Archive for the ‘Restaurants’ Category

Los Angeles is filled with restaurants. If you can think it, you can probably order it in a neighborhood bistro. Like New York, you can find an eatery in LA that is not part of a huge chain and that serves real food.

Sometimes though, you do not want to get dressed to go out to eat. You are tired, you just want to go home and grab something from the fridge or see what falls out of the freezer. That does not mean you are limited to grabbing a meal from a drive through where you talk to a clown head or peanut butter sandwiches. Your refrigerator can hold some glorious fresh seafood and produce if you just make a stop at Elat Grocery on Pico Street.

Elat is one of those places where you either love it or you hate it. For those who have been to the Middle East, who are accustomed to the personalities and demeanor of Persians and Israelis, Elat is like coming home. For someone whose primary experience has been inside the big box chain stores, you may run screaming out the door after just trying to get a cart. There is also a cacophony of languages: Hebrew, Farsi, Arabic, and a collection of Slavic and European languages.

Elat is a Middle Eastern grocery, offering fresh meats, cheeses, fish and produce for prices almost half of what is charged in other stores. They offer imported canned goods, including olives and pickles from Israel, and lovely sheep’s milk feta cheese from Bulgaria.

Walking into the front door of Elat, the customer’s nose is assailed with a combination of scents: the spices redolent in Middle Eastern foods, the produce, the fresh meats sold from a counter tended by a real butcher who weighs and cuts the meat to order, and the smell of fresh fish. Another rarity at Elat is the presence of a fish monger who waits while you select your fish, then scales, guts and cleans it to your specifications. Most seafood shipped to seafood market now comes in already cleaned. Elat brings back this old school service in order to better serve their patrons who had been accustomed to buying their fish directly from fisherman.

Because Elat keeps kosher, you will not find pork or shellfish there. However, the fresh free range chickens and fish so fresh it slept in the ocean the night before is worth the trouble.

Once you are finished at Elat, take a walk across the street to the Haifa Restaurant. Humble, out of the way, with no more parking than Elat, but well worth the trip. They have wonderful fish on their menu, fixed in assorted ways. They offer chicken too, but no beef. Their hummus, falafel, and babaganoush are to die for. For under $20, you can have a nice sit down meal, made up of “small plates,” like salads, dips, fresh warm pita, and vegetables. Remember, they close at two o’clock Friday afternoon, but they set up a small buffet then and do a vegetarian take away, to allow their patrons to dash in grab supper then head home before Sabbath begins.

Step away from the sushi and the haute cuisine for a change and take a trip down West Pico Boulevard and see what develops.

Los Angeles seafood is not limited to restaurants. You may not find seafood chowder at Elat or Haifitz, but you can get enough fresh fish at Elat to make your own, then go across the street for a nice lox and bagel for lunch before you go home to cook.

A Guide to the Freshest Seafood in Los Angeles – LosAngelesSeafood.net

Los Angeles is a wonderful city. Every sort of restaurant imaginable, from Cuban to Ethiopian to Korean to Chinese Dim Sum seem to be located in every other block of the city. It is possible to take a world tour and never leave the city limits.

One thing you will notice in Los Angeles is some of the famous names. Mario Batali, the Iron Chef, has a restaurant there, as do Wolfgang Puck and Bobby Flay. Their food is spectacular, sometimes with prices to match. Sure you can have a bite to eat there for a reasonable price. However, for a whole meal, take your check book. That is not to say it is not worth it, but some people cannot justify spending the mortgage payment on a meal for four.

Then are the smaller, hole in the wall places. Those are sometimes fun. Sure, they may not be classy looking, and may be shabby chic leaning towards just plane shabby. Nevertheless, a restaurant must be judged on the quality of their fare, not by their decor.

Read their menu. Do they offer fresh, local seafood? Alternatively, is it all frozen, processed square breaded fish filets that more commonly come served on a bun with tartar sauce? Do they have calamari on the menu? How is it prepared?

Squid requires flash cooking at a high temperature, such as coating in a light breading and deep frying quickly, or long slow cooking at low temperatures in an acidic sauce. Otherwise it comes out reminiscent of chewing on rubber bands.

There is a collection of wonderful sushi restaurants in Los Angeles. There are also some sushi places that serve fish more suitable for cat food than wrapping in nori and sticky rice.

Koreatown (a horribly xenophobic sounding name for a wonderful community filled with groceries, pottery, natural remedies and food ready to be devoured with relish. With names like Fat Fish, Hokkaido, Boiling Crab, and Flaming Clam, you know the food has to be as creative as their names.

Off of Torrence Boulevard, at the Redondo Beach Pier, the primarily Asian influence offers not only fresh fish from their own tanks, which they use to make sashimi, but organic seafood.

Many of the sushi bars in Los Angeles are not Japanese sushi, but offer the Korean variety. Bu San, and O-Dae-San are only two of the many in the city. One place, The Prince, even offers octopus that is cut up alive and serve still moving.

If you are looking for sea food so fresh you have to slap it, you cannot go wrong in Los Angeles.

Seafood restaurant Los Angeles come in all nationalities and styles. You can find everything from seafood chowder to live octopus there. Let your imagination be your guide.

A Guide to the Freshest Seafood in Los Angeles – LosAngelesSeafood.net

One of the all-time favorite American foods is of course the hamburger, and there are also some all-American favorite burger joints too. The hamburger can found in venues other than restaurants too such as baseball and football games, fairs, and carnivals. People also make hamburgers and do so using different methods of cooking. Still, there is very little argument that the best burgers are the ones that you do not have to make yourself, but that you buy from your favorite burger joint, which most likely is famous for their burgers and how they are made. Read the rest of this entry »