Midtown Lunch

As is customary on Midtown Lunch, every Tuesday we’ll profile a random reader to get their recommendations for the best spots to lunch near their work. This week it’s Rachael, a chick with a knife looking for the best falafel in L.A.

Name: Rachael

Occupation: I’m ½ of Chicks with Knives – we do lots of things but are known for our roaming supper club. We’re also launching PERISHABLE: A Pop-Up Pickle Shop this week. The first incarnation will be on Sept. 12th at Starry Kitchen. We’ll be selling pickles and doing a pickling demonstration. We’re super excited. It’s gonna be fun!

Where in L.A. do you Work?: Mid City

Favorite Kind of Food: For a specific dish, it’s a three way tie: Falafel, Fish Tacos or Moules-Frites. More generally, I just like to eat fresh, seasonal food.

Least Favorite Kind of Food: Potatoes baked in foil. Shudder.

Favorite Place(s) to Eat Lunch: Ooh. Let’s see…I love the Moules-Frites at Comme Ca (8479 Melrose Ave, WeHo), Hungry Cat (1535 Vine St, Hollywood) and Café Stella (3932 W Sunset Blvd, Silver Lake). Fish tacos from Tacos Baja Ensenda (5385 Whittier Blvd, East L.A.), El Siete Mares (2729 E Cesar Chavez Ave, Boyle Heights), Cactus Mexican Food Number 2 (4370 Beverly Blvd, Hollywood) and of course Ricky’s Fish Tacos (1400 Virgil, Hollywood). (Though truth be told, Suzanne, the other “Chick” makes the best fish tacos imaginable.)

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Shrimp Tacos from Ricky’s Fish Tacos. Photo courtesy of NomsNotBombs.

• HOLLYWOOD Fish haters can order shrimp at RFT [Noms Not Bombs]
• DOWNTOWN A new macaron place is opening in Little Tokyo [LoveLA via Eater]
• DOWNTOWN Q&A with the Chef of Starry Kitchen [Part 1;Part 2]
• DOWNTOWN Q&A with the Chef of Izakaya Fu-Ga [Blog Downtown]
• DOWNTOWN Can’t make it to the SGV? Mandarin Chateau is acceptable [Squid Ink]
• KOREATOWN Kogi’s Roy Choi recommends his favorite spots [LAW]
• MID-CITY Miracle Mile is getting a Chipotle [Grub Street]
• WEHO The Guru says Salt’s Cure makes a great BLT [LAW]
• WEST L.A. “Big Fat Pita” is coming to the Westfield Mall [Grub Street]

The brand new “Shrimp Pimp” truck showed up in Westwood on Tuesday (Glendon & Wilshire) and Lunch’er Sarah, who tried the shrimp po’boy, sent this photo and report to let us know how good it was.

“Not a traditional po-boy because it had no pickles and a spicy remolaude instead of mayo and also mesculen instead of iceberg – but the shrimp were huge and delicious. They also offered cevice and handmade French fries which were also delicious.”

New truck + the name “Shrimp Pimp” = automatic eye roll (I’ll refer you to the first paragraph of yesterday’s post.) On the other hand, I do like the sound of shrimp and chips. Supposedly the truck will be parked in front of Hulu today (on Olympic just West of Bundy) and according to Sarah they’ll be trying to park in Westwood every Monday. You can track them (naturally) on Twitter. Got a lunch you want to share? Email it to me at zach@midtownlunch.com

Yesterday Eater reported that Pasadena’s Slaw Dogs was scouting locations for a second branch.  Might we suggest anywhere between Downtown L.A. and Santa Monica!  Slaw Dogs might not have been the SoCal version of Hot Doug’s I was hoping for, but I did enjoy their Thai Slaw Dog (and it’s one of the few ways you’ll see me eating that much “salad” during lunch!)

Check it out after the jump…

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Oh food trucks… you are everything I love and hate about lunchtime in Los Angeles.  I love you, because you bring fun and interesting food to my neighborhood every day, saving me from another visit to [insert boring fast food chain near you office here].  You get me outside, and interacting with people on the street.  You make my lame co-workers willing to eat a less than healthy lunch they would otherwise balk at (“Korean buffet?  Meh… Kogi is outside?  Let’s do it!”)   But there are a lot of you. And not all of you are good.  And sometimes you are hard to find.  And you have made me hate the words “fusion tacos” and “seasoned fries”.  And most of you take too long.  (Isn’t street food supposed to be fast?)  And some of your concepts are ridiculous, and not well thought out.  And if it wasn’t for you I could probably get away with pretending Twitter doesn’t exist.  Did I mention there are too many of you?

Clearly my relationship with food trucks is complicated, but my fat stomach was still pretty excited to move to L.A. and be unleashed into the wild street food scene.  When I first got here, Kogi was already on my radar (I don’t live under a rock), but beyond that I didn’t quite know where to start.  Thankfully (?) a few names kept popping up over and over again.  Grilled Cheese Truck (how could that be bad?), Cool Haus (I like ice cream sandwiches!), India Jones, Komodo… and of course, The Buttermilk Truck, which for some reason I kind of brushed off.  (Here’s where I admit I’m an idiot.)  For some reason the whole “buttermilk” thing didn’t register with me.  Buttermilk pancakes?  Buttermilk biscuits?  It didn’t click (I think I thought it was dessert or something?) until I heard the words fried chicken and waffles.

I want to go to there.

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