21 November 2008

It's a good thing I live in SF ...

... otherwise Christa Faust might have succeeded in making me miss Los Angeles for a minute.
When I first moved to Los Angeles, I saw a hand lettered sign in a crappy little mini-mall coffee shop that read “Comida China y Donuts.” Chinese food and donuts is a standard fast food combo out here, but that homemade Spanglish sign somehow summed up the culinary soul of LA better than an army of clever foodbloggers. Humble or haut cuisine, we love our ethnic fusion chow out here.

So in the spirit of that mix-and-match dining philosophy, the intrepid Eric Stone, his pal Bill and I set out last night on a quest for Bulgogi tacos. That would be MexiKorean fast food composed of traditional, thinly sliced Korean beef in a sweet soy marinade but served carne asada style in a soft corn tortilla, with or without kimchi.

As a friend of mine says, if you look inside the kitchens of Italian restaurants, French restaurants, and even Chinese restaurants, and see who is actually preparing the food, you realize that all restaurants in California are Mexican restaurants.

I presume that this is even true of the place this story reminded me of, a little spot in downtown LA that serves “Kosher burritos” made with pastrami.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

In New York, they are all Ecuadorian, except, oddly, in cheap Mexican restaurants where they are all Chinese.

Go figure.

The Bulgogi tacos sound fantastic, though.

Kate said...

I believe, if I am not mistaken, that you discovered the Kosher burritos one summer when you were working downtown. Is that right?

Jonathan Korman said...

Just so. It was during that two week internship at CalTrans which I won in the math competition in 8th grade.