Archive for January 2014

East Borough’s Lunch Menu is Expensive and Pho-less, But Pretty Great

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If you live or work in Culver City and greeted the news of East Borough’s arrival with a healthy dose of skepticism, you are forgiven.  After all, we’ve been through this before.  Chef with a pedigree, taking on Vietnamese food from a fresh angle, and using quality ingredients are all things we heard back in July when Phorage took over the space left in the hooptie exhaust of Chego’s move to Chinatown. Phorage has turned into a reliable neighborhood option for a decent lunch or take out dinner, but its  food is just a few garnishes short of making it a real destination restaurant, leaving it in the worst purgatory possible- not interesting enough to warrant the prices or the hype, but not authentic enough to keep you from craving that drive down to Westminster.

So the big question is, will East Borough be any different?

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Ricky’s Fish Tacos is Back in its Regular Spot

If you ask somebody in Los Angeles where to find the best fish taco, you can pretty much count on everybody to fall into two distinct groups:  those people who will tell you that Ricky’s Fish Tacos are the best, and those people who haven’t been to Ricky’s Fish Tacos yet.  Originally set up in a tented parking lot on Virgil in Los Feliz, Ricky has spent the past few months in Department of Health enforced exile– serving his fish tacos out of a Chinatown parking lot on the weekends, while he worked on making his operation legal.  The good news is he’s back on Virgil now in a food truck, Wednesday through Sunday from 11:30am to 4pm.  The prices are a little higher ($3 per taco) and you no longer get the added charm of watching Ricky expertly man his bubbling oil filled steel drums, but it’s a small price to pay for having our 2 Hour Taco Crawl starting point back open for business in their original spot.

It seems like Ricky is committed to his original Virgil spot for lunch, but now that he has a truck there is talk of starting to travel around for dinner.  This past Sunday night he was in Granada Hills from 5:30 to 8:30pm.  As always, make sure to check his twitter account before heading out.

Ricky’s Fish Tacos, 1400 N. Virgil. Wednesday through Sunday from 11:30am to 4pm

Chicken & Rice Truck to Bring NYC Style Street Meat to L.A.

Big news for fans of New York City style street meat- our prayers have finally be answered! A new truck is getting set to hit Los Angeles serving chicken and lamb over rice with white sauce and hot sauce.  It’s called Chicken & Rice and they’re hoping to open next week in a parking lot on Hollywood & Highland (next to Mel’s).

Check out the menu, after the jump…

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Lunchtime is the Best Time For Shabu Shabu House on Sawtelle

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It’s no secret why sushi is the hardest lunch to reconcile with our intense desire to keep things under $10 during the midday meal.  Raw fish isn’t cheap, nor do you really want it to be.  But sushi isn’t the only Japanese food that is hard to come by for less than a Hamilton. Shabu shabu has proven elusive as well, for some reason.  All you can eat Korean BBQ seems to have no problem serving up endless plates of thinly sliced meat, ready to be grilled, for $9.99.  But take that meat and dip it in boiling water with some veggies and the price almost doubles.  Maybe that’s why the only shabu shabu place we’ve found that hits the $10 mark is in Koreatown. 

But K-town’s Khan Shabu Shabu has some competition now that Shabu Shabu House has opened on Sawtelle, from the good people at SushiStop. That’s right- the cheap sushi specialists of West L.A. have branched out into Shabu Shabu.

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A Look at Everything That Was Added to Fig + 7th This Past Year

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It’s been exactly one year since I first visited the rechristened food court at Fig+7thin Downtown L.A. Oleego by Park’s BBQ is still the best option, churning out bulgogi topped bibimbap and sweet Korean hamburger patties over rice.  And you can still get some solid Indian food and fresh baked naan at lunch focused mini-chain Indus by Saffron, and a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup from The Melt.  Juicy Lucy is no longer topping their burgers with a 3 inch tall mound of lettuce (which is good) but yesterday they were lacking in the line department (possibly because of new year’s resolutions?)  And of course there’s the grande dame of the food court, George’s Greek, plodding away in the outer courtyard.  But plenty new has been added in the past year, and they’re not done yet.

I stopped by yesterday to give you a quick update…

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L.A.’s 13 Best Lunches Under $10

If you’re a regular reader of this site, then you should already know about all of these places, but to kick off 2014 right here’s a list of 13 of the best under $10 lunches you can get in Los Angeles that I did for Thrillist LA.  Warning: none of them play well with New Year’s resolutions…