restaurant

In the working-class city of Commerce, where cars speed past on highways and the Citadel Outlets tower over neighborhoods, there is a steakhouse named Stevens. By day, it’s a classic and charming old restaurant where working people go for quiet, hearty meals.

But every Sunday night, the outside world disappears.

As waiters whisk about in starched button ups, couples lead each other by the hand toward the dance floor in the restaurant’s ballroom, where Stevens’ tradition of Salsa Sundays has been bringing the community together for 73 years.

At 7 p.m. every Sunday, beginner lessons start at Stevens Steakhouse.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

An eight-piece band plays brass, electric guitar, bongos and timbales, filling the room with music as dancers twirl in a dizzying array. One attendee, 29-year-old Amy Hernandez, greets a few familiar faces before she steps onto the dance floor, spinning in confident steps with a wide smile on her face.

Hernandez is part of a revival that’s been getting younger people excited about salsa music — and flocking to Stevens. She grew up watching her father dance salsa, but started diving back into the genre on her own to find comfort during the L.A. wildfires earlier this year. She credits Bad Bunny’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” for re-sparking her interest.

“It was very healing for me,” she says of the album, which blends old-school Puerto Rican boricua samples with Latin dance and reggaeton influences for an emotional imagining of Puerto Rican identity.

For decades, Stevens has brought friends, couples, and families together for live music and dance.

(Emil Ravelo/For The Times)

When college friends recommended Stevens as an affordable place to dance, Hernandez mentioned it in passing to her dad. “He laughed and said, ‘I remember that place. I used to dance there too,’” Hernandez says.

The increasingly mainstream artists of Latin fusion genre reggaeton are returning to tradition. Along with the music of Bad Bunny, who’s headlining the upcoming Super Bowl halftime show, you can find classic salsa references in reggaeton star Rauw Alejandro’s latest album “Cosa Nuestra,” and in Colombian pop star Karol G’s multi-genre summer album “Tropicoqueta,” which will be at the center of her headlining Coachella set.

“You can feel the younger energy,” says longtime Stevens salsa instructor Jennifer Aguirre. “It makes me really happy to see a younger generation take on salsa. Because I was worried for a bit. I didn’t know how salsa is going to continue.”

Los Angeles has a unique relationship with salsa, the Afro-Caribbean dance born from Cuban mambo. In cities like Miami and New York, salsa arrived with Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants. Instead, L.A.’s salsa influence came from Golden Age Hollywood, where Latin dance in movies produced a singular, flashier Angeleno style, characterized by quick turns and theatrical movement, according to salsa historian Juliet McMains.

The 1990s were another high for the genre, when West Coast pioneers like the Vazquez brothers and their first-of-its-kind dance team Salsa Brava sparked a local dance craze. The Vazquezes introduced the “on-1” step and innovated a flashier, dramatic style of salsa in L.A. that brought crowds to competitions and congresses through the 2000s. Legendary late promoter Albert Torres founded the L.A. Salsa Congress in 1999, the first congress on the West Coast, drawing a worldwide audience for Angeleno salsa.

Opened in 1952 by Steven Filipan (and located on Stevens Place), Stevens in Commerce became a local hub for Latin music. “The interesting part was that the area wasn’t Latin at all,” says Jim Filipan, Steven’s grandson and now the third-generation owner of the restaurant. “My grandfather had a foresight that this genre would be the future.”

Jim recalls his childhood growing up in the restaurant. “We would have hundreds of people on Sundays,” he says. “The ballroom, the restaurant, everyone was dancing salsa, and it was incredible. My dad took over in the ‘70s, and I was running it with him in the ‘90s.”

Yet by the 2010s it was apparent that another genre was taking hold of the Latin dance scene: bachata, ushered in by smooth-singing New York stars like Prince Royce and Romeo Santos. Salsa quickly went from being considered hip to rather old-fashioned.

During a Stevens dance lesson, guests learn how to spin on the dance floor.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

Aguirre witnessed the genre lose interest firsthand. “It was like an immediate switch,” Aguirre says. “Salsa just wasn’t as popular anymore, and people would walk over to the other side of the restaurant to take the bachata lessons.”

The pandemic also dealt a large blow to local salsa clubs, as peers in the long-standing dance club industry fell to lower attendance rates and rising rent. And in the last year, two historic venues, the Conga Room and the Mayan, closed permanently.

Stevens almost had the same fate. The financial burdens during the pandemic made Jim consider closing for good. But he couldn’t help but consider the responsibility of his family’s legacy and the special place Stevens holds for local dancers.

“It’s very emotional for me because I have four generations in this restaurant, and now my daughter works here,” he says.

When Stevens reopened, the community came back in droves, ushering in a new era of excitement for salsa.

These days, at the beginning of every class, dance instructor Miguel “Miguelito” Aguirre announces the same rule.

“Forget about what happened today, forget about your week, forget about all the bad stuff. Leave it at the door,” Aguirre says. “It’s going to be better because we’re going to dance salsa.”

Dance instructor, Miguel Aguirre, right, mans the DJ booth alongside DJ Pechanga, another longtime employee of Stevens. Every weekend, the duo brings Latin music to the forefront of the space.

(Emil Ravelo/For The Times)

Aguirre has taught salsa at Stevens for 30 years. In many ways, the steakhouse has shaped his life. It’s where he discovered his love for teaching dance and much more.

“I started coming here in the ‘90s, sneaking in through the back door. I was a teenager, so not old enough to show my ID, but one day, Jim just said, ‘You guys cannot come in through the back anymore. You can come into the front,’” Aguirre says. “And then one day he said, ‘Hey, we are missing the instructors. They’re not coming in. Can you guys teach the class?’ And, I’m still here.”

Jennifer Aguirre, a fellow dance teacher at Stevens, is his wife. She met him one day at Stevens’ annual Halloween party.

“He asked me to join his class because they ‘needed more girls,’” Jennifer says, laughing.

Now Jennifer teaches the beginner’s class, while Miguel is on intermediate. But once 10 p.m. hits, it’s social dancing time. The whole floor comes together and a familiar community converges. If attendees are lucky, they might catch Jennifer and Miguel, a smooth-dancing duo, letting loose, stepping and dipping effortlessly.

On a recent Sunday night, the low-lighted ambience of the restaurant met the purple lights of the dance room, with people sitting all around for a peek at the moves on display. Buttery steaks and potatoes cooking in the kitchen tinged the air as the dance floor came alive with women spinning in dresses and men in shining shoes gliding to the rhythm of the music. Miguel Aguirre manned the DJ stand, asking two singles if they knew each other and encouraging them to dance.

Gregorio Sines was one of the solo dancers on the floor, swaying partners easily under Miguel’s encouragement. Years ago, his friend, who frequented Stevens, dragged Sines out to dance socials, telling him it would be the best way to meet people and open up.

As someone who began with anxiety to dance in front of others, Sines now performs in Stevens’ dance showcases. He says consistently returning to the steakhouse’s historic floor and immersing himself in the supportive community not only changed his dance game, but brought him out of his shell.

“I tell anyone, if you’re scared to dance, you just have to get out there,” Sines says. “There’s a community waiting for you.”

Where can I host a big birthday party on a restaurant patio or rent out a bar during the day? That’s not outrageously expensive? — Kristen Silva

Here’s what we suggest:

First and foremost, I respect — and deeply relate to — your desire to celebrate your birthday on a budget. It’s tough right now. The good news, though, is that L.A. is brimming with delicious restaurants and aesthetic bars that go easy on the pockets — both for you and your guests. And some even allow you to bring your own birthday cake.

For a laid-back spot where you and your friends can sit at picnic tables and enjoy juicy pastrami sandwiches, loaded French fries and refreshing cocktails, check out Johnny’s in West Adams. Senior food editor Danielle Dorsey recommends the spot in a guide to West Adams, calling the umbrella-dotted parking lot patio “the perfect al fresco setting.” Because Johnny’s has a walk-up service counter, its easy for your guests to come and go as they please. Plus, you won’t have to worry about the headache of trying to split the bill at the end of the night. Reservations are only necessary if you’re looking to rent out the space, but there is a $35 cake fee.

If you don’t mind being indoors, my colleague Deborah Vankin suggests Far Bar in Little Tokyo, where she celebrated her birthday on the mezzanine with about 50 friends. “It was a cozy, but still roomy space that felt festive and provided the best people watching below,” she says. “The price was beyond reasonable and, afterwards, a group of us walked down the street for dessert and karaoke.” If you’re open to hosting your party on a slower night (not Friday or Saturday), a manager told me you can avoid rental fees. (FYI: There’s also a narrow outdoor seating area here, but Vankin says it’s not great for parties.)

Music lovers will appreciate Zizou, a vibey French-Moroccan restaurant nestled in Lincoln Heights. Owned by two lifelong friends from France, Zizou features a stunning vintage sound system, where DJs can be found spinning jazz, French hip-hop, South African rhythms and other global sounds on the weekends. My friend Tori Johnson hosted her birthday party on the starlit patio earlier this year. “We were able to invite friends post-dinner to come and have wine with us until the restaurant closed,” she tells me. “It felt intimate and just what I was looking for for my 31st birthday.” For parties of eight or more, there’s a $75 minimum per person for seated dining, but no minimum if you’re planning to just chill at the bar or near the sound system. You can either bring your own cake at no additional cost or order Zizou’s house-made French apple tart for dessert. And don’t worry, the servers won’t look at you with disdain if you ask for separate checks — at least from my experience.

Another worthy option is Everson Royce, which deputy food editor Betty Hallock calls “one of the best bars in the city (with great food),” and I can’t agree more. This spot is popular because of its happy hour and its breezy outdoor patio. “It’s like being in a friend’s backyard, with picnic tables, string lights and a vine-wrapped tree, except you’re in the middle of downtown,” Hallock reports in a guide to the most picturesque restaurant patios in L.A. An Everson Royce staffer told me that you can book a normal reservation for up to 100 people — yes, you read that correctly — and that the restaurant doesn’t charge extra fees or require any deposits. Staff will even split the checks for each of your guests.

In the mood for dancing? Start your night with focaccia-style pan pizzas at De La Nonna, then head next door to the Let’s Go! Disco & Cocktail Club. I DJed a wedding here last year and it was a seamless transition, sweating out the delectable pizza at the Italian-inspired nightclub where 1970s disco hits (and related genres) are the soundscape. Reservations are highly recommended. For 20 guests, De La Nonna requires its prix fixe menu with optional drink packages, but 30 or more guests are considered a “partial buyout,” so both are required. There’s also a room fee. If you’re still in the mood for partying once the cocktail den closes at 1 a.m., then walk across the street to EightyTwo, an arcade bar with dozens of pinball machines and classic video games. (Note: De La Nonna charges a $20 cake fee.)

If these spots don’t satisfy your needs, some of my food colleagues also suggested Le Great Outdoor in Santa Monica, Mr. T in Hollywood, Good Neighbor Bar in Altadena and Benny Boy Brewing in Lincoln Heights — all of which have a patio.

As you can see, there are loads of options depending on what type of food, vibe and part of L.A. you prefer. Wherever you end up, I hope you have a wonderful time and, most importantly, that you have a great birthday and year ahead.

The Shohei-inspired sushi roll, available only during games, features spicy tuna inside — representing Ohtani’s Japanese heritage — and avocado on top, representing California. “That’s the whole idea: the mixing of the cultures,” said owner Don Tahara. Other World Series specials — available all day, even when the game’s not on — include chili cheese fries, cocktail specials and Canadian poutine in a nod to the Blue Jays.

A first taste of L.A.’s new Maydan Market. Plus, eating in this town for $50 or less, a cookbook of gravestone recipes, allegations of racial discrimination at a popular L.A. cafe … and how Diane Keaton liked to drink her favorite wine. I’m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week’s Tasting Notes.

Market of dreams

Chefs Rosio Sanchez, left, and Laura Flores Correa of Copenhagen’s Sanchez and Hija de Sanchez, sample mole-sauced turkey legs from Lugya’h at Maydan Market.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

Many of us have favorite places to take out-of-town guests — restaurants, hiking trails and idiosyncratic spots like the recently reopened Museum of Jurassic Technology that show our friends and family why we love L.A.

For years, I’ve brought friends to Mercado la Paloma, the food hall and cultural center that is home to Gilberto Cetina‘s Holbox, the seafood counter that was our L.A. Times Restaurant of the Year in 2023 and last year was awarded a Michelin star. These days, there’s always a line for Cetina’s exquisite seafood plates, including his octopus taco with squid-ink-stained sofrito. While one person in your group waits to order at Holbox, you can find many other things to bring to your table at the mercado — unbeatable cochinita pibil and more Yucatecan dishes (try the papadzules or a refreshing agua de chaya) from Chichén Itzá, founded by Cetina’s father Gilberto Sr.; Oaxacan nieves or ice cream flavored with mamey, tuna (cactus fruit) or especially leche quemada (burnt milk) from OaxaCalifornia; and Fátima Juárez‘s gorgeous quesadilla de flor, with orange squash blossom petals spilling out of the blue corn tortilla like sunshine at her masa-focused restaurant Komal (one of Bill Addison’s picks on his 101 Best California Restaurants list).

This week, however, I tried a new place when Rosio Sanchez, the Copenhagen-based chef I wrote about in this newsletter a few months ago, said she was coming to L.A. for the Chef Assembly conference and two collaborations, one that took place Wednesday with Jordan Kahn at Meteora and another that is happening all day Sunday at Enrique Olvera and chef Chuy Cervantes’ downtown taco spot Ditroit with Yia Vang of Minneapolis’ Hmong restaurant Vinai. Sanchez wanted to meet someplace for lunch, but had just tried Komal at the Mercado la Paloma and had even been to Thai Taco Tuesday at Anajak Thai, one of my other dependable suggestions for wowing visitors. I had to change my usual game plan.

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Chef-founder Rose Previte details the bevy of vendors and dishes at West Adams’ cross-cultural new food hall.

Fortunately, our intrepid woman about town Stephanie Breijo had been telling me all about Maydan Market in anticipation of its recent opening in L.A.’s West Adams neighborhood, across the street from a branch of chef Kat Turner‘s Highly Likely. In addition, Breijo made a hunger-inducing video showing off the live-fire-based restaurants at the heart of the market founded by Rose Previte, whose Maydan in Washington, D.C., is devoted to the cuisines of the Middle East and was among the Top 40 restaurants chosen in 2024 by the Washington Post’s recently unmasked critic Tom Sietsema.

Here in Los Angeles, Previte wanted to open a food hall centered on hearth cooking from different cultures. That not only means new branches of her Maydan restaurant and Compass Rose cafe, but Afro-Mexican Guerrerense cooking at Maléna from Tamales Elena founder Maria Elena Lorenzo; Yhing Yhang BBQ from Holy Basil chef Wedchayan “Deau” Arpapornnopparat, serving charcoal-grilled Thai chicken, seafood and duck, and a space for emerging chefs that is currently featuring Melnificent Wingz from Melissa “Chef Mel” Cottingham.

Most of the places so far don’t open until 5 p.m. — I spotted Arpapornnopparat prepping some fantastic-looking chile sauces for his dinnertime barbecue that I am eager to try. But lunch operations are slowly getting underway and on Thursday afternoon we were lucky to find Alfonso Martinez of Poncho’s Tlayudas fame at Lugya’h, his new post in the market. In addition to tlyaudas — which Addison, in his 2022 review of Poncho’s called one of his “this is the Los Angeles I love” dishes — Martinez is serving dishes from Oaxaca’s Sierra Norte at Lugya’h.

Mole-covered turkey leg with a black bean tamal from Alfonso Martinez’s Lugya’h at Maydan Market.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

With Sanchez and her chef Laura Flores Correa, best known as Laurita, I was able to try a turkey leg sauced in a dark, rich “mole de bejed” with a black bean tamal on the side. The meat was incredibly moist, perfect with the tamal. We also got bowls of foamy Mexican cacao-flavored atole, which came with brioche-like Oaxacan pan de yema.

A slice of tlayuda with chorizo, grilled tasajo and the blood sausage moronga from Lugya’h at L.A.’s Maydan Market.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

And even though the current plan is to serve tlyaudas only during dinner, we were able to try one with three meats: chorizo, beautifully charred on the edges from the fire; a slice of grilled tasajo, and a link of moronga, one of the best blood sausages I’ve ever eaten, from a recipe, as Addison writes, handed down as a wedding gift from the father of Martinez’s wife Odilia Romero. She was helping out at the market this week, though is anxious to get back to her work advocating for Indigenous migrants in L.A. That might not be easy once word spreads about the deliciousness of Lugya’h’s food.

Alfonso Martinez, right, and Odilia Romero, who have expanded their Poncho’s Tlayudas operation to Maydan Market under the name Lugya’h.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

Indeed, each of the places Previte has curated is certain to draw a crowd. I’m looking forward to bringing more friends and trying them all.

If you think $50 a person sounds like a lot for dinner …

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s crazy that $50 per person is now considered a cheap sit-down meal.”

“The fact that LAT is suggesting $50 a person is somehow a ‘win’ is pretty crazy.”

Those are two reader comments on our 50 under $50 guide to restaurants where it’s possible to eat for $50 or less a person — including tax and tip. Which actually means finding items on the menu that cost $38 a person to account for an approximate 10% sales tax and 20% tip. We thought it was important for you to not get hit with charges that traditionally are not reflected on most restaurant menus.

To those readers who say $50 a person is too much to spend for a nice sit-down dinner, we agree. But all over the city — and in so many parts of the country — it’s increasingly difficult to get dinner at a non-fast-food or fast-casual restaurant for less than $50. Indeed, some of our finest restaurants charge $500 and even more than $1000 a person once you figure in wine or sake pairings.

This kind of pricing, which accounts for luxury ingredients and livable salaries for members of the kitchen and dining room staff that provide world-class service, puts many of our most acclaimed restaurants out of reach for the majority of Angelenos. That’s why we thought it was important in these tough economic times to come up with a guide to more affordable restaurant choices. We weren’t only going for “cheap eats.” Our entire Food team searched the city for a range of places that, as senior Food editor Danielle Dorsey wrote, “must be open until 9 p.m.” (so a true dinner spot), “doesn’t have to offer table service, but must [have] seating available to enjoy your food on-site” and where “you must be able to order at least two menu items, whether that’s a starter and a main, an entree and a dessert, or a large plate and a cocktail.”

The restaurants we chose ranged from the casual but highly acclaimed Sonoratown, which has what our critic Bill Addison says is “the Los Angeles food item I have consumed more than any other” (the $12.50 Burrito 2.0) to strategic ordering suggestions at star chef spots such as Dave Beran‘s Pasjoli and Bestia from husband-and-wife chefs Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis. In between are affordable date-night places, including Cody Ma and Misha Sesar‘s Persian spot Azizam, the buzzy Cal-Italian Beethoven Market
and Propaganda Wine Bar in the Arts District. We’re always looking for more suggestions. If you have a favorite affordable place, tell us about it in the story’s comment section.

Also …

• Stephanie Breijo spoke with archivist and social media personality Rosie Grant about her new cookbook “To Die For: A Cookbook of Gravestone Recipes,” which as the title implies, is a collection of recipes that decedents or their loved ones treasured so much they had them etched on their tombstones.
• Breijo also broke down the allegations of racial discrimination at the L.A. restaurant Great White and Gran Blanco “after intensifying social media videos claim that Great White segregates customers based on ethnicity and race, which its owners and some employees deny.”

And finally … ‘slug it down’

Diane Keaton in 2023.

(Raymond Hall/GC Images via Getty Images)

In memory of the great Diane Keaton, let’s raise a toast to her unforgettable movie roles and personal style with what she called “the only wine that I love.”

“It’s called Lillet,” she said in an Instagram video she made back in 2022 with a similar unconventional approach to ice that Stanley Tucci demonstrated his viral negroni video from 2020. After adding many ice cubes to a large yet elegant tumbler, she fills the glass with Lillet and adds a wedge of lemon, instructing her followers to “slug it down” without the addition of the usual tonic or sparkling water. Apparently, Keaton was not a spritz kind of gal. “And if you don’t like it,” she said to her viewers, “that’s fine with me. I’ll just drink all this myself.” Sounds like she knew how to live.

As many stock market observers know, Warren Buffett‘s Berkshire Hathaway has been a net seller of stocks. The most notable sale has been Apple. That position made up over 40% of the portfolio at one time, but the share has since fallen to around 22%.

What investors need to understand is that the selling does not mean Buffett’s team isn’t buying stocks at all. One notable recent purchase has been Domino’s Pizza (DPZ -0.03%). The stock’s past gains and its value proposition have likely inspired this investment, and such optimism warrants a closer look at the business and the stock to see if it is a suitable choice for average investors.

Image source: Getty Images.

Berkshire Hathaway and Domino’s

Domino’s has returned more than 6,500% in stock gains and dividend payments since it went public in 2004. Most investors, including Berkshire Hathaway, have missed out on most of those gains, but Berkshire’s bets could indicate that significant upside remains.

DPZ Total Return Level data by YCharts

Buffett’s company began buying Domino’s shares in the third quarter of 2024 and has increased its position size in every quarter since that time. Today, it holds just over 2.6 million shares, or about 7.75% of the outstanding shares.

Another possible factor in Berkshire’s investment in Domino’s is that it is the world’s largest pizza chain, boasting 21,750 locations globally as of the end of fiscal Q3. Despite that success, investors may question why an investor would want to get into a business like pizza, which at least in theory, has low barriers to entry.

However, no other pizza business has grown to the same size, and one can find the kinds of competitive advantages that attract investors like Buffett when looking at Domino’s more closely.

One key part of Domino’s is its franchise model. This enables the chain to open a large number of locations with a relatively small amount of capital, leveraging high brand recognition to drive business.

Moreover, it offers a digital-first approach, which makes ordering easier and capitalizes on route planning for faster deliveries. Additionally, an efficient supply chain helps standardize food quality and costs, increasing consistency across locations.

Furthermore, despite a global footprint, Domino’s adapts its menu to suit local tastes, and new offerings such as parmesan-stuffed crust or added customization options keep its customers coming back to Domino’s.

The financial case for Domino’s

Buffett’s team was likely also drawn by its financial metrics. Indeed, with its global footprint, the maturity of the business appears to make it more of a value stock.

In the first nine months of fiscal 2025 (ended Sept. 8), revenue of $3.4 billion rose by 4%. Nonetheless, during that time, its free cash flow of $496 million surged 32% higher over the same timeframe. Gains on assets and lower capital expenditures bolstered that cash position.

Additionally, that free cash flow easily covered the company’s $119 million in dividend costs in the first nine months of the fiscal year. At $6.96 per share, its 1.6% dividend yield is well above the 1.2% average for the S&P 500. Buffett’s team also probably liked its 13-year history of payout hikes, a trend that makes further annual payout hikes likely to continue.

Investors should also take note of the pizza chain’s valuation. Its P/E ratio of 25 is below the company’s five-year average earnings multiple of 30. Also, since its P/E ratio has not fallen significantly below 25 since the early 2010s, one can assume that Domino’s stock sells at a reasonable price.

Should you follow Berkshire Hathaway into Domino’s stock?

Given the state of the company, investors can likely make a prudent move by following Berkshire Hathaway into Domino’s stock.

Indeed, a 6,500% total return over the stock’s history may cause some prospective buyers to shy away, particularly because of the competitive nature of the pizza industry.

However, Domino’s brand recognition and its focus on franchising, operational efficiency, and a robust supply chain give the company a competitive advantage. Moreover, investors can buy the stock at a relatively reasonable price and collect an above-average dividend yield.

In the end, even if Domino’s does not generate excitement, the stock is likely to cook up rising dividends and market-beating returns over time.

The cantina on Tatooine in the first “Star Wars” film. A Greek taverna on a layover in Miami. A mermaid’s womb. Every friend I take to, or even ask about, Cento Raw Bar and its fantastical design has a knee-jerk one-liner at the ready.

The wildest new bar in Los Angeles

Walk into the West Adams space adjoined by an awning to Cento Pasta Bar — both conceived by chef Avner Levi — and the first sight of the curving walls will spin anyone’s mind. They look plastered with a mixture of stucco and meringue, smeared like a frosted cake in progress, that’s meant to evoke the shimmer and shifting light of a Mediterranean cave. A three-sided seafoam-green bar anchors the room, girded by tall white chairs with metal backs patterned in a snail’s spiral. Details fill every corner: rounded, sculptural pillars and pedestals; a blue-tile floor mosaic resembling a pond; pendant sconces in shapes that remind me of the “energy dome” hats worn by the band Devo in the 1980s.

A mosaic moment in the dining room of Cento Raw Bar.

(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)

The effect leans more toward trippy than transportive. As one stop during a night out for a drink and a stopgap plate of seafood or two, I’m into it.

Idiosyncrasy is welcome right now

Maybe in another era I would gawk once and move on. But in times like Los Angeles is living through, in a half-decade that has begat one trial and horror after another, the operators of new restaurants, particularly those in the highest-rent districts, tend to default to conservative choices. Menus full of comforts familiar to whatever cuisine is being served. Atmospheres easily described as “pleasant.” The decisions are so understandable, and given a particular neighborhood or desired audience perhaps it pays off economically. Familiarity is a priority to many diners. Hospitality workers deserve stable incomes.

Culturally, though? The restaurant pros who can’t stomach the status quo, who go regionally specific or deeply personal or brazenly imaginative, are the forces who inspire cities toward creative rebellion. Thinking about this, I found an article from 2011 by former Times critic S. Irene Virbila about the year’s restaurant openings. The nation was burrowing out of the Great Recession at the time, but the roster of emerging talents mentioned by Virbila would wind up shaping the 2010s as the decade that landed Los Angeles on the global culinary map: names like Bryant Ng, Josef Centeno, Nyesha Arrington, Michael Voltaggio, Steve Samson and Zach Pollack.

She also pointed out Ludo Lefebvre, who in 2011 was still in pop-up mode before launching his defining restaurants Trois Mec (felled by the pandemic) and Petit Trois. Maybe it’s a sign that this week Lefebvre came full-circle with a new occasional pop-up series he’s calling Éphémère.

Point is, we could use more extreme individualism in restaurants right now. I appreciate the obsessiveness from designer Brandon Miradi, who has the title of “creative director” at Cento Raw Bar and who counts Vespertine, Somni, the Bazaar at SLS Beverly Hills and Frieze Art Fair as previous projects. Note the spiraling ends of the silverware, matching the chairs, and the ways napkins too are rolled into a tight coil. He managed to find colored glassware in geometries that register at once as retro and postmodern.

Cento Raw Bar, the sibling cocktail and seafood bar to chef Avner Levi’s pasta restaurant, features an all-white interior.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Maybe no surprise, but the TikTok-magnetic vibes keep the bar full of young, beautiful groups — Angelenos or visitors modeling their best L.A. looks, who can say. In June, about a month after the place opened, a friend and I were sitting at one of the low tables and she pointed over to the bar: The women seated in the high stools all came in wearing stilettos that were now dangling half off their feet. Panning this shoe moment could have been a montage sequence during a Carrie Bradshaw voiceover in an early season of “Sex and the City.”

What to eat and drink

Perhaps to fully center or to balance Miradi’s visual extravaganza, the food and drink options are quite straightforward. A few cocktails do wink right into the camera, among them a play on a Screwdriver made with SunnyD (which the menu calls “Sunny Delight,” the branding name I also remember from my Gen-X childhood). Most are mainstays: a classic escapist piña colada, a spicy margarita, an Aperol situation spiked with mezcal. The bartenders listen kindly when I request they stir my dry gin martini well.

A martini at the bar of Cento Raw Bar.

(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)

Seafood towers, served on undulating green-glass plates designed by Miradi, are stylish and modest in size and arrive as two levels for $83 or three levels for $97.

A buddy and I recently split the smaller one, neatly polishing off a handful of tiny, briny oysters along with scallops served in their shells, some bouncy shrimp and a couple meaty lobster claws. We had shown up to Pizzeria Sei without a reservation — because scoring one at a prime hour is maddening, and so I take my chances as a walk-in — and were told the wait was an hour and 15 minutes. Cento Raw Bar was a 12-minute drive away, ideal for one round of drinks and pre-dinner shellfish.

On another occasion, I might skip the pricey tower and order a plate of hamachi crudo (dotted with stone fruit during the summer season) and a dip of smoked cod with bagel chips. I’ve found more substantial plates, such as ridged mafaldine tangled in lobster sauce, in need of spice and acid.

Fish dip topped with trout roe at Cento Raw Bar in West Adams.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Desserts riffing on a Hostess cake or an ube cheesecake spangled with prismatic bits of flavored gelatins? Fun, but I’ve had my share of outlandish décor and cocktail nibbles — exactly what I came for.

4919 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 795-0330, cento.group

Also …

• Food editor Daniel Hernandez writes about Mexico City, the food lovers flocking to its energized restaurant scene … and the digital nomads who are also settling in, pricing out locals in some areas. As tensions boil, he asks, is it possible to still visit and be a mindful tourist?
• Daniel, a former longtime resident of Mexico City, also names 34 of the city’s best restaurants and bars that aren’t tourist traps.
• Speaking of Bryant Ng mentioned above, Jenn Harris checks out his new project, Jade Rabbit, a new fast-casual restaurant in Santa Monica where Ng re-imagines Chinese American food.
• Stephanie Breijo reports from West Hollywood on Darling, the new restaurant from legendary Southern chef Sean Brock, who is determined not to lean on his heritage in California. “In order to fully understand the taste of this place [L.A.], and that’s my goal, I can’t cook Southern,” Brock shares.
• Farewell, lunchroom pepperoni pizza? Daniel Miller lays out the details of the new state law aimed to ban some ultraprocessed foods from school meals.

The Tudor Pass in Egham, Surrey, has been named the best fine dining restaurant in the UK – and it’s not hard to see why, with its stunning interiors and delicious food

Topping the charts in its local area and making a splash on the UK’s fine dining scene, this intimate restaurant with its breathtaking interiors is a must-visit.

Nestled in Egham, a town brimming with stunning architecture in the Borough of Runnymede, The Tudor Pass is a gem tucked away in the Surrey countryside. Its exclusive ambience, offering just seven tables, provides a unique experience that celebrates the rich history of both the building and its surroundings.

Patrons can look forward to an extraordinary dining experience, complete with interactive service, all without the commotion of an open kitchen. The culinary magic is orchestrated by Chef Stefano Di Giosia, whose signature dishes are a fusion of classic flavours, seasonal ingredients, and a dash of personality.

With previous stints at renowned establishments like The Fat Duck and KOL, his passion for food is evident in every dish he creates. This dedication hasn’t gone unnoticed, earning the restaurant a coveted Michelin star for its exceptional cuisine, much to the delight of its customers.

One satisfied diner took to TripAdvisor to share their glowing review, describing it as “one of the top international dining experiences from a foodie”. They added: “Our experience at Tudor Pass implores me to provide a review placing this as one of the top restaurants you can visit, and it is at a very reasonable price point compared to all of the others.”, reports the Express.

One diner shared their experience, writing: “We’ve enjoyed tasting menus at a number of restaurants, including those with a Michelin star. You usually get one or two courses that miss the mark a bit – but our meal at The Tudor Pass was wonderful from start to finish.

“Every course was delicately presented and a delight to eat – every course made us smile!” Another satisfied customer praised their meal for its “real depth of flavour”.

The Travellers’ Choice Awards via TripAdvisor have celebrated the crème de la crème of UK dining, compiling an ultimate list of top-notch eateries across the country. Nestled at number 23 on the 25-restaurant-long list is the Tudor Pass, rubbing shoulders with famed establishments like The Witchery Restaurant in Edinburgh and Gouqi Restaurant in London.

A recent guest penned about their dining experience, stating: “The food was sublime; the tasting menu was exceptional (and we’ve had a good few worldwide).”

Another chimed in: “This was so much more than we were expecting, and a number of the dishes, as well as the extra touches such as the story cards behind the dishes, made this feel more like a two-star than a one-star restaurant.”

The Tudor Pass is nestled within the luxurious five-star Great Fosters hotel resort, boasting breathtaking gardens that guests can admire through the mediaeval-style windows. Whether you’re a guest at the resort or looking to elevate a special occasion, it’s evident why this Edham eatery has earned its place on such a prestigious list – and the premium pricing certainly reflects the quality of the experience.

Pricing

• Lunch – Wednesday to Friday – 4-course tasting menu £95 and Signature tasting menu £125
• Lunch – Saturday – 4-course tasting menu £125 and Signature tasting menu £155
• Dinner – Wednesday and Thursday – 4-course tasting menu £125 and Signature tasting menu £155
• Dinner – Friday and Saturday – Signature tasting menu £165

TV chef Jamie Oliver raked in £28.5million last year as he continued to bounce back from his restaurant chain collapse.

Jamie Oliver Holdings’ bumper 2024 income came from TV shows, book sales and restaurants.

It also covered his cookery school and fees for promoting Tesco.

Jamie’s Italian chain collapsed in 2018, with debts of £83million.

But he now has international brands and a restaurant in Covent Garden, central London.

Revenues were up from £27.1million in 2023, Companies House files show.

But profits took a slight dip to £4.6million last year, from £5.2million.

The chef and his wife Jools, both 50, received dividends of £3million.

A report said: “The principal drivers of this decrease in profitability were reduced revenue from the effects of the cyclical nature of long term partnerships contracts, partially offset by savings in central staff costs (excluding Owned and Operated sites)

“We have delivered new Jamie Oliver titles in both book and TV formats during the year and there has been continued strong performance from back catalogue book titles and our international television content distributor.

“The Board recognises that the Jamie Oliver brand is a key asset of the Group and is confident that the night controls are in place to protect its value.”

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The normally surf-themed bar at the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort and Spa has transformed into Pete’s Spookeasy for the month of October with Halloween-themed decor, food and drinks. Order mains such as Pasta from the Black Lagoon, with squid ink spaghetti, sautéed shrimp, lobster cream sauce, roasted tomato, asparagus and micro parsley, plus starters including “Bugs” in Stinky Cheese with whipped goat cheese, dates, marzipan “grubs,” figs, hot honey, micro thyme and crackers. Seasonal cocktails include Hex on the Beach, with rum, pineapple juice, orange juice, coconut and nutmeg, and BooBerry Margarita, with tequila, fresh blackberries, lemon and lime juice, agave and a black salt rim.

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The allure of sea cucumber, Addison on Cafe 2001 and its elusive watermelon cake, plus L.A.’s king of super chuggers and more. I’m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week’s Tasting Notes.

Crackle pop

The sea cucumber spring roll at Wing in Hong Kong before it is sliced and plated. Behind the roll is a display of dried sea cucumber before its undergoes a multi-day cooking process.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

The crackle of paper-thin pastry under a razor-sharp cleaver as the chef beside your table slices a golden fried spring roll in half is just one sign that you are about to eat something extraordinary.

There is also the sight of the otherworldly creature — a sea cucumber — displayed on a platter in its dried state before it has undergone a multi-day blooming and braising process and formed the filling of the spring roll before you.

You bite into the delicate wrapper and find that the sea cucumber has been transformed into something that on one level resembles braised pork belly but also has its own kind of lusciousness.

This is the sea cucumber spring roll by chef Vicky Cheng, one of the not-to-miss dishes he created at his restaurant Wing in Hong Kong.

Cheng, who was born in Hong Kong, grew up in Canada and came of age as a chef in North America, learning the intricacies of French cuisine at Toronto and New York restaurants, including Daniel with chef Daniel Boulud.

That French training shows in the lightness of the pastry wrapper of Cheng’s fried spring roll. Not to mention the showmanship of its presentation, which provides ASMR thrills when the cleaver cuts through the cylinder. But Cheng’s true purpose is to recontextualize a traditional Chinese ingredient that has been seen as old-fashioned, a luxury texture food often eaten more for medicinal purposes and status rather than deliciousness.

Chef Vicky Cheng in the dining room of his Hong Kong restaurant Wing.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

At his first Hong Kong restaurant, the Michelin-starred restaurant VEA, one floor above Wing in the same office building that houses a collection of Michelin-starred restaurants, including the Chairman, Feuille, Hansik Goo and Whey, sea cucumber quickly became one of Cheng’s signature dishes.

In the VEA preparation, a smaller, spikier type of sea cucumber surrounds a shellfish filling — in January, when I tried the dish, it was tiger prawn. But for the spring roll at Wing, Cheng uses a much larger and smoother species from New Zealand and Australia, which has the first sea cucumber fishery certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council.

The sea cucumber spring roll is one of the dishes Cheng is planning to serve at Kato here in Los Angeles when he collaborates with chef Jon Yao for a two-night dinner series on Oct. 14 and 15. Reservations quickly disappeared when they were made available this week, but I’ll be talking with Cheng onstage Sunday, Oct. 12 at UCLA’s Fowler Museum about his restaurants and the different ways he’s trying to shift the conversation about Chinese cuisine for a younger generation. Joining us will be chef Curtis Stone, who featured Cheng and many others in the Hong Kong episode of his PBS series “Field Trip With Curtis Stone,” which will be screened at the free event.

The appearances will cap off our L.A. Times Food Bowl Night Market at City Market Social House Oct. 10 and 11. VIP tickets are sold out, but limited general admission tickets remain for the Friday and Saturday night event presented by Square. The more than 40 participating restaurants include Holbox, Baroo, the Brothers Sushi, OyBar, Heritage Barbecue, Crudo e Nudo, Hummingbird Ceviche House, Rossoblu, Perilla L.A., Evil Cooks, Villa’s Tacos, Holy Basil, Heavy Handed, AttaGirl, Heng Heng Chicken Rice, the Win-Dow, Agnes Restaurant & Cheesery and Luv2Eat Thai Bistro. Check lafoodbowl.com for tickets and info.

Chasing watermelon

Chef Giles Clark and some of his breakfast, lunch and pastry specials at Cafe 2001 in downtown Los Angeles.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

My habit at the Arts District’s Cafe 2001 has been to arrive just after 11 a.m. when chef Giles Clark‘s menu, restricted to breakfast items before that point, opens up with lunch choices. It’s the best way to experience the full array of inventive dishes Clark has cooked up for the day … with one big exception. The cafe’s gorgeous watermelon cake, taught to Clark by Tokyo chef Toshio Tanabe, doesn’t come out of the kitchen until 1 p.m., even if it’s sometimes visible earlier than that, tempting diners. All summer long I haven’t managed to get a slice of that cake. But our restaurant critic Bill Addison is a pro; he got the cake and so much more, which he elegantly describes in his new review of Cafe 2001 — “a peculiar and quietly serious little place, with a narrow yet soaring space reclaimed from urban decay, and casual, sophisticated daytime meals,” he writes. “Its eccentricities feel like welcome refuge.”

For more on Cafe 2001, read Food’s deputy editor Betty Hallock on Clark’s spring-green potato salad (with his recipe), plus my contribution to our brunch guide on the appeal of Clark’s morning offerings and my newsletter earlier this summer on how the chef’s corn fritter was a welcome sign of summer in a city recovering from downtown L.A. restaurant closures after immigration enforcement actions prompted a curfew.

The wine auteur

Winemaker Scott Sampler gets chuggy at Anajak Thai in Sherman Oaks.

(G L Askew II / For The Times)

Chances are good you’ve seen Scott Sampler‘s Scotty-Boy! wines in restaurants and local wine shops. And you may have sipped from bottlings of some of his other labels without realizing they came from the same mind.

“Sampler’s wines,” writes Food contributor Patrick Comiskey, “have managed to channel L.A.’s boundless culinary enthusiasms for the past decade.” Of course, Comiskey adds that Sampler’s wines — “pungent, savory, defiantly unfruity” — “can be polarizing even in the era of natural wine, when wine’s very range of flavors is in flux.”

Sampler and Comiskey met in a booth at Musso & Frank’s in Hollywood to talk wine, food, Serge Gainsbourg and how the king of the super chuggers got serious about what he puts in a bottle. A terrific read.

3 out of 50

Gilberto Cetina, chef and owner of Holbox, pictured outside his restaurant.

(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)

On Thursday night, three Los Angeles restaurants were named to the inaugural North America’s 50 Best Restaurants list from the World’s 50 Best franchise, as Food’s Stephanie Breijo reports. They are Kato at No. 26, Holbox at No. 42 and at No. 47 Providence, which also received its third Michelin star this year.

“Everybody’s really proud,” Holbox chef Gilberto Cetina told Breijo, “especially right now with these times when our people don’t feel as welcome as we have before, with the way politics are. Being able to be here at a national forum representing Mexican culture through our food is really cool.”

Diner talk

Chef Nancy Silverton and Phil Rosenthal share a milkshake at the counter of Fair Oaks Pharmacy and Soda Fountain in Pasadena.

(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)

Food’s columnist Jenn Harris took chef Nancy Silverton and TV’s Phil Rosenthal to Pie ‘n Burger and the soda fountain at Fair Oaks Pharmacy in Pasadena to discuss the many debates the two have during the making of their soon-to-open diner Max and Helen’s in L.A.’s Larchmont Village. Patty melt or hamburger? Both was the compromise. And the secret of a great milkshake? The answer might surprise you.

Reeling

PCH seafood stalwart The Reel Inn before the Palisades fire.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Will the Reel Inn rise again? That’s the question Food’s Stephanie Breijo asked in her story about the challenges the iconic restaurant is facing as it tries to rebuild after the Palisades fire.

And in her Quick Bites report on new restaurants, Breijo has details about Bub and Grandma’s Pizza in Highland Park; Michelin-starred Kali‘s pivot away from tasting menus to steakhouse favorites; the appearance of Pino’s Sandwiches in Los Feliz from the owner of Salumeria Verdi in Florence and the expansion of Tacos Villa Corona to Eagle Rock.

Also …

TESCO has launched a range of “restaurant quality” ready-made meals across 160 of its stores around the country.

There are 12 different dishes included in the collection, for a different meal to be had each day of the week.

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The brand new Finest Chef’s Collection range has been designed by Tesco’s in-house chefs.

It includes slow-cooked meals ranging from Italian to Indian cuisine, as well as classic British flavours.

Prices range from £17.50 to £20 per dish.

Among the British-inspired dishes include a Blush Double Pork Chop a Tender Lamb Rump, Balsamic and Rosemary Lamb Shoulder, Succulent Pork Belly, and an Oak Smoked Chicken Crown.

Indian flavours in the collection include Tandoori Spiced Chicken Supremes, Masala Spcied Beef Cheeks, and Spice Lamb Shanks.

The chicken and beef have masala spice blends in the sauce, while the lamb shanks are served with green tikka sauce.

For the Italian inspired dishes, there is a Blush Shoulder of Pork, Stuffed Beef Featherblad with a Procini and Parmigiano Regiiano stuffing, Nduja Stuffed Porchetta, and Rosemary and Porcini Pork Shoulder.

Breige Donaghy, Director of Product Development and Innovation Tesco, said: “We know life’s busy, but that doesn’t mean you have to miss out on amazing food at home.

“That’s why our chefs have created the Chef’s Collection – a range of dishes inspired by restaurant menus and packed with clever techniques that make it super easy to cook something special.

“With top-quality ingredients, and most of the prep already done, these dishes make it easy to create special food moments and transform a meal at home into something truly memorable.”

It comes after research found almost 30 per cent of Brits, and around 60 per cent of adults, have tried to pass of supermarket-cooked meals as their own.

More people have also been found to be going out less to restaurants to eat compared to last year, often due to costs.

Executive Chief at Tesco, Jamie Robinson, added: “We’ve worked hard to bring authentic flavours from across the globe to customers’ kitchens without the stress of cooking from scratch.

“Most dishes have been gently slow cooked, and come with our top cooking, pairing and plating tips to help you deliver great results every time.”

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Each meal is designed as a main for two people, therefore costing £10 each.

The Finest Chef’s Collection range is launching at larger Tesco stores, and offers a 25 per cent discount of Clubcard customers until October 12.

Dishes come with step-by-step cooking instructions and a QR code that can be scanned to provide cooking, plating and pairing tips from Tesco chefs.

It comes after Tesco was mocked for launching a strange meal deal shoppers spotted in stores.

As a £9 Clubcard offer, Tesco launched a meal deal consisting of a 12-packl of Sol beers and a bag of five limes.

Many shoppers also threatened to boycott Tesco last month after it was seen increasing the price of its meal deal by 25p.

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Cheese is the star at one of the world’s most enchanting restaurants in a Puglia forest. Plus, cold noodles to obsess over … how fish sauce caramel transforms instant noodles … the sexy steak videos transforming an Armenian meat shop … losing Birdie G’s pickle chicken … 6-to-1 grocery shopping … and an Angeleno’s connection to Mexican Chicago. I’m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week’s Tasting Notes.

Slinging the blues

Cheesemaker Vito Dicecca, who built Baby Dicecca, a cheese bar in the Mercadante forest close to Altamura in Puglia, Italy.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

It’s been more than 15 years since I stumbled into Caseificio Dicecca, the shop of the famed cheesemaking Dicecca family in the Puglia city of Altamura, and bit into a round of freshly made burrata, the rich, oozing cream still warm. No burrata I’ve had since has equaled that first bite.

I had come to the region with chef Nancy Silverton, who was poking her head into the doors of the city’s many bakeries, sampling focaccia and the local bread that has a tradition so old the ancient Roman poet Horace called Altamura’s crusty loaves “by far the best bread to be had.”

Burrata is a much younger food. It wasn’t established in the region until the 1920s and Caseificio Dicecca is just one of several family-run operations in the area making the cheese that is now ubiquitous around the world — thanks in part to Silverton, who first started serving burrata in the 1990s at L.A.’s Campanile before she later opened her many Mozza restaurants.

The phenomenon got so out of hand that a burrata backlash was sparked, led by author Jeff Gordinier‘s 2019 Esquire story titled “F*** Your Burrata,” in which he argued that the appearance of the cheese on a menu “is like a billboard announcing, ‘The chef at this place has never had an original idea in his life …’”

Meanwhile, burrata sales continue to grow, with one estimate valuing the global market at more than $2 billion this year.

Last week, I returned to Puglia with Silverton, this time with author Alec Lobrano and several food-obsessed travelers. Silverton, who is a fan of Gordinier’s writing, read parts of his story aloud to the group even as she extolled her love for the maligned cheese. Especially when it is made by expert cheesemakers like the Diceccas.

And no one would ever accuse the Dicecca family of being unoriginal.

The cheese operation is now in the hands of five siblings — Vito, Paolo, Angelo, Vittoria and Maristella — who are the fourth generation to run the caseificio. At various points, the siblings left Altamura to travel the world and, in some cases, make cheese in places far away from Italy. But Altamura is their lodestar and several years back Vito Dicecca, who spent time in Japan, Thailand, Mexico, Australia and even lived for a bit in Southern California, not only brought back new cheesemaking ideas (the siblings make more than 300 varieties) he created one of the world’s most enchanting restaurants in the Mercadante Forest not far from Altamura.

Focaccia with fresh stracciatella at Baby Dicecca in Puglia’s Mercadante Forest.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

You may have seen an earlier version of the restaurant — which then was more of a kiosk — in the Puglia episode of Stanley Tucci‘s CNN series “Searching for Italy.” A few months ago, Vito Dicecca relocated and expanded his restaurant, Baby Dicecca, but it is still a very simple spot where the majority of diners eat outside surrounded by the trees of the forest.

“Proudly, we serve mostly cheese and some vegetables from our friends close to here,” Dicecca said as he welcomed the group. Even his wines are usually made by friends of his, he explained, as he poured “a natural, biodynamic sparkling wine” made with the Puglian Marasco grape from the producer L’Archetipo.

“I don’t buy the brand,” he said. “I like the people and then I’ll like the wine.”

What followed was a cheese lover’s feast, including focaccia draped in fresh, almost liquid stracciatella (or the “heart of mozzarella” as Dicecca put it on the menu) and “calzoncello alla Vito,” a handmade type of raviolo sauced with mozzarella whey and topped with a fresh grating of the aged cheese the family calls Dicecca Gold. To break up the richness, there was an heirloom tomato salad plus Vito’s take on a Caesar salad with seasonal greens mixed with fennel and celery plus a bit of honey and aged Pecorino. It may not have been a true Caesar, but it was delicious.

At one point Dicecca broke out a charcoal-colored loaf of bread made with grano arso, the burnt flour that also is used in some of the region’s pastas. He sliced the bread, drizzled it with local olive oil and then took a bundle of dried, wild oregano grown in the forest nearby and shook some of it on top of the slices.

Wild oregano is shaken on olive-oil-drizzled slices of bread made with grano arso, or burnt flour, at Baby Dicecca, a restaurant in Puglia, Italy.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

Dessert was two kinds of gelato, including one with goat’s milk, oregano and honey, made on the spot by Dicecca’s friend — “a genius” — Maurizio Bonina.

But the climax of the meal was, of course, cheese. And it wasn’t burrata.

Amore Primitivo is Vito Dicecco’s fever dream of a cheese, a blue, aged variety that is soaked in local Primitivo wine for 100 days, turning the exterior deep purple. He places the whole cheese on a cake stand and then loads the top with macerated cherries. Once the group admires the cheese’s beauty, he slices and serves it atop guests’ hands like a caviar bump.

Only when you taste the cheese and its beautifully mellow funk does it become clear that this is not just a cheese for Instagram. This aged blue created in the land of fresh mozzarella exemplifies the best of the Italian spirit — a healthy respect for tradition infused with a risk taker’s desire for innovation.

“For the first three years, I didn’t sell one piece,” Dicecca told us. “My family was very mad at me. Friends of my dad, they said to him, ‘Tell your son, this is not a pastry shop, it’s a cheese shop.’”

For a time, he added, “I pretended to sell the cheese — I was giving it as a gift to friends. But now it’s one of the best sellers.”

These days, Caseificio Dicecca is almost as well known for its blue cheeses as it is for its fresh burrata and pasta filata family of stretched curd cheeses. They’ve experimented with more than 60 types of blue, including an ultra aged cheese, golden yellow on the inside, that Vito Dicecco named Surfing Blu. Who knows what he’ll think of next?

Baby Dicecca cheese bar is open from May through October.

Sexy steaks

Sevan Meat Market manager Norvan Simonian, right, and co-owner Serop Marukyan.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

More generational innovation, this time closer to home, as our favorite Grocery Goblin Vanessa Anderson reports in her latest dispatch on the social media ideas transforming an Armenian meat shop: “Sevan Meat Market’s social media videos — conceived by owner Hrach Marukyan, his son Serop and manager Norvan Simonian — tell an Armenian American story built on beef, a story of the old and new, of adaptation to a rapidly changing world. And their growing audience of now nearly 60,000 Instagram followers is eagerly tuning in.”

In a pickle

The “pickle chick” cutlet, front, plus the relish tray and knife-and-fork tomato sandwich at Jeremy Fox’s Birdie G’s, which will close in December.

(Shelby Moore / For The Times)

Last month, when I was at Birdie G’s in Santa Monica for a family get-together — and a taste of the restaurant’s famed “pickle chick” fried chicken cutlet — the place was packed, with the crowded valet station just one indication that this was a place people wanted to be. It seemed that chef and partner Jeremy Fox‘s vision for a chef’s take on a chain restaurant was ready to spread to other locations.

But as Fox told Food’s Stephanie Breijo this week, business has been inconsistent since the Palisades fire in January. “One month the sprawling restaurant’s seats would all be filled,” wrote Breijo, “the following, sales would drop by 40%.” And in the days right after the fire, Fox estimated that the restaurant’s revenue fell by 80%.

“That was a bloodbath,” Fox told Breijo, explaining his decision to close the restaurant on Dec. 31.

Until the end of the year, Fox and Birdie G’s co-owners, Josh Loeb and Zoe Nathan, owners of the Rustic Canyon Family restaurant group, are planning more daily specials, ambitious large-format dishes, guest chefs and “one final run,” Breijo writes, “of the restaurant’s fan-favorite Hanukkah series, 8 Nights.”

“What’s the worst that could happen,” Fox said, “we go out of business?”

The great holiday cookie bake-off returns

(Leslie Grow / For the Times)

Here at L.A. Times Food we decided it had been too long since our last Los Angeles Times Holiday Cookie Bake-Off — a tradition that began in 2010 and allowed us to connect with you, our readers, and your recipes. As Deputy Food Editor Betty Hallock wrote in our recipe call, we are accepting recipe submissions until Monday, Oct. 13. If you’ve got a great holiday cookie recipe we want to hear from you.

Noodle cool-down

A bowl of Beijing Yanji cold noodles from Bistro Na’s restaurant in Temple City.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times )

Columnist Jenn Harris’ latest obsession is Bistro Na’s Beijing Yanji cold noodles. “It’s a tangle of buckwheat noodles in an ice-cold broth,” she writes, “with sliced beef shank, beef tongue, kimchi, watermelon, boiled egg, shredded cucumber, pickled radish and chile sauce all arranged over the top like a color wheel.” I think I need to return to the Temple City restaurant very soon for a bowl of my own.

Mexican as Chicago

Marcos Carbajal, left, and his father Inocencio Carbajal at their Little Village location of Carnitas Uruapan in Chicago.

(Carnitas Uruapan)

With so much of the Trump administration’s focus on Chicago, Food Editor Daniel Hernandez wrote about the city’s deeply established Mexican roots as seen in its restaurants from the perspective of a visiting Angeleno: “Los Angeles may have more Mexican residents in total numbers, but in terms of who makes up each city’s Latino population, Chicago is as Mexican as Los Angeles.”

Instant classic

Holy Basil’s chef and owner Deau Arpapornnopprat holds his ‘Yum Mama’ Instant Noodle Salad With Lime And Fish Sauce Caramel in the Times Test Kitchen.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

Have you ever made fish sauce caramel? It could become your next kitchen essential. For our most recent “Chef That!” cooking video, Deau Arpapornnopparat, chef-owner of the Thai restaurants Holy Basil, came to the Times Test Kitchen to show us how he elevates instant noodles with easy-to-make fish sauce caramel and more toppings. As Deputy Food Editor Betty Hallock wrote, the “dressing is classically sweet, sour, salty and spicy all at once.” Find the recipe here.

Curtis Stone’s ‘Field Trip’

To cap off the weekend of The Times’ Food Bowl Night Market, presented by Square, we’ve added a free Sunday evening screening, reception and conversation on Oct. 12 featuring L.A. chef Curtis Stone with Michelin-starred chef Vicky Cheng of the acclaimed Hong Kong restaurants Wing and VEA. I’ll be talking with Stone and Cheng about the Hong Kong episode of “Field Trip With Curtis Stone” and more. It takes place at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. To sign up for free tickets, click here.

And although VIP tickets (allowing early entry) to The Times’ Food Bowl Night Market are sold out, general admission tickets remain for the two-night event taking place Oct. 10-11 at City Market Social House in downtown L.A. More than 40 restaurants are participating, including Holbox, Baroo, the Brothers Sushi, OyBar, Heritage Barbecue, Crudo e Nudo, Hummingbird Ceviche House, Rossoblu, Perilla L.A., Evil Cooks, Villa’s Tacos, Holy Basil and Luv2Eat Thai Bistro. Check lafoodbowl.com for tickets and info.

Also …

PETE Wicks was spotted snogging a mystery blonde in a Mayfair restaurant – days before locking lips with his Strictly partner Jowita Przystał.

An onlooker saw the tattooed telly star romancing the woman at The Maine Mayfair over a posh dinner.

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Pete, 36, was seen on his hot date last week.

A fellow diner told The Sun: “They were intimate the whole time. You would think they were alone.”

They added: “Pete and his date arrived about 8.30pm. It was very intimate and they seemed really giddy.

“At one point they disappeared midway through dinner for about 15 minutes.

“They didn’t really eat. It was more about intimacy than dinner – they just kept snogging.

“I think they thought they had the place to themselves.

“The waiters just left them to it and the band just played as they kissed like teenagers.

“There were lots of leftovers by the time we left about 11pm.”

On Instagram, Pete posted a shot from the restaurant of his glass of wine, saying: “This week coming up may be the end of me.”

Days later he was on stage at London’s O2 Arena with his Staying Relevant podcast co-host Sam Thompson.

The pair put on a hugely successful live show, where Pete was seen passionately kissing Strictly’s Jowita three times during a dance routine.

The show, on Friday, led to claims Pete and Jowita had started dating after meeting on the BBC dancing show last year.

But representatives for Pete insisted the pair were just close friends, adding that the kisses were all part of the performance.

Pete’s mystery blonde is the latest woman he has been linked to, following his romance with Maura Higgins last summer.

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It comes after The Sun revealed how Olivia Attwood, 34, was left in the doghouse with footballer husband Bradley Dack, 31, after she and Pete were seen getting close in Ibiza.

After a week of partying pictures emerged of radio co-hosts Olivia and Pete looking cosy onboard a yacht in Ibiza.

Olivia’s husband Bradley was said to be “livid” after seeing his wife sitting in between best pal Pete’s legs on a yacht off the coast of the party island.

The Sun later revealed how Bradley’s Gillingham FC’s teammates then shared the pics of Pete and Olivia on the team’s WhatsApp group.

Appearing on Loose Women last week, Pete insisted that he no longer lives with regrets.

He said: “I think years ago, I mean I have a lot of regrets and things I’m not proud of but I think a couple of years ago it kind of changed for me when I realised life is too short for regrets.

“You only get as far as we know only one chance at this and you may as well live your life for yourself rather than other people.”

9

Inside L.A. restaurant Jaragua, on a recent Friday night, Justin Alexio moved with a measured urgency from the backroom to the front of the restaurant without disturbing anyone’s dinner. The comic, producer and creator of the Los Angeles-based comedy show, Pupusas and Punchlines, Alexio escorted guests to their tables, switched on the microphones placed around the room, and pointed a camera to the center stage before the show was to begin.

The dining area inside the Salvadoran restaurant is rather quiet for a Friday night; there’s a soccer game playing on TV as a family of six places an order for dinner. As people in the audience spread their curtido, or pickled cabbage and carrots, on their pupusas, others await for their food with anticipation, while some choose to stick to drinks. The room is filled with distractions, but comedians are not fazed — it is a welcoming atmosphere, and they know that soon the sounds of laughter will fill the air.

“I feel like eating is such a large part of Latin culture and most cultures,” Alexio said. “I wanted a place where you can eat Latin food and listen to Latin jokes.”

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, independent comedy shows had almost become a thing of the past in L.A. Not to mention that finding gigs is a difficult task, especially for Latinx comedians; according to Alexio, most comedy rooms don’t want to book more than one Latinx comedian.

Pupusas and Punchlines offers a place where they can perform in front of a packed room and joke about the immigrant experience in the U.S. — and the absurdities of the American dream in 2025 — while sharing a delicious meal.

Pupusas and Punchlines producer and creator Justin Alexio performs on March 7, 2025.

(Drew Steres)

Alexio said he started the show in 2023, after he took a long break from stand-up comedy, to instead pursue acting full time. His résumé includes appearances on NBC’s comedy series “Superstore” and ABC’s late-night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

“The future of entertainment has to be more real,” he said of his decision to return to the stage. “Stand-up is live.”

The L.A. stand-up scene is quite competitive — especially for Alexio, who is an Afro-Latino of Puerto Rican, Dominican and Ecuadorian descent. As an answer to the marginalization of Black and brown people in mainstream comedy, Alexio said he decided to produce his own show, with hopes to highlight other Latinx performers as well.

Since then, he has expanded “Pupusas and Punchlines” immensely — from performing only once a month at half-capacity to selling out 115 consecutive weekly shows.

Alexio attributed the show’s success to the high-quality comedians he’s booked, as well as the food and the feeling of community it has created. People have told him they’ve driven more than an hour just for the show, while others have attended on multiple occasions.

“They want to support me and the show, they want to support the restaurant, they want to support the Latin comics … The crowd feels like they want to help these comics rise,” he said.

Patrons laugh at Pupusas and Punchlines on May 16, 2025.

(Drew Steres)

The majority of the comics Alexio books are Latinx, but he also includes performers who belong to other underrepresented groups. He showcases upcoming comics while providing clips to help grow their social media presence. After performing on his show, he said, comics have noted an uptick of new followers on social media.

Onstage at Friday’s show, comics pulled humor from topics related to immigration, religion, salsa, sexuality and other typical first-generation immigrant dilemmas. Performers feel like they can discuss topics they usually can’t perform in front of a more general club audience.

“I think any ethnicity in an ethnic crowd always thrive,” said comic Gregory Santos. “Obviously you can be a white boy and do a really good job here. I feel like it’s just an extra layer of stuff that you can talk about.”

Daisy Roxx performs at Pupusas and Punchlines in March.

(Drew Steres)

Pupusas and Punchlines is one of the few shows that caters toward the Latinx community, said comedian Rell Battle, as he rattled off a list of shows that sadly don’t exist anymore.

“Ironically, in a majority Latin city, there aren’t [many] consistent Latin shows,” Battle said. He described Pupusas and Punchlines as a road show of sorts — scored by genuine laughter. The audience members feel more appreciative, compared to a run-of-the-mill comedy club in Hollywood that caters more to tourists.

“People that come out to shows in Hollywood will ask me to hold the camera and take a picture of them,” Battle joked.

The crowd at Pupusas and Punchlines is not one to dismiss or antagonize comics that are not Latinx. Yet audience members would gladly correct any comic who’d assume the restaurant was Mexican, or mispronounce the word “pupusas,” as Battle sheepishly recalled during his own set. At the end of the day, they usually bond with comics over what they share in common: the drive to make it in L.A.

“When the neighborhood shows up, those are the best shows,” said Santos, between sets at Jaragua. “It’s normal people, it’s everyday neighborhood L.A. people.”

For more information on upcoming events, visit Pupusas and Punchlines on Instagram.

France says arrest of Hicham Harb, 42 years after attack, made possible by upcoming recognition of Palestinian state.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has arrested a key suspect in a deadly 1982 attack on a Jewish restaurant in Paris in a move that comes amid France’s preparations to recognise a Palestinian state.

The terror attack on the Jo Goldenberg restaurant in the Jewish quarter of Le Marais on August 9, 1982, killed six and left 22 others injured.

France’s National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement on Friday that Interpol had informed it of the arrest of Hicham Harb by Palestinian authorities under a 2015 international warrant.

President Emmanuel Macron said that the suspect had been arrested in the occupied West Bank and that his country was now working with the PA to ensure his “swift extradition” to France.

Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot posted on X that the arrest had been made possible by Macron’s decision to recognise an independent Palestinian state, “enabling us to request extradition”.

Macron is expected to make the landmark announcement at the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week, with about 10 other countries, including Australia, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Canada.

Wanted man

Harb, whose real name is Mahmoud Khader Abed Adra, was one of France’s most-wanted men and had been the subject of an international arrest warrant for the past 10 years.

The 70-year-old is suspected of leading five other attackers in the gun assault on the restaurant, which was considered the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in France since the second world war.

The assault, blamed on the Palestinian Abu Nidal Organisation, began around midday when a grenade was tossed into the dining room by attackers who then entered the restaurant and opened fire with Polish-made machineguns.

Harb is suspected of having supervised the assault and also of being one of the gunmen who opened fire on diners and passersby.

He was formally indicted by French judges in July on charges of murder and attempted murder in connection with the attack. Harb and five other men in the case were referred to trial.

Another suspect, Abou Zayed, a 66-year-old Norwegian of Palestinian origin, has been in French custody since his 2020 extradition from Norway. He has denied the charges.

Bruno Gendrin and Romain Ruiz, lawyers for Zayed, see the arrest of his alleged accomplice as proof that “the investigation was not complete”.

“As usual, the anti-terrorism courts wanted to rush things, and we are now seeing the consequences,” they told the news agency AFP in a statement.

The Abu Nidal Organisation is categorised as a terror group by the US and Europe.

I have a suggestion: Treat yourself to a beautiful meal, right now, at one of the Los Angeles restaurants where the chefs really invest in seasonal produce. There is nothing, anywhere, like the high-ripe flavors and rainbow pigments of California fruits and vegetables at the close of summer. We know this, but the knowing hits different when the produce is freshly considered by our finest culinary minds.

It’s an excellent time for a spontaneous indulgence. Late August and through September is shoulder season for finer-dining in L.A. Vacations are done, kids are back in school, we settle in at work and home before the holiday blur. Reservations are often easier to score. Many of our favorite dining rooms could use our presence. The ingredients are so urgent, I’d nudge you even to show up solo at a restaurant’s bar and savor just a plate or two of summer’s final splendors.

Where to taste the end of summer in L.A.

The cooking at Rustic Canyon, guided by chef de cuisine Elijah DeLeon, is particularly exciting at this annual juncture, when the greatness of the raw product is a given and the deeper pleasure comes from the savvy, daily-changing flavor combinations. His weaving of spells began with a plate of halved greengage plums from Andy’s Orchard — a fruit Lucas Peterson once rightly dubbed the “Holy Grail of stone fruit” — filled with a cherry paste cleverly mimicking the Mexican candy Chamoy.

Charcoal-grilled Jimmy Nardello peppers were paired with hunks of white peach and dusted with fennel pollen, a garnish that can sometimes seem precious and innocuous but here added the right offsetting licorice nip. White cheddar blanketed a spread of earthy-sweet corn kernels and snipped shishito peppers, a feel-good riff that fell somewhere between Midwestern creamed corn and Korean corn cheese. Tiny Sungold tomatoes rolled like marbles around nearly translucent sea bass, crowned for contrast with an oversize round of orange-ish butter flecked with herbs and Calabrian chiles.

Jimmy Nardello peppers and white peaches at an August meal at Rustic Canyon in Santa Monica.

(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)

A meaty pork chop arrived with thin ribbons of zucchini that had been glossed in mustard vinaigrette. The effect was more of a glow than a zap, lifting the pork with gentle acid while allowing the vegetable to also shine. So light-handed, so summery.

DeLeon’s menu moves at warp speed during these heady months; I see figs and purslane currently adorn the pork chop this week, and the variety of snacking plums are speckled Mirabelles.

More summer-themed suggestions

For dining inspiration, here’s a rundown of some other spectacular summertime dishes I’ve had in the last month. They’re going fast, agriculturally speaking. Acorn squash and apples have their own joys, but nothing beats the moment we’re in.

Yess has opened for lunch service, and the menu includes Junya Yamasaki’s famed “monk’s chirashi.” A recent version, splayed over rice, modeled peaches, plums, cucumbers, peas still dangling from their pods and handsomely veiny shiso leaves.

A summertime version of “monk’s chirashi” at Yess in the Arts District.

(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)

I’ve written plenty lately about the glories of the vegetable cooking at RVR in Venice. Go straight for the peaches and purple daikon stung with tosazu (vinegar-based dressing smoky with katsuobushi) and aromatic accents of pickled Fresno chiles, ginger and crushed Marcona almond.

It isn’t summer without at least one cracker-thin bar pie at Quarter Sheets (available Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday, for dine-in only) scattered with Jimmy Nardellos and sausage.

Two perennial favorites for savory-leaning stone fruit salads: The beauty at Kismet fragrant with lemon balm and dressed in turmeric-whey vinaigrette that adds intriguing color and weight, and the tomato and stone fruit salad at Majordomo splashed with a perfectly balanced sherry vinaigrette and flecked with shiso.

Dunsmoor’s summer menu straddles the influence of parallel agrarian regions: California and the American South. A simple platter of sliced duck ham and fleshy Honeyloupe melon from Weiser Farms brought the theme home early in the meal.

Smoked moulard duck ham with Weiser Farms Honeyloupe melon at Dunsmoor

(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)

Camélia in the Arts District is operating at the height of its powers. A late summer dinner: a fluffy salad of greens with slices of yellow peach and hidden walnuts, generously covered in shaved Comté and tensed with calamansi vinaigrette, followed by soft-shell crab tempura over a fresh sauce vierge made with bright, chewy-soft Sungolds. I’m a cheese freak, so a Comté tart with bruléed figs for dessert didn’t feel redundant.

Speaking of stunning salads: They never disappoint at A.O.C. in West Hollywood. Case in point: tender arugula arranged with cherries and nectarines, an ash-ripened goat cheese called Linedeline with the scent of mushrooms and, to drive home the intensity, a garlicky, pesto-like aillade bright green with pistachios.

Birdie G’s, one of the sister Santa Monica restaurants to Rustic Canyon where Jeremy Fox can frequently be seen on the path, has brought back its incredible relish tray featuring five-onion dip. Look for the shimmery sprigs of ice plant among the spectrum of geometric carved vegetables.

Birdie G’s relish plate, pictured in 2019. It’s always changing.

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

When do I know summer is over? When Nicole Rucker and her team stop baking pies with stone fruits at Fat & Flour. I just checked with Rucker, and the last of the peaches are touch and go. Fall might be here sooner than I’m willing to admit.

Food Bowl tickets

VIP tickets (allowing early entry) to The Times’ Food Bowl Night Market, presented by Square, are already sold out for the Saturday-night session taking place Oct. 11 at City Market Social House in downtown L.A. Friday-night VIP tickets are still available, but going fast. More than 40 restaurants are participating, including Holbox, Baroo, the Brothers Sushi, OyBar, Heritage Barbecue, Crudo e Nudo, Hummingbird Ceviche House, Rossoblu, Perilla L.A., Evil Cooks, Villa’s Tacos, Holy Basil and Luv2Eat Thai Bistro. Check lafoodbowl.com for tickets and info.

Also …

• This week I review 88 Club, the Beverly Hills fine-dining Chinese restaurant that’s the latest project from star chef Mei Lin and restaurateur Francis Miranda. I love the shrimp toast hands-down, and there’s plenty else to think through.
• Anyone else want to disappear into a big, nap-inducing pile of flapjacks this weekend? Khushbu Shah powered through diners, cafes and brunch stalwarts to name her 11 favorite plates of pancakes in L.A.
• Stephanie Breijo has news of the latest sushi sensation: Kiyoshi Kimura, a prolific sushi restaurateur in Japan known as the “Tuna King,” has debuted his first U.S. restaurant, Sushi Zanmai, in Koreatown.
• Jenn Harris singles out the best sourdough in the known universe. It’s made in Orange County, and it’s purple.
• Some uplifting news from Suhauna Hussain: A new owner aims to reopen the Original Pantry, the iconic eatery in downtown Los Angeles that closed earlier this year, by New Year’s Eve. His goal is also to re-employ the staff of 25 who had been laid off.
• As we head into the best time for oysters, Ari Kolender of Found Oyster and Queen’s Raw Bar & Grill shows us the right way to shuck them.

A DRAGONS’ Den investment winner was caught with cocaine when nicked for punching a restaurant manager over “poor quality service”.

Ross Mendham, 41, struck Connor Humpleby when he intervened in an exchange between the ex-bodybuilder and staff.

1

Police were arresting Mendham at The Ivy Norwich Brasserie.

A small plastic bag of white powder then fell to the floor, the city’s JPs were told.

Mendham, of Cringleford, Norfolk, admitted possessing cocaine and assault.

He was fined £373 plus £282 costs.

Read more on Dragons’ Den

He was on BBC’s Dragons’ Den in 2013.

He received £60,000 for instant noodle and pasta venture Barenaked Foods.

He is facing trial next year for allegedly punching his heavily pregnant partner in the face.

He denies assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

If you consume tea with any sort of interest, maybe you’ve been hearing about the worldwide matcha shortage of 2025?

Matcha, but much much more

In short: Viral posts featuring soothingly smooth, mint green matcha drinks on TikTok and other social media over the last few years have ignited a global craze. Coupled with a pandemic-era focus on matcha as an antioxidant-rich superfood that might help prevent cancer and perhaps even improve memory and reduce anxiety, its demand is booming. Industry analysts predict the market size to almost double to $6.5 billion internationally by 2030.

Supplies from tea farmers, and dwindled inventory from distributors, can’t keep pace — especially given labor shortages and a recent heatwave in Japan that decreased yields of tencha, the traditional variety of shade-grown tea which is powdered into matcha. Many companies, small and large, that sell matcha have attempted to stockpile their reserves. Wholesale prices this year have increased by a staggering 265%, according to the International Tea Co.

Walk with this knowledge into Kettl, a new Japanese tea cafe and shop in Loz Feliz, and the calmness of the two-story space feels all the more remarkable.

Leaves of Koju oolong, grown in Japan, before a tasting at Kettl in Los Feliz.

(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)

No sense of scarcity here. Order a matcha cortado to drink on premises and it arrives in a gorgeously coarse ceramic cup, the tea decorated with the requisite foam art. Choose from three matcha varieties for your latte: nutty and chocolaty, creamy and floral, or umami-intense. Ask for whisked matcha with options in a similar range of flavors. Grab a cooling matcha splashed with sparking water over ice to go.

Or, stick around for a tasting with schooled staffers who can guide you through wider nuances of matcha — and, even better, to a world of Japanese teas far greater than the current object of focus. This is why I’ve become a regular at Kettl.

Zach Mangan was a jazz drummer in his twenties in the 2000s when, on tour in Paris, he happened upon a store selling sincha, the prized tea made from the first spring harvest in Japan.

“The smell of the glossy, needlelike leaves was incredibly nostalgic, though I had never experience it before,” he writes in his 2022 book, “Stories of Japanese Tea.” “It reminded me of the lawn of my childhood home when freshly mowed. I brewed it and was captivated by how much flavor was packed inside my tiny cup of tea.”

Kettl founder Zach Mangan talks tea behind the counter of his new Los Feliz shop.

(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)

The experience led down one path after another: A job at a now-closed tea shop in New York called Ito En. A first monthlong trip to Japan in 2010, where he understood the degrees to which freshness can take green teas from pleasant to electric. A series of return visits in which he developed relationships with tea producers so he could become an importer.

His first client, from a cold call, was renowned chef David Bouley. Other chefs began buying. He and his wife, Minami Mangan, opened the first Kettl shop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in 2021.

Their Los Angeles location, delayed for several years by a familiar litany of permit and buildout hurdles, steeped their first teas for customers in February.

The state of L.A.’s sit-down tea scene

As a mid-level tea obsessive, I’d say the culture around drinking serious tea in public spaces in Southern California remains niche. No insult intended to matcha and boba shops: I’m talking about places for a face-to-face, sit-down shared experience between the tea brewer and the drinker. I’ve written plenty about Alhambra’s by-appointment-only Tea Habitat, my favorite place in the country for dan cong, the exceptionally fragrant oolongs from the Phoenix Mountain region in China’s Guangdong province.

A tasting at Tea Habitat in Alhambra.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Tomoko Imade Dyen, a Tokyo-born Angeleno who works as a PR consultant and television producer, holds occasional, enlightening Japanese tea tastings with seasonal foods. The Good Liver store in downtown L.A. also holds regular tastings and carries premium matcha that tends to sell fast.

Kettl and its serene, sunny rooms, in this context, feel extravagant. There are ticketed classes, held upstairs, which teach the basics of, say, making iced matcha in summertime, but I’m most drawn to the four-seat tasting bar to the right of the ordering counter. On weekends it’s wise to reserve seats, but I’ve had luck slipping in on weekday afternoons. A staffer will hand you a menu booklet outlining options: bowls of first-rate matcha that begin at $15; pots of other teas, which include multiple steepings, starting at $10; an in-depth tea omakase starting at $70 per person.

I’m happy whisking matcha for myself at home. Drinking in the shop, I’m curious about sencha, the broadest category of green teas produced in Japan. Mangan likens the diversity of styles made under the term to the wild differences between all red wines bottled across France, or whiskies distilled in Scotland.

When he was in town last month, he brewed two for me at the bar. Hachiju Hachiya from Yame — a city on Japan’s Kyushu island so famous for tea that green fields show up at the top of a Google search — was herbaceous but also tasted like popping edamame pods as a snack at a sushi bar.

Hatsutsumi, grown 20 miles away deep in the mountains of the Fukuoka prefecture, smelled like one of those March mornings in Los Angeles after the rain when the city’s terrain rushes into urgent bloom. The texture was almost buttery.

A steeping of gyokuro, a Japanese shade-grown green tea, at Kettl in Los Feliz.

(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)

Kettl receives weekly shipments from Japan, so the possibilities are always changing. This past week I drank a rare gyokuro (tea that undergoes a specific, laborious shaded process for three weeks before harvesting; it’s steeped with lots of leaves at unusually cool temperatures) with specific, sweet seashore aromas emblematic of its style.

“The tasting notes were so enthusiastic on this one, I knew Zach wrote them,” joked Ashley Ruiz, who was brewing that day. The taste reminded me, wonderfully, of crabmeat. And I’ve had very few Japanese loose-leaf oolongs; Ruiz suggested one that was light and expressive, with stone fruit flavors knocking about.

There is so much more to return for. It’s promising to witness the shop’s steady foot traffic, and the groups of people lingering in conversation over tea. Maybe it’s matcha mania … and maybe Kettl is nudging L.A.’s tea culture in magnetic new dimensions.

Kettl: 4677 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 407-6155, kettl.co

Early bird tickets

VIP tickets (allowing early entry) to The Times’ Food Bowl Night Market, presented by Square, are already sold out for the Saturday-night session taking place Oct. 11 at City Market Social House in downtown L.A. Friday-night VIP tickets are still available, but going fast. More than 40 restaurants are participating, including Holbox, Baroo, the Brothers Sushi, OyBar, Heritage Barbecue, Crudo e Nudo, Hummingbird Ceviche House, Rossoblu, Perilla LA, Evil Cooks, Villa’s Tacos, Holy Basil and Luv2Eat Thai Bistro. Check lafoodbowl.com for tickets and info.

Also …

The fight to save Dulan’s on Crenshaw … Jenn Harris’ immersion into Nobu Los Angeles vibes … the post-fire rebirth of Altadena’s Bernee as Betsy … plus a new restaurant with no-tip, no-fee, no-surprises menu pricing and more. I’m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week’s Tasting Notes.

Saving L.A. soul food

Greg Dulan inside Dulan’s on Crenshaw.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

On May 26, 1978, at 4:45 a.m., Adolf Dulan took out a black marker and yellow legal pad. The future “king of soul food,” who a few years later would open the Southern food mecca Aunt Kizzy’s Back Porch, noted the date and time in the upper right-hand corner and wrote across the top sheet in capital letters: “GREG.”

Then, itemizing each point in Roman numerals and underlining key words twice, the late social worker-turned-entrepreneur, who started out with an Orange Julius franchise and had at that point opened his first independent restaurant, Hamburger City, wrote instructions to his eldest son, Greg Dulan, on running a business.

One of Adolf Dulan’s five guidelines: “Find out [the] cost of each item you sell and how much profit it brings in — determine if you need to drop or add items to be sold.”

At the bottom of the second sheet of paper, taped to the first sheet to form a scroll-like document, Adolf Dulan wrote this directive to his son: “If you are ever going to be a business man, this will be your bible to use … [for] ‘making the nut.’ ”

One piece of advice the elder Dulan didn’t pass on to his son: Don’t let a parking lot deal take you down.

Earlier this week Greg Dulan, who in 1992 opened his own successful soul food restaurant, Dulan’s on Crenshaw — years before his father started Dulan’s Soul Food Kitchen — posted a call on social media for help from the community.

“I bought some adjacent real estate with the goal of building parking for the restaurant and a culinary kitchen for training and workforce development,” he said on a video collaboration with radio station KJLH. “The real estate portion is dragging down the restaurant. The restaurant is doing great but the overall business is in trouble and maybe won’t survive unless I get some kind of support.”

On a fundraising page put up by the nonprofit civic and public arts organization Destination Crenshaw, the situation for the restaurant, which reopened early last year after a two-year renovation, was presented as dire: “With foreclosure looming on September 6,” read the plea, “time is measured in days, not weeks.”

During a phone interview on Friday afternoon, however, Greg Dulan wanted to make one thing clear: “I’m going to be here.” There’s no way, he insisted, that he’s giving up on his restaurant without a fight.

“It’s more of a real estate issue than a restaurant issue,” he said. “The remodel took longer than I expected, and it went over budget. It ate up a lot of my reserve capital.”

Dulan’s on Crenshaw, on a busy section of Los Angeles’ Crenshaw corridor, which has become denser with redevelopment and the building of the Metro K line. After a two-year renovation, the restaurant, which has been a fixture for more than 30 years, reopened early last year.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Redevelopment along the Crenshaw corridor, which prompted Dulan’s renovation, also put pressure on the restaurant. “We lost a lot of parking,” Dulan said. “The density on Crenshaw has been increased.”

He added valet parking to help relieve the pressure but hasn’t had the money to build a proper parking lot for the restaurant. Earlier this year, however, he started using the production kitchen on one of the two lots he bought to prepare heat-and-serve meals for Vallarta supermarket’s Hyde Park location and hopes to expand that operation.

The problem is that he took out a hard-money loan to fund the business and now a big balloon payment is due. “Sept. 6,” he said, “is the deadline for me to satisfy my loan obligation or refinance.” He’s hoping to avoid selling the two parcels he bought or even the land with the restaurant itself, but if he is forced to sell he says he would find a way to keep the restaurant going.

“I can run a successful restaurant,” Dulan said over the phone, “but real estate development is a whole different animal.”

Since the word went out that Dulan’s was in trouble, many people have responded with offers to help the restaurant, a soul food fixture for more than 30 years. “We’re getting calls from a lot of celebrities and people from the community,” he said. “Revenue is up 40% at the restaurant.”

Whether these offers will lead to a solution for Dulan’s money troubles is still uncertain, but for Los Angeles soul food lovers, the remodel has been a success. Dulan’s refurbished patio area has become a popular gathering spot for family parties, political events and even yoga classes. And his fried chicken is still some of the best in the city.

Fried chicken, meat loaf and more soul food favorites at Dulan’s on Crenshaw.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

“I had no idea that that my little soul food restaurant would go viral,” Dulan said of the community response, “but apparently we built up a lot of goodwill that I underestimated.”

Vibes and miso cod at Nobu Los Angeles

A view of the sushi bar and main dining room at Nobu Los Angeles on La Cienega Boulevard.

(Catherine Dzilenski / For The Times)

Nobu Los Angeles, “which opened in 2008, several years after its more famous Malibu cousin,” writes columnist Jenn Harris, “is somewhat of a hidden gem on a stretch of La Cienega Boulevard, where black cars once swarmed its valet stand and reservations were elusive. Now … weeknight dinner reservations are procured with ease.” Though it “still vibrates with a current of money, celebrity and those who seek it,” Nobu L.A., Harris says, “suffers from the aesthetic malaise of an Asian-themed chain restaurant in the mid-2000s … The menu, for the most part, is … past its prime even if everyone (this writer included) still loves the black cod with miso.”

With a new chef at the helm of Nobu Los Angeles and a Netflix documentary on founder Nobu Matsuhisa released this summer, Harris tries to determine the value of the younger restaurant, up the road from the original Matsuhisa, which after nearly 40 years, she writes, has “exemplary” nigiri. Can Nobu L.A. “continue to thrive on vibes”?

Post-fire rebirth

At the newly reopened and renamed Betsy in Altadena (formerly Bernee), owner Tyler Wells, in a wide-brimmed hat, huddles with his staff at the bar overlooking the hearth.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

I was one of the few who was able to eat at the ambitious Altadena restaurant Bernee in the single month it was open before the Eaton fire destroyed much of the neighborhood around it. The restaurant, which was saved from the flames, was one of the spots that had been attracting diners from all over Los Angeles to the neighborhood. After the fire, chef Tyler Wells — who lost his home and was in the process of separating from his wife and restaurant partner, Ashley — thought he might leave the state and start over. But as Food’s Stephanie Brejo writes, Wells was drawn back to Altadena and is reopening the restaurant this weekend with a new name, Betsy, in honor of his late mother. Breijo’s story has all the details of Wells’ post-fire journey.

Chef-owner Justin Pichetrungsi’s doodles of new dishes for the renovated Anajak Thai Cuisine, left, and dishes served before the restaurant’s extensive remodel.

(Stephanie Breijo and Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times

)

And if you missed it, Breijo also talked with Anajak Thai‘s Justin Pichetrungsi last week about the two-month renovation of his family’s restaurant, which has reopened. “The hardest part of the business is the organization part, not the innovation,” he told Breijo. “Innovation is so fun…. But with all the behind-the-scenes stuff, people never saw how broken [the restaurant] was in order to make the show go on.” I can’t wait to check out the new show.

‘Instant-izing’ food

Customers shop and eat in the dining area at CU Ramyun Library convenience store in Hongdae, Seoul. Ramyun packets are ranked in terms of spiciness levels from “mild” to “very hot & hell.”

(Tina Hsu / For The Times)

Imagine “nearly every conceivable dish” … “turned into a packaged meal,” even “fried rice that you squeeze out of a tube,” writes Times Seoul correspondent Max Kim. “These have turned convenience stores into a $25-billion industry in South Korea and those food products are churned out at a staggering pace: up to 70 new food items hit the shelves each week, effectively offering a live feed of South Korean tastes.”

“In South Korea’s food retail market,” convenience store critic Chae Da-in tells Kim, “you go extinct if you’re not quick to change.”

Cooling down

The refreshing Mexican drink suero with lime and sparkling water.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

For these sweltering days, contributor Carolynn Carreño wrote about the refreshing Mexican water cocktail suero. It’s made with lime, sparkling water and lots of ice, then served in a salt-rimmed glass. She also includes two other cooling drink recipes, including IPA-Lada Michelada from the much-missed Whittier restaurant Colonia Publica and Salty Angeleno Micheladas, developed in our Times Test Kitchen using our own L.A. Times Salty Angeleno blend developed in collaboration with Burlap & Barrel. Salty Angeleno and our other spice blends, California Heat and L.A. Asada, are available online at Burlap & Barrel.

In the kitchen

Martin Draluck prepares sweet potato chili in the Times Test Kitchen.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Black Pot Supper Club chef and founder Martin Draluck, who was featured in the Netflix documentary series “High on the Hog” on Black food traditions, came to the Times Test Kitchen recently for our “Chef That!” video series. Watch him make sweet potato chili with a secret ingredient — a tab of Abuelita chocolate. As deputy food editor Betty Hallock writes, it “gives the chili a mole-reminiscent richness.” The vegetarian chili, she adds, “comes together in under an hour. Find the recipe here.

And if you missed last week’s “Chef That!” episode, you can watch Adrian Forte, the cookbook author of “Yawd” and chef at Sam Jordan’s modern Caribbean restaurant Lucia, make easy fried plantains with Scotch Bonnet aioli. Get the 30-minute recipe here.

Early bird tickets

VIP tickets (allowing early entry) to The Times’ Food Bowl Night Market, presented by Square, are already sold out for the Saturday-night session taking place Oct. 11 at City Market Social House in downtown L.A. But Friday-night VIP tickets are still available and for early birds, there is a “date night deal” with two general admission tickets available for $199, a savings of about 20%. More than 40 restaurants are participating, including Holbox, Baroo, the Brothers Sushi, OyBar, Heritage Barbecue, Crudo e Nudo, Hummingbird Ceviche House, Rossoblu, Perilla LA, Evil Cooks, Villa’s Tacos, Holy Basil and Luv2Eat Thai Bistro. Check lafoodbowl.com for tickets and info.

Also …

A recent latte art throwdown at Picaresca Barra de Café in Boyle Heights.

(Julie Wolfson / For The Times)

• Latte art “throwdowns, special menus, omakases, pop-ups, speakeasies and out-of-the-box events are part of L.A.’s growing underground coffee scene,” writes contributor Julie Wolfson in her guide to 9 places to check out IYKYK coffee events. Kumquat, Be Bright, York Manor Market, the Pasadena branch of Woon, Mandarin and Picaresca Barra de Café are some of places that host the events. Of course, if you don’t want to wait for a special event to immerse yourself in coffee geekdom, Jack Benchakul is almost always pouring and, as restaurant critic Bill Addison described a while back, talking water alkalinity at Endorffeine in Chinatown.
• “The American beverage firm Keurig Dr Pepper,” reports the business section’s Caroline Petrow-Cohen, plans to buy JDE Peet’s, the European parent company of California’s gourmet coffee trailblazer, Peet’s Coffee, in an all-cash transaction worth about $18 billion.” Note that JDE Peet’s also owns Stumptown.
• Cracker Barrel is keeping its old-time logo after a new design elicited an uproar, reports Dee-Ann Durbin.
• Durbin also breaks down the rise of Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte business, by the numbers.
• And here’s a restaurant model to watch: San Francisco’s soon-to-open 14-seat counter spot La Cigale from chef-owner Joseph Magidow is instituting all-inclusive pricing with no additional tax, tip or service fees. “When the bill arrives, there will be no surprises,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle’s Elena Kadvany. “The price on the set menu — $140 — is exactly what diners pay.”