Newsletter: Counter: Tonkatsu and other things to pair with your Prince playlist
Millefeuille tonkatsu, a deep-fried multi-layered sliced black pork loin cutlet at Kagura in Torrance.
For the last few months, it’s seemed that every third-wave coffee house, cocktail bar and restaurant has been playing Bowie. A few days ago, of course, we switched our playlists from Ziggy Stardust to Prince. If you need to drown your sorrows in Gibraltars and rice bowls, as many of us do, there are a few places we’d recommend. A drive to Torrance is not a bad idea, where, among the ramen shops and okonomiyaki joints, Jonathan Gold finds the tonkatsu specialist Kagura.
We also consider biryani, the addictive Indian rice dish, and head to Chinatown for a politically inspired meal involving Thai food and 10 bottles of hot sauce. (Thank you, Hillary Clinton.) In other news, we check out not one but two just-opened restaurants that are brick-and-mortar versions of excellent food trucks. Because while it is indeed fun to wander around greater Los Angeles looking for mobile restaurants, sometimes it’s nice to find them in reliable places, where you can sit down on a chair instead of the back of your pickup, and even (gasp) valet if you need to.
Tonkatsu love
The bustling scene at Kagura.
As there are few things that taste as good with a cold bottle of beer than the fried pork cutlet, Jonathan heads to Torrance to check in on Kagura. The Kagura in the South Bay (there are other branches of the Japanese chain) specializes in tonkatsu, a dish that is one of the great comfort foods of Japan.
7 variations on biryani
Chicken Dum Biryani is served with an egg and raw red onions at Kabob Corner Indian restaurant in Artesia, Calif.
Food writer Barbara Hansen has been spending a lot of time in Artesia’s Little India, home to many of the 7 great places that make biryani, a pretty fantastic traditional Indian dish of saffron-infused rice and, often, lamb or goat. There’s Zam-Zam Market, a beloved Pakistani restaurant that reopened in Hawthorne, and not a few others. Maybe time for a food road trip.
Nashville hot chicken alert
Shown is an order of hot chicken wings and fries from the new Howlin’ Ray’s in Los Angeles’ Chinatown.
Local fans of this heat-intensive variation of fried chicken have already beaten a well-worn track to Howlin’ Ray’s food truck. Now we all have more reasons to head to Chinatown, where Jenn Harris finds that husband-and-wife team Johnny Ray Zone and Amanda Chapman have opened a brick-and-mortar version of their very popular truck at Far East Plaza. (Food coordinates: next to Pok Pok Phat Thai and across the patio from Chego.)
More fun with Kogi
Chef Roy Choi has four tacos -- carne asada, carnitas, pollo asada and cebollita y aguacate -- on the menu at his new Kogi Taqueria in Palms.
Speaking of actual building iterations of food trucks, Roy Choi’s Kogi Taqueria has opened in Palms. It’s a homecoming of sorts for Choi, as the new shop — a standing version of the trucks that made Choi famous — goes into a mini-mall a few blocks south on Overland from the location of the original Chego. Order one of the new traditional tacos on the menu while you read Anthony Bourdain’s recent essay on Choi, naming him one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People.
What to do with 10 bottles of hot sauce
Bottles of Sriracha for sampling line the table at Pok Pok LA, Andy Ricker’s Thai restaurant in Chinatown.
Earlier this week, while we were waiting for the results of the New York primary, Jonathan and I decided to do a hot sauce tasting at Pok Pok. Why? Because Hillary Clinton isn’t the only one who carries the stuff in her bag. And we were curious how her favorite hot sauce would stack up next to a not inconsiderable number of other sauces, from Thailand and Irwindale. (Spoiler: Grand Mountain is way better than Ninja Squirrel.)
Your “City of Gold” reminder: It’s playing. Maybe go see it. Maybe don’t go hungry, which brings us to ...
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