Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we abandon our East Coast blood pressure for the sunshine of Los Angeles. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Tacos de lengua at Tacos LaGuera
1298, 1236 S Hobart Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90006
Approximately every two years I get tired of everything about my life and New York and find myself in Los Angeles, lying on a lawn chair among stray cats in a palm-tree filled backyard. Like the cicadas coming to the surface, this migration comes from deep within my biological being and is never purposefully planned in biannual increments; it is simply my time to get as far as humanly possible from my life without requiring the foresight of a visa. My favorite thing about Los Angeles is that everyone is depressed there, too, except they have (dying) palm trees and beaches, which I find comforting. Also, they have actual good tacos. My favorite restaurant in LA has no formal name or seating. Like Cinderella, the tables appear every night around sunset, and disappear at midnight. The tacos al pastor will surely grab your attention, but my personal favorite are the tacos de lengua (beef tongue), which are both crispy and chewy. Donāt skimp out on the horchata, either.Ā
Kook soon dang makgeolli (Korean rice wine) at the Prince
3198 W 7th St, Los Angeles, CA 90005
The Prince is a beautiful, dark, old-school Hollywood vibes bar and lounge -- the kind of place where Don Draper would drink, which he in fact did. Which makes it even better that all it serves is Korean bar food -- Iām talking about sticky KFC, kimchi pancakes, and huge piles of shoestring sweet potato fries topped with sugar granules. That lack of cohesion makes the Prince comfortable and likeable -- the kind of place you could stroll in on a Tuesday evening with a big group of friends to order soju and fried chicken. Soju is my mortal enemy (aside from raccoons) in terms of headache-to-party ratio, so I prefer to order makgeolli, my favorite Korean alcoholic beverage. Itās sweet, milky, and slightly fizzy, like a much more casual unfiltered sake, and one bottle is perfect to share with a friend.
Imoto mix bean crackers (imoto adenishiki) at H Mart
Hereās what the packaging looks like (I believe you can also get these at Sunrise Mart).
Mix bean crackers are the Cadillac of rice crackers. Forget the āAsian rice crackers'' mix you know, with the bright green wasabi peas and little half-moon shaped morsels. Let me introduce you to adenishiki. Not only are these lovely little beanies Instagram friendly, theyāre deliciously salty-sweet, and a bit more substantial because each crispy shell coats a roasted peanut. (Which, I guess, is technically a bean, being a legume and all.) Now that weāre (fingers crossed!) maybe having dinner parties again, buy a bag for instant oohs and ahhs.
Every Burger cookies at H Mart
Also available online.
If the cover statement of āburger-shaped chocolate filled cookiesā doesnāt win you over, nothing else I write will, and you are not the target market of Every Burger cookies. That is all I have to say about that.
Guava and cheese strudel at Portoās
315 N Brand Blvd, Glendale, CA 91203 plus several other locations
I am very much an East coast girl to my very core, but there are times when I waver. More specifically, if you present a guava and cheese strudel to me from Portoās, which is the best guava pastry Iāve ever had in my life, with a perfectly croissant-crisp pastry shell and a bright and sunny guava filling with a thick stripe of cream cheese. I have yet to find a place to get my guava fix in NYC, so please reply to this email if you know where to go.
XOXO,
Soph Ā
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