18 Days in California
Recapping my spring trip, from SF to LA: food, movies, and my first Indian wedding.
April was a whirlwind and a reset. I was in California for nearly three weeks, going from Sacramento to the Bay to Paso Robles then finally down to LA. The reason for the trip was two weddings on back-to-back weekends. (Yes I’m in my early thirties, why do you ask?)
One of them was an Indian wedding and with all respect to the other couple whose marriage I celebrated, I never want to attend a non-Indian wedding ever again. Everyone looked so good in their saris and kurtas, the DJ mixed Bollywood bangers with the usual classics, and the food is legitimately terrific. As a groomsman I helped lead the baraat which was awesome. Less awesome was having to learn a choreographed dance with the guys. (We were told that it would just be 40 seconds. When we were sent the video to practice from, Dmitri immediately responded “I didn’t know 40 seconds could be so long.” I think we did pretty well but I haven’t seen any video of our dance and I never want to.)
I was pretty busy that whole time I was in California but it still felt like a respite from life in New York, because I’ve barely spent a night in since getting back. And on Sunday I head out of town again to visit Slovenia and Barcelona. I’m already tired!
There’s a whole other post in the chamber about what I’ve been up to here in New York, but for now here’s a partial roundup of what I did back in my home state: the food I ate, the meals I cooked, the drinks I drank, and even the movies I watched in LA.
Dining Highlights
Besides the usual—In-N-Out after the flight, a California burrito, Viet food, and a sandwich with Dutch Crunch bread—and some lovely home-cooked meals from my parents, these were the best things I ate.
Post-wedding In-N-Out (San Jose)
We thought we’d stand out in our suits and dresses but the place was full of post-prom revelers. It was really cute to see the kids hanging out!
Mazra (San Bruno)
Never trust a Middle Eastern restaurant that says their kebab platter feeds 4-5 people. It feeds way more.
Tall Boy (Oakland)
A cocktail bar that takes its craft seriously but has a casual attitude. Basically a West Coast Bar Snack. On your way to Curbside Creamery for a post-drink ice cream you’ll pass by that ugly Alysa Liu mural.
Rintaro (San Francisco)
A damn good izakaya. There was a squid dish that came with… apples? And it was a weirdly good pairing? Great sake program too.
Ariscault Bakery (San Francisco)
Nothing better than a morning pain au choc with a view of the Bay.
South Indian wedding catering from 8Elements (Paso Robles)
This was my first time attending an Indian wedding and holy shit the food was legitimately great. Better yet, they supplied all four meals that weekend. The sangeet had a dosa station!
My inner kitchen nerd was piqued by the catering setup. With the caterers traveling three hours from San Jose and no access to a kitchen on-site, everything was prepped in a commissary in a nearby town, with anything that had to be fired à la minute cooked in the vendor’s parking lot. The dish pit was set up there too, with a plastic sink hooked up to a hose. (This was nuts!)
Rancho Nipomo BBQ (Nipomo)
Santa Maria tri-tip!!
The Park’s Finest (Los Angeles)
Filipino BBQ on the edge of Lincoln Park. The Wednesday “worker’s special” is the move as you get a sample platter of nearly the entire menu.
A bunch of fruit from the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market
I stuffed all the empty space in my suitcase with FRUIT! Strawberries, a pomelo, calamansi, ice cream beans, mulberries, the best cherries I’ve ever had in my life. I only regret not bringing back even more.
Literally every taco (Los Angeles)
It had been ten years since last setting foot in LA, and my first time without family. I pretty much ate tacos every single day because the scene here is so special. Before going to the airport for my red eye flight home, I had six tacos and zero regrets.
Taco Chidos (Venice) in a Whole Foods parking lot. Best al pastor I’ve had in my life??
Baja California Tacos (Palms) for the fish tacos.
El Ruso #1 (Echo Park) in an Albertson’s parking lot. Sonoran-style with flour tortilla. The salsa is incredibly spicy.
Tacos La Güera (Northeast) on the side of the road. Second best al pastor I’ve had in my life. The suadero wasn’t bad either.
Tacos La 26 (Downtown) which has a whole parking lot to itself. This was to me the quintessential LA taco. You sit on the back of your car and eat them. Not the greatest in the world but incredibly cheap. I got the al pastor, suadero, buche, and a classic asada.
Related Reading: In the back of my mind I was doing a lot of comparisons between NY and LA dining, so it was fortuitous that this landed in my inbox during my trip:
Cooking in My Friend’s Kitchens
I was crashing on friend’s couches while I was in California, and in an effort to repay the favor while saving money/calories from eating out so much, there were a few days that I made lunch. It was a fun challenge, working in an unfamiliar (and sometimes unequipped) kitchen, and figuring out what I could make.
All these recipes were winners in my book.
Chicken Pho Noodle Salad (Phở Gà Trộn)
Pho takes a long time to make but this slop bowl variant lets you take a few shortcuts to make this something you can knock out in an hour. Store-bought chicken stock is fortified with the usual spices and extra chicken.
Instead of using boneless chicken parts (ew) I doubled the recipe and used a whole chicken—including the head/neck/feet—which considerably boosted the collagen.
Skillet Gnocchi With Miso Butter and Asparagus
The rare ten-minute recipe that actually does take ten minutes (if you make the miso butter first, which is easily prepped in advance).
Akshay and Sravya let me use their apartment to host a dinner gathering… on a Tuesday night. In LA. Apparently this is simply not a thing that people do in LA, but I got six people to come and it was a lovely time!
Plus: as a groomsman I was tasked with helping to prepare one of the wedding cocktails. So the night before the American ceremony I was in the groom’s cottage roasting a bunch of Anaheim chiles, jalapeños, and serranos to infuse in tequila, to be used in a spicy margarita. It got rave reviews!
The Hollywood Rep Scene
I don’t usually watch movies when I’m on a trip, but I made it a priority to check out some theaters in Hollywood. My overall impression, scanning through the repertory listings, is that the focus tends to be more on “the classics” and less so on esoterica. And geographically the theaters are much more sprawled out but that’s just LA for ya. I don’t think you can really string together multiple rep houses in one day unless you’re really devoted. Meanwhile in Manhattan, you can easily walk from the IFC to Film Forum to Anthology.
The Academy Museum is absolutely worth a visit (I didn’t expect to get so emotional when seeing the Oscar that Billy Wilder won for directing The Apartment) and they were in the middle of an Akira Kurosawa retrospective (I saw a print of Dodes’ka-den).
The nonprofit/itinerant group Acropolis Cinema put on a retrospective for Greek weird wave director Athina Rachel Tsangari. I saw her debut feature The Slow Business of Going at 2220 Arts + Archives, which included a Q&A between the filmmaker and Julie Delpy (!!!).
Over at Los Feliz 3, there was a “Film by the Foot” showing from American Cinematheque. The ticket price of the 35mm screening was determined by the literal length of the film. The Friday matinee was Shanghai Express. It need not be said that the yellowface is a relic of its time; I thought the selection was an ironic way to ring in AAPI Heritage Month.
Alas, I didn’t have time to go to the AMCs in Burbank and The Grove.
If you live in LA, check out Wine Cellar Cinema, a new microcinema inside a wine shop. They launch on June 19 with a package of short films!
Other Notable LA Things
Navigating a labyrinthian apartment complex that reminded me of Backrooms
A quick sauna/cold plunge sesh in Venice
Looking at art for free (The Broad, ICA, Hauser & Wirth)
A Friday evening at the Natural History Museum (I learned that rocks are really cool, thanks to an enthusiastic and knowledgable docent) followed by KBBQ and karaoke.
Photos of the dogs whose couches I crashed on
Highly recommend Lluritu and Dos Pebrots in Barcelona - two delightful and memorable dining experiences!
Whooooaaa, I don't think I've ever seen fresh mulberries in the wild before! And thank you, Andrew, for shouting out Wine Cellar Cinema!