IN BREAD … LIFE — IN WINE … HAPPINESS!, or …… where to eat and drink in Los Angeles

Bon scrappétit!

A month or so ago, I was browsing at the great SF cookbook shop Omnivore Books and met a chef who cooks at one of Oakland’s cool new restaurants. They’re visiting LA soon and asked where I thought they should eat and drink, which sent me into a weeks-long spiral of finally making a comprehensive list of the places in LA I love. Here it is. 

I eschewed a map or a spreadsheet (à la the NYC version) in favor of more description: I have no idea if this is a good format or not, but — and maybe this is the warmth-seeking instinct of winter talking — I’m feeling emotional about eating and drinking right now, not driven by triangulations of location, budget, and vibe. The idea of coding these establishments and proprietors by any other data than their neighborhoods seems exhausting and extra. (Plus, reading a lot and having to kind of find your way around some unedited muck is a kind of indulgent, undersung way to spend a couple hours, I think: a small burden I enjoy and have now passed on to you, haha.) 

Think of this less as a recommendation engine and more as a paean to what is nourishing right now in the greatest place to eat on Planet Earth: I would guess this will be more helpful for visitors, but perhaps longtime Angelenos, especially those with knowledge of the cuisines farthest east and west in our county, can help me fill in the gaps.

I’ve been slowly sifting through the extraordinary historical menu collection at the LA Public Library. That link will take you to the more visual interface, but the librarians tell me this is where a fuller picture of the collection lives. 

The archives in person are bigger: if there’s something you don’t see online, librarians there delight in trying to help you find it in person. 

Digging through the collection is, from a design perspective, like robbing the Bellagio, the Mirage, and the MGM Grand at the same time. 

From a scholarly perspective, it’s an incomplete but remarkably diverse cross-section of dining in (mostly) America over the last hundred years.

The Central Library in downtown also sustains one of the largest cookbook collections of any library in the country: ride the beautiful waterfall of escalators down to Lower Level 2 and look in the mid-600s. The information desk there will provide you with a paper guide to the collection by cuisine.

Very excited to have joined the Culinary Historians of Southern California: please join me if you live in LA, and we can go to their wacky events and annual historical food potluck!!! They have delicious-sounding lectures (at restaurants around LA, and at LAPL’s Central Library) on stuff like “Lunching on the Lot: How Stars and Moguls Ate at Studio Commissaries” and “Drinks, Drinking, and Snacks in Early India”.

The ringleader of this circus is the phenomenal Charles Perry, whose work I’ve been doubling back through for a few years. He has been: 

• The “dope” (drugs) editor at Rolling Stone (1960s)

• A (very) repeated contributor to Petits Propos Culinaires, a tiny but mighty esoteric food journal [see scraps #4] (1980s) 

• A food writer at the Los Angeles Times (1990-2008)

• One of the pre-eminent scholars of medieval Arabic cookery (long ago-present), and translator of al-Bagdadhi’s كتاب الطبيخ, or Kitab al-Tabikh [The Book of Dishes]

See you at “Banquets of Marrakesh" in January. :)

(Oh, and I recommend this vibey Apartamento video & interview with Perry.)

If LA booze is more your flavor, pour some sweet Angelica and take in this great little history of drinking in LA, from Richard Foss at the CHSC in May.

That’s it for now, y’all, and happy new year. This one was truly gnarly: I’m thinking of you.

love,
alex

ʕ　·ᴥ·ʔ SOON: the case of the missing DragonBall Z fan site …… burnin’ that sweet, sweet incense clock …… did Byzantine scented bricks really exist?? god, I hope so.