Midtown Lunch

Newport Seafood House Special Lobster. Photo courtesy of Noah Galuten

Yesterday some huge news broke for those in the “there’s no good Chinese food on the Westside” camp. Newport Tan Cang, the super popular SGV seafood restaurant that specializes in crab and lobster, is opening a branch in Beverly Hills in the old Xandros space. It’s  great news for those of us who live or work on the westside and don’t feel like traveling east of Downtown for our Chinese food fix.

This is actually just the latest in a series of new developments west of Fairfax, that make complaining about the lack of Westside Chinese food feel almost outdated. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a long way to go. And most of the improvements still come with “it’s not as good as what you would get in the SGV” caveat. But in addition to the Newport news, here are four more arguments against the old stereotype…

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Are you in there Kris Yenbamroong?

If you’re at all curious about the food at Coachella this year, I’ll be eating my through the festival this weekend over on Food is the New Rock an an official Tumblr site for the festival.  Night+Market, Sugarfish, Baco Mercat and Mexicali Taco & Co are just a few of the L.A. vendors added to the festival this year in an effort to up their food game, but I’m sure I’ll also be able to find space for a slice of Spicy Pie, crab fries and a corn dog.  Follow along at www.foodisthenewrock.com 

The transformation of Downtown L.A.’s Grand Central Market into a world class dining destination has continued unabated over the past few months.  For people like us it was always a great place to eat lunch, with pupusas, pork tacos, and wonton soup that made getting summoned for jury duty that much more bearable.  But with the addition of Sticky Rice and Eggslut, Valerie’s and Horse Thief BBQ it has become an actual lunchtime destination, one that seems ready to deliver on the PR promise of becoming L.A.’s version of San Fran’s Reading Terminal Market.

A bunch has happened since the last time I visited the market, pulling me back for 3 lunches over the past few weeks.  Here are the last 5 things I’ve eaten at GCM (and the next 2 things on the docket.)

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Even though 2014 is barely 3 months old, Zagat is already compiling data for their 2015 reviews and they are looking for your help. Know Los Angeles lunch like the back of your hand? Zagat is looking for local experts to take their L.A. Restaurants Survey. Not only could your comments be quoted in an official Zagat review, but everybody who takes the survey will get $10 off a qualifying Gilt City purchase. In addition the wittiest review will win a FREE Nexus 7 tablet. You need to complete the survey by May 8th, 2014. So what are you waiting for?!

Click here to get started>>

It appears as if Erik Black (Campanile, Osteria Mozza) and Joe Marcos (Rustic Canyon, Campanile, Pizzeria Mozza)  have found a semi permanent home for Ugly Drum, their pastrami incubator that first popped up back in September at The Spice Table downtown, a restaurant they both worked at.   Chef Judy from Mendocino Farms noticed, and invited the guys to use her kitchen to do another pop up back in March; which has now turned into a full fledged smoked pastrami tour.  It started yesterday at the Mendocino Farms on Fairfax and 3rd, and will travel in 2, 3 and 4 day chunks to each Mendo Farms branch through the middle of May.

For $12.95 you get thick cut pecan smoked pastrami, with an apple cole slaw, on Il Dolce Forno’s excellent rye bread. There’s also a side of mustard and you can add swiss for $1.  It’s a bit more expensive then the already expensive typical Mendo Farms sandwich, and it won’t necessarily replace Langer’s as your favorite pastrami sandwich in the city, but it’s pretty damn good and worth checking out at least once when the tour passes through your local branch.  (Good luck hitting it up just once.)   The guys are working on opening their own restaurant and there’s talk of this becoming a permanent item on the Mendocino Farms menu after the tour ends.

Check out the full schedule after the jump…

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On Saturday afternoon thousands of people gathered in Grand Park downtown for the second year in a row to celebrate L.A.’s diverse taco scene, hear who won L.A. Taco’s Taco Madness bracket, listen to music,  stuff their faces with delicious delicious tacos.  The day was beautiful and many tacos were consumed, but only some made a real impression.  Here are 5 things I came away with after a few hours of sampling everything LA Taco’s Taco Madness 2014 had to offer. 

1. Mariscos Jalisco has still go it.  At this point there should just be a taco hall of fame, right?  Is Mariscos Jalisco’s shrimp dorado taco any worse now than it was when it won Taco Madness in 2012?  Of course not. People are just sick of sounding like a broken mariachi record.  Can we retire these guys and move on, rather than force them to compete year after year only to have people say “Well, it is my favorite taco of all time but shouldn’t we give somebody else a chance?”

Carnitas, Coraloense and corn, after the jump…

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I try to be positive here on Midtown Lunch… and I love this city.  The food is amazing, and there’s no better place to be a “Midtown Lunch’er”.    But as much as I love most of the food in L.A. (and will defend it to the death against any outsiders, or natives with an inferiority complex) there are some things about lunching in this town that really annoy me.  Here are 7 of them, LAist style, for your enjoyment…

All salads should have this ratio of crunchy things to lettuce

1. So, in case using the words “toothsome” and “mouthfeel” didn’t clue you in, there isn’t actually a Salad Week 2014. It was just an April Fools Day joke. But if there was a Salad Week on this site it would probably be our biggest week of traffic of all time.  This is L.A. after all.  That makes me sad… but not as sad as eating a boring salad for lunch.

2. It is undeniable that Pa Ord’s expansion west to La Brea was a good thing for Thai food lovers who live west of Thai Town.  But we are quickly discovering that not all Pa Ord’s are created equal.  In other words, the ghost of Thai Foon still lives inside Pa Ord #2.  The good news is, you can get crispy pork and chinese broccoli as a lunch special!  The bad news?  That spring roll you get free with your lunch is as terrible as it ever was.  Unless you live in the hood and are ordering delivery, it’s probably worth just driving the extra 2 miles East to Pa Ord #1 or Pa Ord #3 (which, funny enough, might actually be an improvement on the original thanks to the ghost of Ganda!)

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