Heyo!
I apologize for my absence on Monday, but I took the day off. So sue my ass! I love serving people on Sunday, but after a long day of slingin’ pasta noodles in my hot-as-hell apartment (it was 80 degrees!), I needed to shut everything down for a full 24 hours.
Did you know that Monday is an excellent day to tell everyone to fuck off? In fact, I’m starting to think Monday is the new Sunday. Sundays are ass. The parks are full, the coffee shops are full, the restaurants are full. But on Monday—glorious and profusely boring Monday—everything is a little more uninhabited. The nature in Los Angeles is a little more serene. The hikes feature less babbling, the coffee shop lines are shorter, and the Sea Org Scientologists are all in school preparing their formidable naval fleet.
The move next week? While everyone else is busy getting back to work, do yourself a favor and call off on Monday. Monday is the new Lord’s day. God doesn’t exist, but, ya know, if he did, he wouldn’t fuck with Mondays. Actually, Garfield is my god now. Kick rocks, God.
Sooooooo I didn’t churn out a newsletter Monday. That means this week is just one big ol’ free edition of The Move! And I’d like to start off with some pretty big news: I’m leaving Los Angeles on March 5th.
I’ll be headed back to Pennsylvania on another cross-country road trip, but eventually I will make my residence Detroit. Hopefully by April or May.
Why Detroit? If you’re an early reader here, you know that I visited quite a bit over the Summer and I loved it. It’s a great city with awesome people, and there’s this striking sense of community that just floored me. Detroit made me realize that a smaller city is more of my vibe. Couple that with job opportunities, cheaper cost of living, and being in close proximity to family, and it’s made all the sense in the world for me to move there. I’m super excited to learn about the city and contribute in what ways that I can.
What does that mean for this newsletter???
Well, I’ll be covering food in Detroit, but also Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, Pennsylvania, and wherever else life takes me. One of the beautiful things about this move is that I’ll be free to travel more. I plan on stockpiling some L.A. centric posts, while also coming back to visit a few times a year. Los Angeles is always going to be a home away from home. I’ve lived here for seven damn years, and I will always want to write about food, culture, and SoCal things. This beautiful city got me into food writing in the first place!
So, if you’re following this newsletter hoping for only L.A. specific material, I understand if you unsubscribe. But, to me, this has always been The Move and not The Move: Los Angeles. I have always aimed to cover food in a way that will be enjoyable and informative for everyone to read, regardless of location. In fact, many of the subscribers I have don’t live in Los Angeles at all, they just like to read about far away restaurants and exciting dining experiences.
I’m not ready to get all sappy about this place just yet, though. I want to enjoy my time left here. And I have been doing that the only way I know how: With a mouth full of food, muttering something the person sitting across from me can’t quite understand.
Here are the best things I ate this week in Los Angeles.
Before we get to that, if you haven’t yet, subscribe will ya?????
The K-Town Cowboy at Open Market
Open Market is a slick, Asian-American coffee shop and lunch spot in Koreatown that keeps churning out exciting L.A. inspired sandwiches. Each one is an ode to some part of Los Angeles’ culture, whether it be the al pastor oyster mushrooms in the mariposa ($15.25) or the Korean tuna salad used for the kenmore ($14.) But one of their most entertaining specials is inspired by Arby’s of all fucking places.
The K-Town cowboy ($17) is an ode to Arby’s beef n’ cheddar, and it features thinly shaved prime rib, cheddar cheese, and horseradish “Arby’s” sauce on a milk bun. Fast food’s influence on modern sandwiches is indelible. I mean just look around. There’s the le pig mac at Cochon Butcher in New Orleans, countless riffs on Popeye’s fried chicken sandwich, and seemingly everybody aims to copy In-N-Out. Even modern breakfast is shaped by fast food. Chef Rouha Sadighi’s bodega sandwich at The Rooster is oddly reminiscent of an Egg McMuffin, and Sadighi even said McDonald’s is her go-to comfort food when she’s feeling nostalgic.
We are the sum of our lived experiences, and most chefs have at some point indulged in the monstrous delight of a stacked & salty Arby’s roast beef sandwich. Enter the K-Town Cowboy.
The K-Town cowboy, though, is a severe upgrade from Arby’s. The prime rib is thin and savory and plays so well with horseradish Arby’s sauce, which is a more flavorful riff on cocktail. The homemade milk bun is spectacular, too—buttery, rich, soft, and still flaky.
It’s not a giant, Hulked-out monster of a meal, but the sandwich thrives because every ingredient is deliciously rich and well made. Quality over quantity, friends. In that way, the K-town cowboy is the antithesis of Arby’s. It’s only available on special, so follow Open Market on Instagram for the deets on when it’s around next.
Open Market
3339 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90010
Ruen Pair’s Fried Egg & Salty Turnip
I formally submit the fried egg & salty turnip ($12.95) as one of the very best dishes of Los Angeles. That means you can’t visit here without trying it, and you can’t live here without making it at least a yearly part of your diet. It’s a god damn classic.
Though it’s a delicious curiosity to first timers, it will no doubt evoke some sense of familiarity. It appears to be cooked like an omelette and has a deep caramelization to it. The turnips are shredded, and thus are sort of marbled throughout the entire egg cake itself. It’s salty, sweet, meaty, and savory in a way that keeps your taste buds fixated on it. I have found that even when there’s other food on the table, I lock in completely to the fried egg & salty turnip. It’s just so damn savory. My guess is that they use soy sauce and maybe sugar to achieve this, but whatever the combination is, it’s wondrous. The word “addicting” gets thrown around far too often, but the fried egg & salty turnip is truly that.
Ruen Pair
5257 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Bar Covell’s Deviled Eggs
The last time I was at Covell it was for a date, which is the reason everybody goes to this god damn wine bar. It’s dimly lit, romantic in a sort of low stakes way, and the ordering system is fun. You just tell the bartender what you’re in the mood for and they match something to your taste. That experience is key, and it can really take the edge off of a date. It makes you think about what you want to be tasting instead of just mindlessly darting to a name of wine you can pronounce without sounding like you’re from the Amish country (obviously this is something I’m worried about. I’m from rural Pennsylvania.)
Covell also has a menu filled with things like meatballs, tater tots, and even a croque monsieur. A friend of mine recently ordered the deviled eggs ($16), and they were awesome. They’re topped with little bits of caviar, but what really gets me here is the aioli used to fill the hollowed out egg whites. This aioli is made with a strong punch of garlic (perhaps even roasted garlic) that loiters around in your mouth long after you’re done eating it. It’s the perfect amount the garlic. Do you know how hard that is to get right? These deviled eggs are indulgent but not too much. Are you a fan of sybaritic things? Get the damn deviled eggs. They’re luxurious.
I didn’t take a picture, and it’s a gross food word, but these deviled eggs really are sexy. That’s a word nobody should ever use when writing about food, I’m sorry. I won’t do it for at least three more months.
Covell
4628 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Thai Town Latte at Obet and Del’s
If there’s one coffee shop you should be supporting in this area, it’s Obet & Del’s.
Obet & Del’s is a black and filipino owned coffee shop with a focus on strengthening the community. That means the staff is super friendly, and the customers who frequents this place are all A+ human beings. Obet & Del’s is simultaneously cool and unpretentious, two qualities I yearn for in a coffee shop. No demanding dicks here.
It’s also right around the block from me. Normally I’m just there to just pick up a black coffee, mainline the caffeine, and click-clack away on my laptop, but when I’m in the mood to splurge on something fancy I go for the Thai Town latte.
The Thai Town latte is essentially a version of the Thai iced tea you get at the restaurants in this area. This sweet and fragrant tea is made with condensed milk and meant to accompany some spicy southern Thai dishes like jungle curry. Here, though, it’s a refreshing early morning jolt that delivers some serious flavor.
At Obet & Del’s, the Thai Town Latte consists of star anise, vanilla bean, cardamom, sweet tamarind, coconut, oat milk, and Thai tea. Apparently, the tea used here is the same brand that all the restaurants in Thai Town use.
Though, the move here is to get the tea served hot. I don’t recall any of the restaurants around here actually serving their Thai tea hot, so this is a rare treat. When served warm, the Thai Town latte unlocks some deeply comforting, earthy flavors. It’s even a little sweeter, too. The soothing qualities of star anise hit even harder with warm tea. Did you know it’s going to rain all next week in L.A.? Perfect opportunity for one of these lattes, my man.
It’s just an incredibly thoughtful and well-made drink. One latte costs $6.75, so it’s more of a weekend treat for me. Obet & Del’s is a wonderful neighborhood spot that you should be frequenting often. Support this place.
Obet & Del’s
5233 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Jon Kung’s Sweet Potato Dog Treats
As I scout my move to Detroit, I’m starting to get a handle on all of the great people in the city. One such name is Jon Kung, a talented Chinese-American chef who skyrocketed during the pandemic with his cooking videos. Jon is a highly skilled chef with a couple of sweet, adorable dogs. Many of his videos feature those dogs, and in some of them he actually makes homemade dog treats. In the above, he dehydrates Japanese sweet potatoes so that they’re crispy & crunchy (two things dogs love.)
Dehydrating any sweet potato is so damn easy. Simply use a mandolin to thinly slice a skin-on sweet potato, place them on a wire wrack above a sheet tray, then in the oven on the lowest setting for 6 hours. Jon uses a very low setting to dehydrate the potato snacks, but my oven doesn’t go under 200 degrees. Still, it worked out just fine. My dog Fey loves em’. Cheap, healthy, and not time consuming at all.
And if you really love your dogs, Jon posted a new video where he dehydrates chicken feet. Your pet will surely go mental for that.
Ensenada Fish Tacos at Solita in Long Beach
Solita is a chain, but the good kind. What does that mean? Well you won’t feel like your soul is leaving your body just by being there. That’s because the food doesn’t suck. On the whole, the food in Long Beach rules. There’s hundreds of great tacos to try, but after an afternoon at Rosie’s Dog Beach, I wanted a simple, quick meal where I could sit outside in the shade with my dog, Fey, who is a menace.
Man, the Ensenada crispy fish tacos ($17) just really did the job. The puffy, craggy breading was light and popcorn-crisp, and the corn tortillas were flavorful and lightly steamed. No cabbage, but in traditional Baja-style they come with a little squiggle of creamy white sauce. These tacos are light, but the flaky, meaty, perfectly fried white fish was wholly satisfying. I wish all chain restaurant food were as good as this.
The rice and beans lacked, but the free chips and salsa more than made up for the underwhelming sides. I haven’t had free chips & salsa in a minute, so this was a pleasant surprise. The chips are fried fresh, and even include some pinwheels, too. Their salsa is no slouch, either. Great garlic flavor. Great bite.
The real move here is to go to Solita for happy hour. It runs from 3-6PM, and features an awesome selection of street tacos and appetizers. The big deal, however, is two street tacos + a frozen margarita for $10. $10 for anything is a steal these days, let alone two tacos and a margarita.
As I saw a couple leave the dining room with their travel bags, I thought, “Ohhhh, that’s what this place is.” Solita is the perfect pre-flight meal. Quick, light, tasty food, and you get to put a frozen margarita in ya.
Solita Long Beach
1 Pine Ave
Long Beach CA 90802
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Kinda sad you’re leaving. Always thought we would end up friends haha
Omg I’m so excited to hear about east coast / Chicago eateries!! Congrats 🎈