Everything you’ve ever wanted

Gaja is a remote outpost. A mile or two beyond the docks, it sits in a featureless non-space. Just north of the refinery-stripclub-truckstop district and just east of the Redondo piers, with its slatted, pastel houses, home to middle-managers and antique collectors, the city of Lomita itself is a thoroughfare, a means of getting up the coast line, going where you want to go, to the beaches, the sun, the water. Gaja is sequestered away in this gray, odd, land-locked bedroom community in an unremembered corner of LA county. Which is why this spot is so remarkable; somewhere in this stretch of liquor stores, car dealerships and disreputable sandwich counters is this welcome surprise: the only make-your-own okonomiyaki in town.

Okonomiyaki translates literally into “what you want” (okonomi) “grilled” (yaki). Sometimes, okonomiyaki is described on English menus as a Japanese “pancake", but there is really no Western analog. What goes in a proper okonomiyaki? It depends. The variations on the basic setup are as numerous as the number of grains of sand in a good sized sandbox. There is the original Osaka-style okonomiyaki (kansai), which has a basic batter comprised of rice flour, mountain yam, water, egg, and shredded cabbage. On top of that goes any combination of pork, bacon, mochi, cheese, seafood, vegetables. Hiroshima style okonomiyaki is layered, piled high and pushed flat, with extra cabbage and a handful of soba noodles thrown on top. Tokyo-style okonomiyaki (also known as manjayaki) is a runny, viscous and slightly unappetizing regional variant that is worthwhile only because you eat it with a tiny spatula the size of a coffee spoon, scrapping bits of burned rice-flour batter off the teppan like a jolly giant taking paint off the side of a barn. The first time this asian couple visited Gaja solo, we ordered the modan mix you see below:

That’s pork, squid, octopus, scallop on top. Flip this thing over twice and top it off with okonomiyaki sauce, benito flakes, Japanese mayonnaise and pulverized nori or do whatever the fuck you want with it, that’s the point. Ultimately, this is what I like about Gaja. Okonomiyaki itself is a simple affair, a peasant dish made with whatever leftovers can be scrounged up around a Japanese kitchen; it is a dense, substantial all-in-one meal. What I like about Gaja, what I think sets this place apart from any other kind of restaurant you care to think of, is that it never serves the same meal twice. Each okonomiyaki is as special and individual as a melting snowflake. Sure, we all have our own way of handling a hot bowl of pho; and we’ve all experienced the uniquely delicious anxiety of checking a piece of ribeye at the Korean BBQ, but Gaja’s infinitely tweakable offerings is the king of DIY asian foods. Their menu, at somewhere around 100 pages, would make an excellent doorstop. In addition to three regional variants of okonomiyaki, Gaja also offers Japanese soup style spaghettis, risottos, teppanyaki, and intricately layered skyscraper parfaits (another post all to itself). 

2383 Lomita St, Suite 102                                 Lomita, CA 90717

The Piece de Resistance

Santouka Ramen

665 Paularino Ave.

Costa Mesa, CA 92626

The time has finally come to fully explore what it means to be covetous. I mean, what could possibly make a person wish they were me or wish they were with me in Southern California eating $6.00 bowls of noodle soup amidst a bustling and crowded Japanese style food court?

In short, two words: Santouka Ramen.

In the inhospitable landscape of So Cal tract housing, strip malls and crowded, poorly-designed freeways, there exists a small and unassuming refuge by the name of Mitsuwa Mall. Here, you can find Japanese food and products of all kinds. The Mitsuwa Market is a supermarket that offers everything from produce and meat to Japanese snacks and beverages including Dakara, a more tasty version of his favorite beverage, Pocari Sweat, which can also be found here. (It kind of tastes like sweat. I kid you not.)

Nestled in the bustling central food court of Mitsuwa is Santouka Ramen, indisputably the best Ramen place this Asian couple has found yet. We have so far been to two Santoukas- both of course inside of Mitsuwa malls. The first is in Costa Mesa and the second is in Torrance. Both serve up hot, steaming, salty, porky bowls of deliciously fulfilling ramen. Both offer atmosphere- bamboo furniture, Japanese business men in fine tailored suits, a mini pavilion in which to eat tatami-style. (The pavilion exists in only the Torrance location.) And both are no frills, cheap thrill type establishments.

Only have a credit card? Too bad, you can't eat here. Want to take your bowl to-go? Too bad, you can't do that here. Want extra soup or noodles? You're in the wrong place, idiot. Don't you get it?

This place does not need you, nor does it need me, for that matter. Santouka Ramen is an institution and it covets no one. It serves Ramen Perfection- tender pork, perfectly made noodles shipped from Japan, and hearty, hot, unfiltered broth. (Rameniac explains the history and particularities of Santouka's regional ramen style thoroughly well.) What do I mean by unfiltered? Well, their broth has substance. Small bits of pork fat float in it. You cannot see through it. Sipping a spoonful feels like swallowing a subtropical developing nation. It is hot in there and people of all ages are busy working 12 hours in a factory with no air conditioning. The air is thick with humidity and the day is overcast. Wood fires are burning. God, do you sweat.

But this is as it should be.

With a small bowl of ramen you get 1 large piece of fall-to-pieces-in-your-mouth pork; a larger bowl offers at least 2 slices. You have the choice of ordering the shoyu, miso or shio broth, although I recommend the always reliable shoyu. Santouka also offers meal sets- a bowl of ramen with ikura over rice and a hard boiled egg, for instance- to accomodate the extra famished. Get in line, fight for a table in the court, wait for your number to be called, and then go get your blue bowl of This is What Dreams are Made of Ramen. After you finish, you will be thinking about it for days.

Just look at it. What's not to covet?

Having Santouka is better than having a new i-phone or having that new Philip Lim dress at the Co-op or having a boyfriend that other girls may want. Santouka gives me reliable satisfaction,(yes, that kind of satisfaction).

So there, covetous bitches.

Ham. Ji. Motherfucking. Park.

 Speaking of jealousy…

The beginning.

Add bacon.

Panchan.

More panchan.

Add pork ribs.

Pork neck stew.

Do I have to tell you that this is better than the teriyaki chicken bowl you had for dinner last night?

Eat your fat-congealed hearts out.

A-not-so-Asian-reflection #1

For the number of places this Asian Couple has been to eat, not many of them have been blogged about. This in part is due to what I have been calling "A Mediocre Writer's Block". And I've been suffering.

This is not to say that there isn't a lot to write about Asian Coupling and the Asian Couple's encounters with food. This Asian Couple does plenty of things, particularly dining out and spending more money than we ought to (which, upon reflection, is a very non-Asian couple-y thing to do. We need to save, god damnit!).

Part of the problem I think, is a lack of motivation and plain old fatigue. After leaving school and moving to Southern California, I've gotten used to writing only corporate memos and passive (aggressively) threatening emails. And at the end of the day, who has the energy to think about this?

We have been talking about this recently and have determined that there are mainly 2 ways that others go about writing about the next great (or not-so-great) dining experience. The first is to embrace and understand the food, the preparation of the food, the history behind the food, and all the various parts that form the food. In short, go the technical route.

The second way is to convey the visceral experience of eating: food as feeling, food as compared to, say, modern art or literature. The idea is to juxtapose something provocative (steamy noodle soup) next to something else that's provocative (Kline, although he'd prefer Pollock) and to conjure an altogether different, more complex sensation of eating for the reader. It's easy enough to say something is tasty. But why should someone, upon reading about it, want to eat it? This method might be called, um, the "creative" route, for lack of a better term.

Famous critic Gael Greene opts for this second route, although after almost 40 years of reviewing for New York Magazine, she knows the technical stuff, too. Most writers seem to have a "thing" and her thing is to basically eat like she's fucking. Here's the formula:

Provocative thing 1: sex + Provocative thing 2: food = I want to eat that.

Her writing is extremely tactile. She says things like, "I want a proud, compelling burger - caramelized, rare and juicy..." This has been extremely effective for her.

The ideal lay food blogger would incorporate both methods and complement that with their unique signature. Since I have no intention of delving into the technical side of food, I am more likely to lean towards endeavoring to describe why the food I eat is indeed provocative and sensational, which of course, does not make me any sort of "ideal food blogger". But now the intention is clear: to evoke jealousy.

That being said, the next post is the latest installment to the NSP- a review of the Ramen Piece de Resistance, Santouka Ramen. I will try not to write the entire thing in French, which I am tempted to do.

To observe great food writing for yourself, please see Gael Greene's blog http://www.insatiable-critic.com/. Eating really is as good as sex and it doesn't require any talking.

P.S. She also wears big hats!

NSP: The Perfect Bowl

Gardena Ramen

1840 W 182nd St

Torrance, CA 90504

Ramen is the noodle soup that above all others deserves its own blog.  This is perhaps because ramen has been subject to over 400 years of uptight, obsessive Japanese tweaking. The rules are simple -- a pork-based soup broth flavored with soy, miso or plain salt; add noodle, pork chashu, assorted add-ons and bits (canned bamboo, shoyu egg, butter). But the simplicity of the dish is what lends itself to the characteristic Japanese rage for both perfectionism and localism. Ramen is to the Japanese as the kennel club is to the British bourgeoisie -- a chance to cultivate regional differences while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of a single perfected form.

If Gardena Ramen's ramen were a pedigreed breed, it would be a blonde labrador, the ideal everyman's dog: loyal, noble, unaffected. Walk into Gardena Ramen and you are greeted by an elderly Japanese lady and the wonderful scent of long stewing pork bones. The menu is posted on the wall and there are only three items -- Ramen in two flavors -- miso or shoyu -- and a side order of gyoza. A simple affair. Five minutes after being seated, this is what arrives at your table.

The soup is light and almost clear. The noodles are straight, striking a nice balance between softness and chewiness. All of which amounts to a straightforward, unadulterated bowl of ramen which carries its flavors from bowl to mouth with admirable clarity and precision. Everything is there. No special ingredients, no gimmicks, no imported noodles, no conspicuous symbols of rustic Japanese life. Just an excellent bowl of noodles served hot and quick, by an adorable and doting Japanese grandmother. What more could the asian couple ask for?

Asa Ramen

18202 S Western

Gardena, CA 90248

The problem with this feel-good story of an asian couple and their golden lab is that right across the street from Gardena is Asa, this beast of a ramen house. After much deliberation, we both agree that while Gardena is a perfectly respectable lab with all its papers in order, Asa is a Rhodesian ridgeback. Fearless, bold, unmistakable, powerful, and salty. 

Asa Ramen is an unassuming spot in the unassuming strip mall that includes other establishments like Salty Sports and Golf and a tempura and udon house. The only clue for the non-Japanese that one has arrived at the right ramen place is a welcoming whiteboard sitting outside the frontdoor proclaiming it 'Asa.' Open 6pm to 2am. 

Inside, Asa is tiny. Three or four tables and a truncated bar. The decor is, in contrast to Gardena's anti-design minimalism, a designed minimalism. The menu is divided down the middle, with Japanese on the left, English on the right. Compared to Gardena, Asa presents you with a vertiginous array of choices. Regular and large size bowls. 'Rich' and 'light' shoyu (no miso). And six types of takoyaki (more on that below). After a pretty tense wait, this is what comes out of the kitchen: 

That is what the surface of Jupiter would look like if Jupiter was a bowl of ramen. Marbled chashu that tastes like it has been salted and preserved. A perfect soft-boiled shoyu egg (metaphors fail me here, this egg is just really good and again, soft-boiled perfection), and gorgeous silken ramen noodle that holds up against the searing heat of the soup. And the soup: a cascade of sensation, a wall of sound (er, taste). There is a deep savoriness that works in exact counterpoint to the sharp and insistent saltiness. A layer of floating pork oil covers the whole thing, sealing the entire bowl and keeping its hellish convections currents rolling until your spoon breaks through. 

And so we are torn. While we admire Asa Ramen for its virtuosity, its complexity, its integrity, its serious and uncompromised deliciousness, we are nevertheless delighted by Gardena Ramen, by its naked simplicity, its lack of pretense and ambition, which somehow only amplifies its demure charms. Luckily for us, these two deserving ramen spots occupy different noodle soup niches -- Gardena being the perfect lunch spot for the sober light of day; Asa being the first place to pop into mind at around 1:00 am, when all you need is a strong bowl of ramen to regain equilibrium and get the world back on your side. It's good to have choices.

Nem Nuong Khanh Hoa

Nem Nuong Khanh Hoa

9738 Westminster Ave.

Westminster, CA 92684

By no means has the NSP come to an end, but we at ACM feel that it is time to expand our evaluations of Things Delicious to other types of Asian (and come to think of it, also other types of non-Asian) fare.

He, in particular, is forcing the issue, insisting that we have discovered his new "favorite" Vietnamese place  in the OC.  I, on the other hand, while with great appreciation for the new place, am still quite hesitant to let go of the old place (Luc Dinh Ky, reviewed previously).  

Nem Nuong Khanh Hoa specializes in nem nuong, a fresh roll originating from Central Vietnam similar in its construction to the Southern goi cuon, but nem nuong contains grilled pork cake rather than fresh shrimp and includes a crunchy fried rice paper in the middle.  Khanh Hoa also serves a shrimp paste-grilled-on-sugarcane version, cha tom nuong.  Both rolls are quite good and are offered in two ways: the "Made For You" form and the "Do It Yourself" form.  Depending on how you're feeling that day, you can satisfactorily have it however you'd like.  (T.I. would like them, perhaps.)  Khanh Hoa provides an ample and wide variety of greens to incorporate into your roll and all of the ingredients they provide are fresh.  

I am usually feeling lazy, and so I order them pre-made, although I'd probably be more likely to order them deconstructed if he were to roll all of mine for me, as he has impressive rolling skills and makes interesting, exceptional rolls.

Anyway, back to the rolls themselves:

- The ingredients are fresh.  I can't emphasize this enough.

- The proteins are well-made and well-seasoned.  They are flavorful enough to be described as "porky" or "shrimpy" but they're not overly meaty or dry and they remain crisp on the outside and tender on the inside even if you've left them to sit for a half hour while you eat other things.

-  The crisp rice paper inside gives the roll a dynamic texture: soft-crunch-soft-pork.  It's neither oily nor too thick and therefore doesn't distract from the roll's central focus, the meat.

- There's no hint of laziness in the preparation of these rolls.  If you get them pre-made, you'll see the nem nuong is tightly rolled.  There's neither too little nor too much of any ingredient, and the proteins are still hot inside of their soft white rice paper when the plate reaches your table.  

How lovely.

And then there's the sauce that comes with nem nuong.  It is not nuoc mam (fish sauce) or a spiced and altered hoisin sauce.  I am not entirely sure what's in it, except that I know it contains fish sauce.  Next time you see her, ask my Mom.  

We ate other things at Khanh Hoa too, actually.  Here's the run down in the order of which dishes I liked most:

1. Banh beo chen: This dish is mostly steamed rice flour with dried shrimp, dried garlic, and green onion on top served with nuoc mam.  It's been one of my favorite things since I was like, 2.  Khanh Hoa serves them steamed into individual small dishes.  I like to add nuoc mam directly into the dish and then scoop with a spoon or slurp the banh beo directly into my mouth.  They've mastered the texture issues that other places tend to have, and again the ingredients are Fresh.  Words to describe good banh beo: Salty, light, onion-y, and squishy with an occasional slight crisp from the dried shrimp.  

2. Bun tom thit nuong: This dish, grilled shrimp and pork over cold rice noodles, is served in many Vietnamese restaurants.  They make it particularly well here, as their grilled pork is nicely seasoned, their vegetables are fresh (that word again), and their noodles are slippery, but not hard.  The portions are adequate with the exception of the shrimp, in that I only had 3 in my bowl.  

3. Ap chao thap cam don: He was thoroughly impressed with this one.  It consists of a combination of seafood, other meats, and vegetables served over deep fried noodles (in this case, wide rice noodles) and smothered in a smooth gravy.  Texturally (close your eyes), it's like biting into the unknown.  Will this bite be crunchy with a piece of chewy calamari or will this bite be soft with a gravy covered tender piece of beef?  Who knows?!  Who cares?!

 

4. And lastly, there's the banh khot.  Banh khot at Khanh Hoa is very similar to their banh beo except deep fried.  Khanh Hoa's banh khot can be skipped.  It tastes like their banh beo without any other appealing qualities.  The banh is too thick and exceptionally greasy.  There is little incentive for me to order their banh khot when I have the option of ordering the banh beo.  I've had banh khot at other restaurants, and it was made with a slightly different "dough" which was lighter, still crispy but not tough, and it contained just a simple whole shrimp.  Try your first banh khot elsewhere if you've never had it. Try Khanh Hoa's if you've already had many.  

Overall, Nem Nuong Khanh Hoa is a great place.  They have excellent hot tea, the service  is always friendly, and the coffee is strong.  Oh yeah, if you're interested, they also serve noodle soup.   

Duke of Mountain Deer

Luc Dinh Ky

9812 Bolsa Avenue, Suite 100 

Westminster, CA 92683

Editor's Warning: The following review contains such words as "pastiche" and "bricoleur".  Who ever says "pastiche" in conversation?  What a jerk.

It's 1:30 in the morning and the party has degenerated in the worst possible way. Looking around you realize that when the police come around again to break this thing up, you won't want to be at the after party with any of these people. Someone has put on that Queen song for the second time and the white people are on the dance floor, elbows flying, knees bending in an uneasy syncopation. It's time to make your early exit. Grab your jacket and pretend like you're headed out front to answer a phone call or maybe smoke a cigarette. Once you're at the car, there is only one place to go -- up the 405 to Luc Dinh Ky, where every one knows your name, or at least knows what you want: Luc Dinh Ky house special rice noodle, size large, soup on the side. 

This is a proprietary noodle soup, found, as far as I can tell, nowhere else in the Bolsa-Brookhurst food supercomplex known as Little Saigon. Come to Luc Din Ky on any night from 12 to 3 am and it's packed with grandparents, nuclear families, club kids and employees from other Vietnamese restaurants. For the great majority, they are here for one thing: the house special noodle soup. The soup itself is pork based, a clear, porky concoction that is simple and rather indistinct. This is because the soup serves to merely moisten the noodles, served separately in its own bowl. The noodles are flat rice noodles sitting in a delicious sauce, a kind of sweet-savory brown gravy. Buried in this mixture of soup and sauce is a pastiche of good old noodle soup standards -- thin slices of BBQ pork, one or two steamed shrimp, fish cake, steamed chicken thigh, a hardboiled egg, fish ball, fresh, crisp choy, green onions, fried garlic -- all things to all people! 

The miracle of Luc Dinh Ky's noodle soup lies in the unexpected juxtaposition of disparate and seemingly arbitrary components. This is, for lack of a better term, a poststructuralist noodle soup. The soup is over there, the noodles are here. From spoon to mouth, we, the bricoleur, are confronted with any number of tasty permutations -- noodle, soup, fish ball, green onion; noodle, no soup, shrimp, choy; no noodle, soup, fish ball, fish cake, garlic, etc. etc. To heave everything towards the realm of the absurd, we can observe that there is no single soup here, nor is there a single soup-maker; but only the unfolding drama between hunger and freedom, between the soup-eater and the materials at hand. Each trip to Luc Dinh Ky becomes an engagement with the idea of sustenance on two levels -- the material (the question of what kind of soup you will have) and the existential (the question of what kind of soup-eater you want to be). 

In brief: Luc Dinh Ky is the only place where this guy goes for soup.

Update: Luc Dinh Ky, as excellent as it is, is no longer my favorite spot in Fountain Valley. The new spot coming soon!