Midtown Lunch

It’s been a big couple of months for Ricky’s Fish Tacos, the much heralded fish taco stand that popped up last year on the sidewalk of Sunset Junction. Considered the best Baja fish taco in Los Angeles by the Taco Task Force, Ricky’s started off as a Saturday and Sunday lunchtime treat. But after a brief stint on Santa Monica Blvd., it looks like Ricky has found a permanent spot in a parking lot at 1400 Virgil (just south of Hollywood Blvd.) The rainbow umbrella is gone, replaced by three big green pop up tents, covering two big fryers… and if the last two weeks are any indication, he is now open Tuesday Wednesday Thursday through Sunday!

Last week Ricky’s kicked off the Angeli Cafe’s new series of Street Food Mondays, and tomorrow Eating L.A. (aka Profiled Lunch’er “Pat”) will celebrate their 6 year blogiversary by throwing a party at Ricky’s, with “cupcakes, free fish tacos for the first 25 readers, friends and supporters, and muy special aguas frescas”. Basically, if you work (or live) anywhere near the border of Hollywood and Los Feliz and haven’t been to Ricky’s- what the hell are you waiting for?

Fish taco porn is after the jump…

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I know I spend a lot of time railing against chicken (comma Los Angeles’ love of) here on Midtown Lunch… but I can’t help it.  Choosing white meat chicken breast over pork, lamb, goat, and even dark meat chicken is a crime against all that is holy and good about eating.  It’s a cop out.  That being said, not all chicken is bad.  For example, rotisserie chicken = good chicken.  White or dark meat… if you allow the liquid fat from other chickens to drop onto your chicken while you cook it, getting the skin all crispy and greasy, that makes an acceptable chicken.  And lucky for me, there is no shortage of rotisserie chicken in Los Angeles.

Family issues aside, Zankou is the undisputed king of chicken (if not in taste, certainly in popularity) but if you work near Hollywood and Vine, there are a few other worthwhile (and more importantly, cheaper) options.  Certainly you could drive East to Zankou (there’s one on Sunset and Normandie), but Al Wazir and Ro Ro are close as well.  Can you tell the difference between the three?  Let’s find out…

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Good, cheap, Asian food is always a tough proposition for those of us who don’t work in the San Gabriel Valley. And that’s definitely true of Vietnamese food. If you work near Koreatown, you can make due. And there are a few options in Westwood and Beverly Hills. But Hollywood? Nada. Zilch. Nothing. So when Squid Ink reported that Paddy Rice had opened along Melrose, Vietnamese food fans in the area had good reason to get excited. Sure, there were some big time red flags (the most notable one being the fact that the restaurant was opened by a Korean architect and interior designer) but whatever. Everything on the menu is under $10, and if you work in the area you’re not going to care that better Vietnamese food can be had 30 minutes to the East.

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I become mesmerized in the presence of cheap Chinese food steam tables (you know- the ones where you point to what you want), and I know there are some of you who are with me… after all, how else would so many of them exist in L.A.? How do you know if you’re afflicted with cheap Chinese food-itis?  It’s pretty simple actually. At mall food courts, do you find it difficult to choose anything but the place that has the best free samples of orange chicken? When you travel, have you ever walked to another terminal hoping for Panda Express (but willing to settle for Manchu Wok)?  Do you find yourself wanting to try every single crappy looking Chinese place you drive by?  Well, I’m here to help.

Last month, after a particularly mediocre meal at Patty’s Chinese Express downtown, I agreed to eat at any of the cheap Chinese food dives that dot our wonderful city… not just as an excuse to eat at all the gross Chinese fast food spots that dot our strip malls, but also because I wanted to serve my community!  Oh, who am I kidding.  I just wanted an excuse to eat gross Chinese food.  So I was pretty excited when I got this email from Lunch’er “Cathy” (who also happens to run Gastronomy Blog):

“I passed by this awful looking chinese restaurant on Santa Monica the other day and thought of you. It’s called fortune cookies. please go there without me one day.”

How could I not?

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Whenever anybody says that New York City is better than Los Angeles, one thing immediately pops into my head.  Thai food.  Sure, the Mexican food is awesome… but I’m kind of addicted to the Asian thing.  And, for me, the Thai food alone is enough to make me feel pretty damn good about my decision to move back to L.A.  And while there are little pockets of great Thai food all over SoCal, Thai Town in East Hollywood is still the mecca.  They have everything you could want, with countless restaurants specializing in a few great dishes… like the spicy catfish at Ganda, the great dessert place next door, the Northern Thai food specialties of Spicy BBQ or Pailin Thai, and for those who want a show (but don’t care about the food) there’s Thai Elvis.

But if you want a Southern Thai feast, of epic proportions, from a restaurant with a menu that is the Thai equivalent of the Cheesecake Factory (how… do… they… do… it!?) then there is only one spot for you:  Jitlada.  And if you want to do lunch at Jitlada, everybody who is a huge fan will tell you the same thing- “talk to Jo.  She goes every Thursday.”  And so last Thursday I asked Jo (from My Last Bite) if she would show us how the “Mayor” of Jitlada recommends doing lunch.  She agreed, and a crew was assembled of her friends just knowingly arrived to join us…

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Ever since visiting Thailand a few years ago, Khao Soi has become one of my all time favorite dishes.  The crunchy noodle topped curry dish, usually served with chicken, is a Northern thai specialty- so you won’t find it at most Thai restaurants (unless the owners are from the North.)  I love it so much that I had the version from Spicy BBQ as my very first Midtown Lunch here in L.A. (Spoiler Alert: It was awesome.)

So last week you can imagine how surprised I was to see the blog Sinosoul call the khao soi at Spicy BBQ an “atrocity”. After all it came recommended by “The Guru” himself.  And I thought it was pretty damn good. Hyperbole aside (I can assure you the khao soi at Spicy BBQ is not an atrocity) the comment was in the context of a pretty stellar review of the noodles from Pailin Thai.  And even though Tony “Mr. Sinosoul” C. is fairly acerbic, a known contrarian, and loathed by many of his contemporaries, I felt like if he found Spicy BBQ to be atrocious Pailin’s khao soi must be the second coming of Jeebus.

Only one way to find out.

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Like many attendees of this years Grilled Cheese Invitational I left hot, sweaty, and completely grilled cheese-less.  If you didn’t have a “judges pass”, the entries were off limits, and if you didn’t want to wait in long lines at one of the few mobile vendors selling food, you were basically SOL. So when I heard that Locali, the “conscious convenience” store on Franklin & Van Ness was selling their DaVincheese sandwich- the 1st place winner in the Professional/Kama Sutra category– I headed right over to see what I had missed out on.

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