Midtown Lunch

Ajrakan from Mush Bakery in Little Armenia. Photo courtesy of Food GPS

• DTLA Woori Market is a hidden gem [Brigham Yen]
• HWOOD Mush Bakery just keeps getting better and better [Food GPS]
• HWOOD Mao’s Kitchen has some great lunch specials [Unemployed Eater]
• KTOWN Yu Chic makes the mool naeng myeon [Squid Ink]
• KTOWN You can find decent Italian food in Koreatown!? [Food Marathon]
• MID CITY Your first look at Hatfield’s Sycamore Kitchen [Squid Ink;Eater]
• LISTS The 15 best Peruvian restaurants in L.A. [Squid Ink]
• LISTS 15 Hamburgers that are better than Apple Pan [LAist]

Poor 101 Noodle Express in the Fox Hills Mall.  With all the fat food blogger talk of “there is no good Chinese on the westside” one can easily see why this SGV mainstay opened up in the food court of a Culver City Mall.  Kyochon seems to be doing alright in the same location, and who doesn’t like a scallion pancake stuffed with sweet meat!?  Answer: most people who eat at the food court of the Fox Hills Mall.   Their opening menu touted turkey as a possible filling, and french fries as a possible side dish  for their famous beef rolls. It didn’t matter to true fans, who were just happy to have something resembling a beef roll on the westside.  But clearly it didn’t go over well with the food court regulars.

Fast forward a few months and the french fries were gone, along with the pan fried dumplings and a decent version of dan dan noodles.  The beef roll remained, and could now be paired with food court style teriyaki chicken and a special ground chicken dish that was actually pretty great. It was a food court fanatics wet dream.  (Translation: it was my wet dream combo… and a ton of food for $8.)

Sadly it appears that I may have been the only person is obsessed with both beef rolls and food court teriyaki chicken, who also regularly visits the Fox Hills Mall.  Because recently they unveiled a completely new menu, and my beloved combo is gone.

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Not having to drive all the way to the Valley for some fresh baked sangak is a great thing for those of us who live in L.A. proper. But being able to get solid, under $10 kebab lunch specials alongside that fresh baked Persian bread is what made Kabab Mahaleh (8762 Pico Blvd, just East of Robertson) one of my favorite 21 lunches in Los Angeles to share with people from out of town. So when I heard that a rotisserie spit had popped in their window a few weeks back, I got pretty excited. And on Friday I finally got to check it out (with a friend from out of town, of course!)

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Photo courtesy of Hanhonymous

If you’re reading this site, I’m guessing it means you like food.  But if you also like music you should be listening to the podcast I just started with Chuck P from KCRW.  This week’s episode features Mac McCaughan, the guitarist of Superchunk and one of the founders of Merge Records (the label behind Arcade Fire, Spoon, She & Him, and more).  He talks about getting food tips from Fugazi and Yo La Tengo, but the important part for fans of L.A. lunch is that he showed up to the studio with fish tacos and stingray ceviche from Ricky’s Fish Tacos- which we ended up talking about for the first 5 mins of the show.  From the looks of this post on Twitter it probably was just something he did special for a television taping, but may I be the first to it should become a regular menu item!

You can read about the podcast here, and download it from iTunes.

If you go by the insane number of new ramen places that have chosen the beginning of summer to open their doors, you’d think June, July, and August were prime ramen eating months.  And maybe they are for some?  But for me this is actually the one time of year I don’t really feel like slurping down a hot bowl of liquid pork fat, served underneath a glistening sheen of more pork fat.  Call it my version of the bikini diet.   That’s why I got so excited about the Naked Ramen at Tatsu, the new order-from-iPads ramen spot on Sawtelle.  All my favorite parts of ramen (the noodles, the pork, the scallions, the egg), replacing the hot broth with with breadcrumbs, lime juice, and a slightly sweet sesame soy sauce. It’s not cold, but it is still perfect for summer. I could eat this every day for the next 3 months.

Luckily I don’t have to!  Here are 5 more soup-less noodle dishes I’ve enjoyed over the past few weeks…

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I try to be positive here on Midtown Lunch… and I freakin’ love this city.  The food is amazing, and there’s no better place to be a “Midtown Lunch’er”.    But as much as I love much of the food in L.A. (and will defend it to the death against any outsiders, ornatives with an inferiority complex) there are some things about lunching in this town that really annoy me.  Here are 7 of them, LAist style, for your enjoyment…

1.  Alright Mendocino Farms… we gave you a bit of leeway when you called your admittedly delicious pork belly sandwich a banh mi.  But a cuban sandwich should probably not be on the same bread as your shrimp po’boy, or at the very least it should be pressed.  You have a panini press, use it.  That being said, adding plantain chips on top of the sandwich is genius.  Oh, we can’t stay at mad you Mendocino Farms!

2. Prediction: When the Los Angeles branch of Eataly finally opens, bloggers who get to eat there for free will love it.  Those who have to pay will be slightly less enthusiastic.

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