“Doldrums” — it’s a wonderful word, born as the sailor’s jargon for what’s technically known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone. That’s the zone near the Equator, where the northeast and southeast trade winds converge, canceling each other out — leaving a region with no wind, where sailing ships would become trapped in what’s also known as “the calms.”
They were caught, unable to move, with their water running short, and their food running low. It often was a death sentence for the sailors of old, described elegantly in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”: “Day after day, day after day/We stuck, nor breath nor motion/As idle as a painted ship/Upon a painted ocean/Water, water, everywhere/And all the boards did shrink/Water, water, everywhere/Nor any drop to drink…”
Growing up on the East Coast, I suffered through the August doldrums — windless days of heat and misery, where to even move was an agony, relieved only by the autumn cooling and the storms of September, hurricanes included.
But here in Southern California, our doldrums last far longer, as does our summer — well into September and even October, the hottest months of the year, when our lethargy is broken only by the distant smoke of wildfires, which is an awful way to break out of those doldrums.
Though, of course, there are other ways as well. Which for me, no surprise, involve food. At a summer baseball game, my lethargy would be relieved by a stadium hot dog — Yankee Frankies in New York, Dodger Dogs in Los Angeles. The sound of ice cream trucks — Bungalow Bar and Good Humor — would do much to rouse my urban street from its torpor. So would a rare trip to Coney Island — two hours in an airless subway car each way! — for the joys of Nathan’s…and for that remarkable, long-cooked corn on the cob, served on a stick, slathered with enough butter to give any cardiologist palpitations.
And out here, the options have grown to logarithmic proportions. Our season of late summer/early fall doldrums may seem endless. But then, so are the ways of breaking free, with the foods that taste so much better for the solace they give us. And anyway, the evenings are cool, filling every bite with that much more joy.
What dishes do I turn to for satisfaction when the weather gives me no hope? Just consider…
Barbecue
We are in an age when comfort foods are not just desired — they’re essential. Oreo cookies comfort me. So does chocolate sorbet, as dark as sin. And then, there’s barbecue, the ultimate non-vegan experience, chewing on a nice meaty pork or beef rib, or some brisket, slow-cooked and filled with the flavor of smoke.
For the sake of standardization, let’s call it “barbecue.” I know that it’s often called “bar-b-q,” “barbeque,” “bar-b-que” and often just plain ”BBQ.” But by changing “que” into “cue,” there’s an element of Americanization at work, turning the word from its French roots to a sort of street lingo, that smacks of dingy bar stools, beer from a bottle, and whiskey out of a fruit jar.
Barbecue, let me tell you, is real people’s food. It may parade in classy duds, but underneath is a taste of smoky rooms and bad-tempered Saturday nights. Barbecue is food you eat with your teeth, your jaws, your whole being. I’m not talkin’ quiche here, I’m talkin’ ribs. And brisket.
At Dr. Hogly Wogly’s Tyler, Texas BBQ (8136 Sepulveda Blvd., Van Nuys; 818-782-2480, www.hoglywogly.com), this is Texas barbecue, which means there’s an admirable reverence for beef here — and especially for brisket.
Beef brisket is one of the leanest cuts of meat, which means that, in its own funny way, this is a diet meal. Not that anyone goes to Dr. H for a diet meal — this isn’t the sort of place where the side dish options include cottage cheese and a fruit salad. Heck, aside from the coleslaw, beans and potatoes, the closest the menu comes to a vegetable are the sliced tomatoes and sliced onions offered as sides.
There’s also sweet potato pie, which I guess counts as a vegetable dish.
Anyway, getting back to the brisket, it’s the sort of dish you never want to end. Each and every bite seems to hold nuances, subtleties, tasty bits not noticed the bite before. If I feel the need for pork, I opt for the pulled model — shredded and rich with sauce. I prefer the babybacks, served in a rack, to the beef ribs, which take a lot of chewing; I’m split on the spare ribs, which come in batches of three or six. The hot links are always a good fall back; and there’s roast chicken for those who need roast chicken. It’s not a bad choice; it’s just not brisket.
Mee krob
The first Thai dish I fell in love with was mee krob — which is also spelled mee grob and mi krop and very probably a dozen other ways. But “mee krob” does just fine.
I was at a Thai-Chinese restaurant in East Hollywood, back in the day when all Thai restaurants were Chinese as well, when I decided it was one of the best things I’d ever eaten — a brain-melting combination of sweet, spicy and crispy, a dish that approached the Platonic ideal. I soon added chicken satay to my growing diet of Thai dishes, probably because though I liked chicken on skewers, I couldn’t get enough of Thai peanut sauce. Still can’t.
And then, I went to Bangkok. And discovered that mee krob — a ubiquity on menus here — is rarely served there. As one restaurateur explained to me, “It’s a very difficult dish to make. It takes three days to get it right. Very few cooks can manage it. You should try the pad Thai noodles. Everyone can make them. And they’re just as good.”
I don’t know about “just as good.” They’re good…very good. But it’s mee krob that owns my heart. Or at least my stomach. And honestly, I don’t know what it is that we eat over here. But whatever our mee krob is…it sure is good.
I also discovered in Bangkok that mee krob came with a backstory. Seems that in the late 1800s, Siamese King Rama V went by barge to visit his subjects, stopping in the market district of Talad Phlu, where he caught a whiff of a dish being cooked in the market by a Chinese immigrant named Chi Lin. The King decided he had to taste it — and he brought the recipe back to the palace where, no surprise, it became a favorite of everyone who tasted it because the king, you know? The name he gave it translates simply as “Crisp Noodles.” Which pretty much cuts to the chase.
But it’s also so much more than that. The noodles are ultra-thin, looking like a bird’s nest sweetened and spiced, with crunchy bits of meat lurking within. It’s like an edible treasure hunt. And it stays crispy for a long time. Perhaps forever since it’s never really lasted long enough in my refrigerator to find out. And, I should add, it’s not King Rama’s only accomplishment. He also established the Thai Royal Naval Academy. And abolished slavery. Amazing that he had the time, since he had 96 wives and concubines. (I have one. She keeps me very busy. I can’t imagine 96.)
Lum-Ka-Naad Thai (17644 Ventura Blvd, Encino, 818-616-2338; 8910 Reseda Blvd, Northridge, 818-882-3028; www.lumkanaadthai.com) is a dazzling duet of Thai eateries, where there are wonders throughout. The chicken and beef satay, touchstone dishes at any Thai restaurant, are exceptional — chunky chubbettes of tender meat, with tasty grill mark, served with a perfect peanut sauce that made me wonder, once again, why I’ve never managed to replicate a good peanut sauce at home; is it that difficult? Guess so, because so many restaurants get it wrong. Lum-Ka-Naad gets it right.
As is often the case in Thai restaurants, you don’t have to wander far from the apps to create a meal that will make your table happy. The prosaic egg roll is as good as it gets, so crispy, with a fine sweet & sour sauce. The fried pork ribs are crazy good — the menu tells us they’re “fermented,” though they may mean “marinated,” in a hot & sour sauce, then splattered with chiles, ginger, lime and cilantro.
If you want your satay hotter than usual, try the Bangkok Sticks on Fire. You want your beef rarer than usual, go for the Crying Tiger. And there’s a lovely dish of shrimp marinated in garlic and chiles, called Naked Mermaid. The name alone makes it worth ordering. And in this case, the mee krob is “mee grob” — “sweet and sour pan-fried crunchy rice noodles, topped with sliced chicken, tofu, egg, and shrimp.” Chicken and tofu and egg and shrimp! King Rama would be very happy. So would his 96 wives!
Exotic sushi rolls
The first “exotic” sushi roll I encountered was the iconic California Roll — technically, a makisushi containing cucumber, crab (real or otherwise) and avocado, sesame seeds and flying fish roe, often rolled inside out. It stands in contrast to the more traditional nigiri sushi — the lozenge of rice with a slice of fresh fish layered on top, held in place with a strip of seaweed. It first appeared on the burgeoning sushi scene back in the late 1970s. And it’s probably from California. But as ever, there are disputes. Culinary origin stories are rarely simple.
As a local, I’ve long been happy to credit the California Roll to sushi chef Ichiro Mashita, who created the roll at Tokyo Kaikan in Little Tokyo. I’ve also seen it credited to chef Ken Seusa at Kin Jo in Hollywood. And to Hidekazu Tojo in Vancouver. In Japan, it’s known as Kashu Maki — and yes, it does exist over there.
But when it comes to the madcap, near lunatic world of exotic sushi rolls, we’ve gone far beyond the modest California Roll. At many roll-heavy sushi bars, it’s listed under “Standard Rolls.” Exotica has its own section. And it can be daunting and nutty at the same time. There are no longer boundaries; if it can be imagined, with a properly over-the-top name, it can be made.
One example: the Spicy Tuna Roll — which is credited specifically to chef Jean Nakayama at Maneki here in Los Angeles, who came up with the concept of mixing bits of tuna (scraps, if you wish) with chili sauce, and rolling them with rice, the mix then wrapped in the inevitable sheet of nori.
Without the notion of spicy sauce, many of the tsunami of exotic rolls wouldn’t exist. Add on tempuraed ingredients for crispness, and — yes! — cream cheese, and you have a near infinitely of variations.
And an infinite variety isn’t overstating the number of rolls out there. Last time I dropped by a casual café called the California Roll Factory in West LA, I counted more than a hundred rolls on the menu, and wouldn’t be surprised if there were more by now. I ran into the problem I’ve often encountered in exotic roll joints — I couldn’t tell one from the other without a roadmap. And once they started arriving, my table went into a feeding frenzy, wolfing down the rolls without rhyme or reason. They just tasted so…good. They were messy, and they fell apart, and the ingredients all got jumbled together. But no matter — they were so…yummy. This is sushi devoid of subtlety or understatement. This is the “Californification” of sushi.
Am I offended? Not at Sushi Planet (23349 Mulholland Drive, Woodland Hills; 818-224-7711, www.mysushiplanet.com), I’m not.
Writing the menu for Sushi Planet must have been an exhausting process. For this exceedingly large menu features more than 40 exotically named rolls — many of which, in the great tradition of sushi roll naming, have monikers that have little to do with the roll itself. The albacore with fried garlic-hot mustard sauce is a “Walk on the Beach.” The shrimp tempura and crab salad roll is “Mr. Tommy.” A similar roll, topped with tuna and salmon, is the “Oh My God Roll.” The spicy seafood and shrimp tempura roll is a “Touchdown Roll.” Why? I dunno! But buy that menu writer a cold sake! That’s an impressive accomplishment. But then, so is the food at Sushi Planet — a mini chain with branches in Moorpark, Camarillo, Westlake Village and right here in Woodland Hills.
Despite the massive number of rolls, the sushi staff — laboring in plain sight behind the counter — manages to crank out an impressive selection of reliably tasty dishes, something for everyone including purists for whom nigiri sushi (fish over rice) and sashimi are the only way to go. And they manage this in a space that’s like an endless party in Shibuya.
Thankfully, this is one of those sushi bars where cream cheese is a rara avis, found in the Tempura Rainbow Roll. There’s also butter in the Jupiter Roll of shrimp and cucumber, which may be a first for me. But if there’s a dominant note in the rolls at Sushi Planet, it’s a wide and somewhat madcap use of sauces unique to this particular planet, and largely undefined on the menu. There’s Planet Sauce, Sumo Sauce, Spice Girl Sauce and Nat’s Sauce.
Better understood are the ponzu sauce, the spicy karashi (mustard) sauce, the eel sauce and the creamy garlic sauce. Clearly, this is a pretty saucy place. I worry about the use of too much sauce, as if it’s there to cover up the flavor of the fish. But for the most part, the ingredients seem to work in harmony. Which means if you order a “Home Run Roll” of baked crawfish with spicy mayo on top of a California Roll drizzled with eel sauce, the whole construct will make good sense. Sure did to me — to my surprise.
Fried chicken
Here in Los Angeles, thanks to the ethnic mulch in which we toil, we eat chicken in a staggering number of forms — rotisserie grilled in the styles of Mexico, Peru, Italy, Armenia and more. Chinese chicken salad, which is far more American than Chinese. Boiling turns chicken Jewish. Poaching turns it French. Nuggeting turns it sporty.
But there’s probably no form of chicken to which we’re more addicted, and about which we’re more opinionated, then fried, and particularly Southern fried, with a sub-species of Nashville hot. We love our fried chicken, not wisely, but far too well. Like french fries, we don’t even pretend it’s healthy; we just dig in.
Do remember that fried chicken is best still hot from the oil. It can be reheated. But it’s never quite the same. Eat up…fast! Which you will do at Dave’s Hot Chicken (5166 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood, 818-358-4793, www.daveshotchicken.com).
Of course, Dave’s comes with a story. It begins on their website with a section titled, “To Live and Fry in LA,” where we learn, “In 2017, four childhood friends came up with a simple concept — take Nashville hot chicken and make it better than anyone else in America. With only a couple thousand dollars to their name, they boot-strapped a pop-up concept in a parking lot in East Hollywood serving a simple menu of tenders, sliders, fries, and kale slaw — they created a viral cult following with lines consistently over an hour long…
“After 6 months of running the pop-up with long lines, the team took the plunge and opened their first physical store in January 2018 in a sleepy strip center in East Hollywood. Demand for their crave-able hot chicken exceeded all expectations and sales have grown every month since opening with consistently long lines throughout the day.
“The co-founder, Dave, a chef trained in Thomas Keller’s Bouchon restaurant organization, came up with a simple process: take the best quality chicken, prepare the chicken in a proprietary brine, and after deep-frying, top the most tender chicken in the world with one of seven signature spice blends…”
And here they are, in trendy NoHo, serving well-crusted birds, with seven gradations of spices — No Spice, Lite Mild, Mild, Medium, Hot, Extra Hot and Reaper. (The inevitable, and possibly well-justified, reference to death by drumstick!) They serve tenders and sliders. There’s mac and cheese, fries and cheese fries on the side. And kale slaw. Yup…kale slaw. Because as Nashville as the chicken may be, this is still Los Angeles. And people still believe kale is actually edible. Give them time, say I. This too shall pass.
Hamburgers
I do believe that my earliest culinary memories are of eating hamburgers. I remember going to a drive-in with my dear old dad, cruising to White Castle in the family Studebaker (with the classic bullet-tip nose), and watching in wonder as he’d order two dozen burgers for himself, my mother, my sister and myself. They cost 12 cents each, and they were just wonderful.
In case you’ve never had the pleasure of a White Castle burger (by and large an Eastern U.S. phenomenon), you must understand that for your 12 cents what you got was basically a roll with a spot of grease on it. It was a soft sweet roll, pure candy, into which the thinnest burger (with holes punched in it ”for quicker cooking”) was dropped, and covered with grilled onions, a sweet pickle slice, and a squeeze of ketchup. It was heaven incarnate — and it was served to you in your car by a carhop, who did not arrive on roller skates.
I have other early hamburger memories — of the place in the Parkchester section of the Bronx called Hamburger Express, where your burgers and fries arrived on a small toy train that journeyed on a track around the perimeter of the counter; of a chain of burger places that served something they called “The Hamburger with a College Education” (I don’t remember exactly why these burgers had college educations, just that they did); of the Salisbury steaks I’d order at Horn & Hardart, accompanied by mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy; of the immense burgers I’d be given to take along to school for lunch, well larger than half a pound, drenched in ketchup and packed between slices of challah. Other kids got liverwurst; I got the hamburger that ate New York.
LA is Hamburger Heaven, complete with mustard, ketchup, mayo, thousand island dressing, lettuce, tomato, chili and bacon. It’s Heaven on a bun. And at Fat Sal’s (16901 Ventura Blvd., Encino; 855-682-4373, www.fatsalsdeli.com), so much more on a bun. At Fat Sal’s, more is more, and even more is better. This is a tribute to excess, a restaurant (with several other branches around town) that declares it’s over-the-top madness in its name, and it’s slogan, “We’re Makin’ Sandwiches Over Here.” And, yes, they are.
This is not food for dieters, teetotalers or the mild of spirit. This is food for livin’ large. Let us begin with the Big Sandwich, the Grand Gesture, the Monster. It’s called the Big Fat Fatty. (There is no linguistic PC here!) It contains cheesesteak, cheeseburgers, pastrami, chicken fingers, bacon, mozzarella sticks, fried eggs, French fries, onion rings, chili, marinara sauce and “Fat Sauce” on a 27-inch garlic hero. It’s not available for delivery. It exists, oddly, only for a Food Challenge — if one Fatty Fan can eat the whole thing in 40 minutes, they get it for free, and a get a sandwich of their own design, which they can name. And dream of while they digest. For a long time.
More simple souls can go for the basic sandwiches — none of which are especially basic. The Fat Sal, for instance, is packed with roast beef, mozzarella sticks, onion rings, fries, brown gravy and mayo. The Fat Jaime involves grilled ham, chicken fingers, grilled jalapeños, grilled onions, mozzarella, avocado, lettuce, tomato, fries, mayo and Tapatio sauce.
The inclusion of deep-fried side orders on the sandwich is not new. But it’s been taken to a new level of madness at Fat Sal’s. It makes a fat sandwich that much fatter.
A word needs to be said about the Fat Fries, which are served in an aluminum pan, and looks for all the world like nachos on steroids, or maybe a demonic notion of a casserole. There are nine of them — the Stromboli Fries, which are typical of the breed, are topped with ham, pepperoni, salami, provolone and mozzarella and marinara. Add it to one of the Fat Sandwiches, and you may just barely survive.
For the record, there are three salads — tuna, chicken Caesar and veggie. The veggie comes with fries. Of course it does.
Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email mreats@aol.com.
