Midtown Lunch

There is something happening on Sawtelle these days. Empty spaces are being filled, tons of coming soon signs are going up, and for the first time in awhile Little Osaka doesn’t feel like a tired, second rate alternative to the South Bay (third rate if you include Little Tokyo.)  There’s still a long way to go, but signs are pointing in the right direction. With the opening of Tusjita, West L.A. can legitimately lay claim to serving the best ramen and tsukemen in L.A., and Ramen Jinya is also on the way (presumably to capitalize on the lunchtime overflow and give people a dinner time ramen option?) Plan Check is opening Feb. 22nd. Blockheads Shavery is now open on Mississippi, for all those people looking to try the hot-right-now Taiwanese shaved snow phenomenom. And coffee snobs now have Balconi and Cafe Tomo.  Gr/eats, which closed on Monday, is supposedly going to become another tsukemen place.  And the empty space next to Tsujita is going to be a new Vietnamese cafe called Nong L.A.  Even food trucks are getting in on the action.  Signage recently went up for a brick and mortar location of the Slice Truck.  (Huzzah?)

And if you like Japanese pasta we were excited to find last week courtesy of Lunch’er Dylan that Orris, the French/Japanese restaurant owned by Chef Shiro (of Restaurant Shiro in Pasadena), has become Spaghetti House.

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If you are super fan of the Japanese fried meat cutlets known as tonkatsu (and quite frankly, how could you not be?) then you likely have discovered that one of the best versions in the city can be found not in the South Bay or on Sawtelle or in Little Tokyo, but in Koreatown, at a Korean/Japanese place called Wako Donkasu.  They’ve pretty much perfected the lunchtime katsu, but it doesn’t stop me from trying any new places that may pop now and again.  So when I saw this photo on Food GPS from the 6 month old Myeongdong Donkasu, I thought… don’t mind if I do!

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When Jinya opened its first outpost in Studio City back in the summer of 2010 it was a bit of a ramen revelation.  Not only was it a great bowl of soup (praised excitedly by both JGold and Rameniac) but it was also in the Valley- a particularly noodle deprived part of the Greater Los Angeles area. To say people were excited would be a bit of an understatement.  Robata Jinya came a few months later to Mid City, and even though the ramen menu was a bit more limited it filled a hole between the ramen hubs of Downtown and West L.A. But the ramen explosion of 2011 seemed to leave Jinya in the dust a bit, as the Yamadayas and Shin Sen Gumis (not to mention the sole branch of Tsujita) relegated Jinya to “good for the hood” status, but nothing to drive out of your way for.

This year Jinya looks to get back into the swing of things, with new branches coming to Sawtelle in West L.A. and the Miracle Mile section of Wilshire Blvd.  The Mid-Wilshire location opened up a few weeks ago, and is serving a quality bowl of ramen.  But it just might be their soup-less ramen dishes that makes the new Jinya a destination lunch spot in L.A.’s quickly overcrowding ramen scene.

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Even though it will likely never compete with the South Bay for Japanese food supremacy, Sawtelle has managed to compile a decent enough collection of lunch options to make those of us who live and work on the Westside less likely to make the drive down the 405. If you want a decent katsu curry, there’s Hurry Curry of Tokyo or Curry House.  Japanese fried chicken?  Furaibo has great lunch specials. Cheap hot bento boxes to go?  Tempura House it is. Sushi?  Kiriko if you’ve got money, Hide Sushi if you don’t.  And now that Tsujita is open, West L.A. could reasonably lay claim to serving the best ramen and tsukemen in all of Southern California.

But as much as I enjoy lunching on Sawtelle one place has never enticed me: Sawtelle Kitchen.  I don’t know if it’s the valet parking, the disproportionate number of white people who eat there (yes, I’m a self hating gaijin), or the fact that you could plop the place down on Doheny, and it would fit right in.  Thanks, but no thanks.  That is, until a trusted (read: Japanese) friend told me they have a decent hamburger/meatloaf and their salad dressing is amazing.  Amazing, as in they closely guard the recipe and won’t you give you any extra in a to-go cup, amazing.  No salad dressing could be that good… but I’m down with Japanese hamburger!

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Say what you want about Yamashiro, the crazy almost 100 year old Japanese palace turned restaurant perched on a “Mountain” just above Franklin Ave. in Hollywood, but their chef makes some freakin’ delicious tacos. Previously only available at the Yamashiro Farmers Market and various special events around town, it’s Japanese inspired finger food featuring fillings like miso cod and hoisin duck confit served alongside their now famous wasabi guacamole. Think Kogi, if Kogi tacos were Japanese, more refined, smaller and more expensive. Ok, so maybe not like Kogi at all.

I’ve always been a big fan. So when they announced that they were going to be spinning the tacos off into their own brick and mortar location called Komida I was pretty damn excited. Yamashiro tacos, available everyday for lunch? Awesome! As long as they don’t do something stupid like put it in some shitty mall in the most touristy part of the city, we’re golden.

What’s that you say?  Hollywood and Whaaaaa?  Fuck.

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Thanksgiving is just days away, so food blog readers should probably prepare themselves for a bunch of “Here are my favorite turkey sandwiches in L.A.” posts. (Lord knows I’ve been guilty of this in the past.)   But that’s just food blog filler.  After all, who wants to eat turkey before eating turkey?  Oh… you do?  Well, not me.  I try to limit my turkey intake to once a year, followed by a day or two of leftovers. Of course everyone has a different way of preparing for Thanksgiving.  Since we’re in Los Angeles, I’m guessing starvation is a go-to strategy for many.  Then again, for those people not eating is probably a default setting so the lead up to Thanksgiving is really just an excuse to make their eating disorder acceptable.

But don’t those people know that eating less is probably the worst thing you can do the prepare yourself for the carnage of a properly eaten Thanksgiving meal!  Stomach shrinkage?  No thanks.  We need stomach expansion.  That’s why I like to all-you-can-eat-buffet it up in the week leading up to turkey day.  And what do you know?  A new one has just opened up in West L.A.!

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If there was an award for most improved L.A. lunch scene in the past few years, it has got to be Miracle Mile.  The area of Wilshire Blvd. between La Brea and La Cienega has been completely transformed since I worked at 5700 Wilshire in 2005.   Back then it was Baja Fresh or Baja Fresh… unless of course you liked Marie Callender’s (I do not.)  Now there’s The Counter, a couple of decent looking sushi places, Five Guys is on its way, and of course the food trucks- which still line up en masse across the street from the LACMA.  But my new favorite place in the area has got to be Genki Grill, a 6 month old Asian rice bowl place on Wilshire between San Vicente and Crescent Heights.

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