Midtown Lunch

If you’re looking for a one page eating guide to Thai Town, this post Josh Lurie did for DineLA is a pretty great resource.  He heaps praise on a bunch of great Midtown Lunch’ing spots, and most importantly tells you the best thing to order at each.  Anybody who reads this site on a regular basis will recognize Pa Ord, Sapp Coffee Shop, Ruen Pair, Spicy BBQ, Krua Siri, and Siam Sunset.   But the part of the post that really caught my eye was Rodded, a “40-year-old corner spot with pastel green walls and a cartoon-covered blackboard” that specializes in roast duck noodle soup.

But the noodle soup is not the only duck dish worth ordering at Rodded, and there are even a few ways to get your Donald on that aren’t on the menu.

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F-You Paleo Diet. Photo courtesy of Grub Street.

• HWOOD Hoy Ka has finally made their name change official [Eating LA]
• KTOWN Young Dong makes a good bowl of sullangtang [Food GPS]
• PALMS Chego & Kogi are losing some of their menu items [KOGI via Eater]
• VENICE We’re not the only ones who love GTA’s brisket banh mi [Squid Ink]
• WEST LA Kotoya Ramen will reopen on the 21st [Grub Street]
• WEST LA Hamada-ya serves a decent yakisoba sandwich [Grub Street]
• WESTWOOD Soleil has spun off its poutine into a separate restaurant [E*star LA]
• LISTS This cheap eats list has some good Midtown Lunches [Eater]
• EVENTS This looks like fun! [L.A. Fried Chicken Fest]

One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong.

Defining the characteristics of the all you can eat buffet fanatic is not as easy as you might think. Girth is part of it, sure. And I will not deny the fact that part of the reason I love eating at buffets is because they are the only restaurants in Los Angeles where I find myself squarely in the bottom 10th percentile weight-wise. But more than being fat you have to prize variety, sometimes most of the time to the detriment of quality. To most buffet aficionados, getting to eat a lot of different things is way more important than getting to eat as much as you want. But winning the game is important too, and a true buffet fan will attack a newly opened buffet like an M.I.T. card counting team takes down a newly introduced casino game.

And last week the opening of Las Vegas Seafood Buffet on Hollywood Blvd gave me a chance to put my Rules to Beating the Chinese Food Buffet to the test once again…

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After a nearly two month hiatus Fundamental LA, on Westwood Blvd just south of Wilshire, reopens for lunch today with a brand new menu.  The super popular chicken torta and the egg topped BLT have both made the cut, but the porchetta, meatloaf, and fried chicken sandwiches that floated in and off the menu have been replaced by a pork belly banh mi, a fried calamari sandwich, and a cold roast beef sandwich with pimento cheese.  Check out this week’s full menu, after the jump…

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Pizza at Vito’s. Photo by Katie Robbins

• PIZZA The 5 Best Slices in L.A. [Squid Ink]
• CENTURY CITY Bibigo is now open in the Westfield Mall [Eater;Grub St.]
• DTLA Mendo Farms is coming to 7th & Fig [LADTN;Grub St.]
• DTLA Mexicali’s lunch deals are the best [My Last Bite]
• HWOOD Vegas Seafood Buffet is finally open! [Eater]
• KTOWN The goat stew at Chin Go Gae looks amazing! [The Minty]
• MID CITY Chapa Grill’s Jerusalem mix looks pretty tasty [Food GPS]
• MID CITY Cook’s County’s pork loin sando looks splurgeworthy [Food GPS]
• SAMO BP Taco will open in two weeks [Eater]

If you had asked me a few months ago where I like to go for kimbap (think: Korean futomaki) in L.A. I would have said School Food. Their massive platters of Korean sushi feature over 10 different kinds of kimbap, a selection that I believe is unparalleled in K-Town.  But there are drawbacks to School Food, not least of which is price, its horrible location (on the top floor of a weird Korean mall on Western), and the fact that I’m not a Korean teenager.  But now that Squid Ink’s Garrett Snyder has clued me in to Gaju Naengmyeon, I now have a kimbap alternative that doesn’t make me feel like a sketchy old man.

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