, I have developed a new appreciation for avocados, those same avocados and the pride of all vegans.
But a visit to the avocado shop must be followed by artery-clogging sundae and cookie, to balance everything off. Diddy Riese’s perfectly fits the bill here, and the chocolate chip ice cream sundae with chocolate chocolate chip cookie (yes, chocolate on chocolate), topped with whipped cream, and chocolate and caramel sauce is the perfect sugar and cholesterol fix one can find on the planet.
Such was the binging whether in the form of vegetable oil or animal fat, that several weeks on, and I am still finding it hard to lose those extra dollops of cream from my paunch, and while I study, to finish whatever it is I am doing, I often feel like my centre of gravity has been lowered, giving my body greater downforce to stick to my chair and belt out these silly sentences while I should be doing something far more important.
But even in my silly peregrinations and distractions, while I looked into my heart to write about American food in LA, I actually found something very different yet equally American coming out of my head – called entrepreneurship. The disappointment with food in LA has been stemmed by an excess of chain restaurants wherever I looked, and I generally abhor them with all my heart. Yet, somehow the American spirit of entrepreneurship won me over, and I couldn’t escape the fact that IT IS those American chains that sell real American food, however disgusting it might be.
