Midtown Lunch

Potato Stick Pizza (!?!) from Bella Vista in Culver City

• CULVER CITY All you can eat Brazillian pizza for $10 [Squid Ink]
• KOREATOWN Hello mutton kebab! [Gourmet Pigs]
• KOREATOWN Finally a bibimbap that’s worth $10 [SinoSoul]
• SILVERLAKE Cowboys and Turbans gets a new menu [Quarry Girl]
• HOLLYWOOD “The Guru” recommends the boat noodles at Pa-Ord [LAW]
• HOLLYWOOD Whoa! Should have gone here for my cajun seafood fix [Glutster]
• SANTA MONICA Nonna’s Empanadas should open today [UD via Eater]
• MOBILE Fresser’s becomes the latest food truck to call it quits [LAist]

I have a confession to make.  I love steam table “Chinese” food.  You know the places I’m talking about, right?  You walk in, point to two or three things plus rice and/or noodles, pay around $5, and walk out with a delicious meal that leaves you with nothing but regrets a few hours later.  I can’t help it.  I love dim sum.  I love Sichuan peppercorns.  I wish I lived in the San Gabriel Valley.  But I also love Panda Express, and will defend their orange chicken and lo mein as benchmarks of their genre until the day I die (possibly from eating General Tso’s chicke too much…  it did send me to the hospital in college.)

That being said, Panda Express isn’t really a Midtown Lunch.  Sure, if one opened in Midtown Manhattan it would be huge news… but here, they’re on every corner.  In every outdoor mall. In every food court.  And this site is about finding the off the beaten path places.  The lunch spots that your boring non Midtown Lunch’er co-workers would turn their noses up at (as they order another turkey $5 footlong.)  So when a friend of mine and I walked by the never been reviewed on Yelp (we’re talking off the off the beaten path here!) Patty’s Chinese Express Downtown the other day, after discovering that Uncle John’s Ham & Eggs had closed, and he said “why don’t we try this place out?”, I couldn’t resist taking it as a personal challenge.

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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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The nominees for the 1st Annual Los Angeles Vendy Awards have been announced… congrats to India Jones, the Hot Dog Kings, Bigmista’s BBQ, Nina’s Food, Grilled Cheese Truck, & Tacos El Galuzo. The winner will be crowned on May 15th in MacArthur Park, tickets are $50 and all proceeds go to benefit non profit organizations that advocate on behalf of street vendors here in Los Angeles. (It’s like a charity street food version of the Oscars!)

Watch a video about all of the nominees, plus buy your tickets for the event here…

Related:
The Vendy Awards Are Coming to L.A.
India Jones’ Butter Chicken is a Force to Be Reckoned With

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 Nguyen, who despite being the owner of one of the better lunch spots Downtown (Starry Kitchen) does a lot of amazing eating in Downtown and beyond.

Name: Nguyen

Age: 32

Occupation: Pan-Asian Comfort Food Presenter/Poser + Level 3 – Janitorial Engineer

Where in L.A. do you Work?: The deep dark depths of the dingy dungeon called Starry Kitchen / DTLA – Financial District/California Plaza

Favorite Kind of Food: Most Pan-Asian / Asian

Least Favorite Kind of Food: Off the top of my head, Tibetan (which does fall into the Asian category), but I haven’t had anything I crave yet.. I’m always ready to be convinced otherwise

Favorite Place(s) to Eat Lunch: Fisherman’s Outlet (529 South Central Ave., Downtown) is one my FAVORITE blue collar paradises, and forget the fried stuff- get the grilled (to perfection) Sea bass drenched in their garlic butter seasoning. Chin-Ma-Ya (Weller Court, 123 Astronaut Ellison, Downtown): Tan-Tan-Men w/ Chicken Karaage (I swear, best karaage I’ve had… so damn crunchy.) Langers: not exactly DTLA, but close enough. #19 – Pastrami & Cole Slaw w/ Russian Style dressing sandwiched in a beautifully crispy & yet brittle bread… so good. Mendocino Farms (what, we can’t like a competitor? ^_^): DUDE, that secret PB&J sammie w/ the carmelized bananas… off the f’ing CHAIN. (Editor’s Note: Too bad they stopped serving it at the end of April!) Daikokuya: shredded pork w/ ramen combo (kotteri / extra fatty style)… actually my favorite things are the things leading up to the ramen – the cabbage salad/slaw w/ this AWESOME ginger sauce + the shredded pork bowl w/ a TON o’ ginger. Curry House (123 S Onizuka St, Downtown): Curry Pan + Extra-spicy Ginger Curry Rice… yuuuuum. Grand Central Market (317 South Broadway, Downtown): can’t remember the place, but there’s one on the side that serves a delicious heart attack of a Torta Cubano “uh huuuh.. pork, cheese, fried pork, tapatio and more meat = heart attack… yuuum” Pitfire Pizza: haven’t been to the one in DTLA, but assuming it’s the same… the freakin’ Burrata Pizza is NICE! And did I mention Fisherman’s Outlet??? :)

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I kind of hate Twitter.  I use it (you can follow me @midtownlunchLA) but I still hate it.  Mostly because it’s just a jealousy feed.  I check it constantly, and all I see are things I wish I was eating from places I wish I was at. Case in point… Jazzfest. After a whole week of reading about crawfish bread and crawfish monica and fried crawfish po’boys I am a very jealous boy.  So on Friday I decided to seek out a little bit of Jazzfest in Los Angeles.  Sadly, Harold & Belle’s is too  pricey for Midtown Lunch purposes… and I could have gone to the Gumbo Pot in the Farmer’s Market- but once I heard that Sky’s Tacos on Pico served a crawfish taco (!?!), I was kind of sold.

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