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Life is delicious on Trump-free Tijuana getaway

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I escaped.

A lot of celebrities — and some of you — talked about fleeing the country if Donald Trump were elected. I actually did it.

As a post-election pall settled over Los Angeles, I called my daughter at college and asked if she wanted to go with me. 

“Where?” she asked.

“Anywhere,” I said. 

Trump had vilified a lot of countries, people and genders in his campaign, but first and foremost he went after Mexico and Mexicans. Tijuana, I thought, why not Tijuana? I hadn’t been there in 30 years. First, it got too seedy. Then, it got too dangerous. Then, that image stuck. 

But for years, I’d heard the food, wine and craft brew scene there had exploded. And it was close; if we hurried, we could get there before The Wall went up. If I was going to sit shivah, why not do it with some good mezcal?

We left late at night, like Israelites fleeing Pharaoh. From our home to our hotel took 2 hours and 15 minutes. Crossing the border felt like an act of defiance. You hate them? #Imwiththem.

Our unspoken rule was that we would avoid the news for as long as possible. We walked into the lobby of Hotel Lucerna at 2 a.m. It was bubbling with young people in tuxedos and fancy dresses, coming from a wedding. No one paid attention to the soundless images on a large-screen TV of Trump and Mike Pence. We didn’t, either. TJ was going to be our no-cry zone. 

The next day, it was time to shatter stereotypes. TJ wasn’t dangerous or depressing. Over the past two decades, it had boomed — thanks, NAFTA. The businesses that free trade had lured or spawned created an ambitious middle class that fed a bold food and art scene. The city isn’t even remotely pretty — but its sprawl reflects a relentless entrepreneurialism and energy, and a lot of that translates into great food.

Our first stop was the main market, Mercado Hidalgo. At Birrieria El Rincon del Oso, we passed on the eponymous goat stew and ordered perfect huevos rancheros and coffee scented with cinnamon. A mariachi band played. People sang and cheered for some occasion. They toasted with micheladas — cold beer and spicy tomato juice. It was 11 am.

The market was spotless and sprawling. It smelled of fresh guava. Vendors hawked hunks of fresh cheese with orange rinds, pomegranates, sugar cane. The market has an indoor section offering restaurant supplies: ladles the size of oars, soup pots that could hold enough matzo ball soup for an army division. That’s when I noticed something: the prices. In TJ, things cost half of what they do here. Those pots, that cheese, our breakfast — half. Every meal became a giddy case of reverse sticker shock.

I turned a corner and came face to face with one lone Trump piñata. Reality must have been sinking in by then — it didn’t amuse me. I don’t like the thought of anyone hitting the president of United States, and, yeah, he was my president. I needed a glass of wine. 

We ate lunch at Hotel Caesar, where the original Caesar salad was invented in 1924. No, it’s not a tacky tourist trap. Think Musso & Frank with better food at 50 percent off. The waiter who made our salad tableside turned out the single best one I’ve ever tasted. Two glasses of superb L.A. Cetto Cabernet from Baja (I drank both) and things were looking up.

Dinner was even more impressive. For years, I remembered a great meal along the Baja wine route at a restaurant called Laja, from chef Jair Tellez. The Tijuana native (who, despite his first name, swears he is not Jewish) opened Verde y Crema in TJ, and it is among the city’s best. Farm-to-table ingredients cooked mainly over a wood oven. My wood oven-roasted local grouper with smoky tomatoes and lentils came closer to true California cuisine than what even the best Cal-Med restaurants in L.A. put out. There’s a curated list of artisanal local mezcals, as well. And wood oven-baked banana bread pudding with mamey gelato. 

The restaurant restored us. It was packed with upscale couples and celebratory groups. If these people were worried what a President Trump would do to Mexico’s economy, they sure weren’t in mourning. 

 “We’ll see,” our Uber driver, Raziel, said to us that evening. Raziel, like most of the people we met in TJ, spoke perfect English and had a life on both sides of the border. He was getting his MBA in international business. Ending NAFTA could hurt the medical parts company he worked for during the day, but he didn’t see it happening.

 “It benefits both sides,” he said. “Trump will see.”

 “And what about the wall?” I asked.

 “I don’t care. I have a green card,” Raziel said. “But we’re not paying.”

Raziel dropped us off at La Mezcalera, a smoke-free, mellow bar that serves all things mezcal. Backlit religious icons adorned the wall. With no squinting at all, you could be at a Williamsburg or Echo Park hipster hangout. 

The next day, we took in a little news at a time, titrated, to ease our re-entry. Trump already had backed down from “a wall” and was now talking about “fencing.”

Things were looking up, or at least we were feeling better. We stopped for coffee at a La Stazione Café, ground zero of the artsy crowd. Inside, a mural proclaimed the store motto: “Coffee Is Hope.” We had two shots of hope.

We headed south for a half-hour, one last meal, at Puerto Nuevo. It was a stunning, warm day, the ocean a vast blue swirl beneath us. The Angel del Mar restaurant was full — at 11: 30 — with families drinking those micheladas, eating giant spiny lobsters or whole fried snapper with rice and beans. Mariachis played, and the couple next to us got up and began dancing. 

We toasted them, and toasted love, and toasted life, and crossed back home.

You can follow Rob Eshman’s food adventures — including pictures and recommendations from Tijuana — on Instagram and Twitter ” target=”_blank”>jewishjournal.com/foodaism.

Moroccan Candied Eggplant

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My partner David Suissa returned from a family Passover in Montreal with a gift for me from his mother, Meme Suissa: berenjenitas en dulce.

Moroccan candied eggplants are a post-Passover treat, laid out on a groaning table of sweets for the celebration of Mimouna. The last time I tasted them was in a Moroccan Jewish home in the Musrara quarter of Jerusalem in 1984 — and the flavor lingered.  Poaching the baby eggplants in sugar syrup turns them into something besides a vegetable, and other than candy.  The spice mixture — ginger, cinnamon, cloves, allspice — makes them intensely fragrant as well.  

The recipe below comes from from Dulce lo vivas/ Live Sweet: La Reposteria Sefardi by Ana Bensadon, which is also the source of my go-to olive pil chocolate mousse dessert.

How do you eat these eggplants?  With a cup of mint tea and a pile of Meme Suissa's Anise Biscuits.

RECIPE

Berenjenitas en dulce (Moroccan Candied Baby Eggplant)

Ingredients

  • 25 baby eggplants – as small as possible

  • 1.5 kilos (7-1/2 cups) sugar

  • 500 grams (1-1/2 cups) honey

  • crushed fresh ginger (according to taste)

  • 8 cloves

  • 1 stick of cinnamon

  • a few grains of allspice

 

Directions

Poke the raw eggplants all over with a fork.

Put them in a (large, heavy, enamel) casserole, cover with cold water and add the sugar.

Boil for 10 minutes, lower the flame and simmer for 2 or 3 hours over a low flame.

Remove from the heat.

Make a (little sack) with a fine cloth or gauze and put in all the spices.  Add the spices and half the honey to the casserole and return it to the flame.

When the pot begins to boil, lower the flame and simmer over a low flame for 2 or 3 hours.

Add the rest of the honey.  The eggplants have to cook for another 2 or 3 hours more, until they turn very dark.

Jonathan Gold on eating your entire city

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The first question I asked Jonathan Gold after watching “City of Gold,” the new documentary about his life, was basically this: Did you set out to change Los Angeles, or just to find the best tacos?

In the film about the Los Angeles Times food critic, the food Gold has spent a lifetime uncovering gets at least equal billing to the city in which it is cooked. 

We follow Gold into South Los Angeles, where he enjoys a fat, grilled hot dog at Earlz Grille, then east to Boyle Heights for tacos slathered in a pumpkin seed-based salsa at Antojitos Carmen, on to Alhambra for a staggering plate of Chengdu Taste lamb cubes pierced with toothpicks and drenched in cumin, and west to Attari Sandwich Shop, which Gold describes as basically re-creating a Tehran cafe from 30 years ago.

You like to eat? You will love this movie — and you will grow to love L.A.

I have extolled Gold in these pages since 1999, from the first time I read him compare a rolled South Indian pessret in a Cerritos deli to an Eero Saarinen structure, “a beige, lentil-flour pancake with the dull, smooth sheen of a freshly pressed pair of gabardine slacks, as big around as a phonograph record and bent into a kind of ’50’s-curvilinear shape.”

That was eight years before the Pulitzer Prize judges found Gold, who at the time was writing for the LA Weekly, and awarded him their prize for criticism, the first ever for a food writer.

And now comes this 90-minute documentary, the near-perfect vehicle to distribute Gold to the masses. 

The film weaves Gold’s descriptions of great L.A. meals from his Times and LA Weekly columns with stories of the people who cook the food, Gold’s life story (and quirks) and the music, architecture and life of Los Angeles. Director Laura Gabbert has managed to make one of the finest movies ever about Los Angeles, without once mentioning the movies or Malibu.

Jonathan Gold’s L.A. unfolds before us as a flat, mini-malled and traffic-choked metropolis, far more brown than blond, whose Technicolor allure explodes solely in plate after plate of food.

“That was intentional,” Gabbert told me in a Q-and-A session I led with her and Gold after a screening at the Landmark Theatre on March 12. 

“We just followed the lead in his writing. This is his Los Angeles, and it’s many of ours. This is the way we see the city.”

“City of Gold” depicts an L.A. of immigrant bounty. The most moving moments of the film, hands down, come when once-struggling restaurant owners — Thai, Latino, Ethiopian — tell how a single Jonathan Gold review brought hordes of new customers to their restaurants and transformed their lives.

The delicious irony is that these immigrants succeed by cooking the most authentic native food possible. They resist the urge to Americanize their food, and when Gold discovers and rewards their craft with his words, they become successful Americans. 

At a time when entire political movements have organized against immigrants, I wondered aloud if the movie wasn’t a full-throated retort.

“I’ve been writing about immigrant communities for 30 years,” Gold responded. “I like immigrants. I think we should pretty much let everybody in — well, maybe they should be able to cook. Donald Trump is a guy who eats a lot of white bread.”

I asked the 300 people in the sold-out audience how many had visited a restaurant because of a Jonathan Gold review. Most of the hands went up, like the many toothpicks jutting out from that Chendu Taste lamb. That’s why I asked Gold if his mission was to find great food, or to transform L.A.?

“If I’m doing anything that’s beyond writing about food,” he said, “it’s to get people in Los Angeles to be a little less afraid of their neighbors. And it’s easy to live in one part of town and not really interact with other parts. There are a lot of ways to do it. But you might not go some place to see an Indian movie or a Nigerian art exhibition, but if I tell you that someone is making a bowl of noodles like you’ve never had in your entire life, maybe you’ll make that drive.”

Gold grew up in a “highly Reform” L.A. Jewish household, where his father was “the most overeducated probation officer in the history of Los Angeles County.” The household was filled with high culture, if not great food. The links between food, tradition and family that Gold has spent a lifetime searching out didn’t exist in his childhood home.

There was one exception.

“My father definitely considered deli to be a sacrament,” Gold said.

I quickly asked Gold to name his favorite deli in a city rich with them.

“Langer’s,” he said, to wild audience applause. “The pastrami sandwich — there should be a marble statue of it in the Civic Center mall.” 

In a scene in the film that takes place in New York City, Gold and his wife, L.A. Times Arts and Entertainment Editor Laurie Ochoa, dine at an Italian restaurant with New Yorker food writer Calvin Trillin, whose books “Alice, Let’s Eat” and “American Fried: Adventures of a Happy Eater” influenced Gold, then a UCLA liberal-arts graduate, concert cellist and nascent punk rocker, to explore his food obsession through words. Why is it, I asked Gold, that so many great American food writers, from A.J. Liebling to Calvin Trillin to Gold to Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman — are Jews?

“Um, “ he semi-joked, “we think about food a lot. We’re a hungry people.”

But if a good appetite, as Liebling wrote, is the first requirement of a great food critic, Gold’s achievement goes well beyond that, as does this movie. Hunger leads to curiosity; curiosity leads to discovery; discovery leads to empathy. It is a recipe as simple as a slice of sashimi, and as beautiful.

At the Sundance Film Festival, where “City of Gold” premiered to critical acclaim last January, a viewer pointed out that it was the only doc that wasn’t “a social issue documentary.”

Yet somehow, Gold said, it is exactly that. Most journalism focuses on the things that divide us. Gold’s focus is on one of the few things that unites us.

“The idea, which is so completely obvious,” he told the Landmark crowd, “is live in your entire city. Reach out to people. Everybody has something worthwhile and delicious for you.”

“City of Gold” is screening across the city. Follow Rob Eshman's thoughts on food on Instagram and Twitter @foodaism. 

Rob Eshman is the publisher and editor-in-chief of The Jewish Journal.

Kombucha lessons

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Over the winter holiday, I got really good at making kombucha.

I did my online research, copied and pasted a basic recipe from a website called thekitchn.com, then began riffing on my own flavors. Ginger-honey, pear-lime, pomegranate, verbena-kalamansi. I picked most of the fruits from trees in our yard — they don’t call it homebrew for nothing. At Whole Foods, 12 ounces of kombucha will set you back almost $4. Homemade, it’s basically free, just a jar of tea and a little sugar.  

My wife, Naomi, was leery at first. She’d adapted easily to my pickle- and yogurt-making spree, probably because her taste buds, like the rest of her, were born and raised in Brooklyn. The yogurt she now makes from a Yonah Schimmel’s starter culture is every bit as good as Yonah’s.  

But kombucha is from Asia, not the shtetl. It is black tea and sugar fermented with the help of a slimy blob called a SCOBY, which stands for a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. (You can buy the blob on Amazon, like everything else.) The plain gallon jar on our kitchen counter looked like an aquarium full of bilge water with a dead jellyfish inside. Naomi was dubious.

And yet, after seven days of creation, the kombucha turned out delicious. Dry, sparkly and slightly sweet, with just the tiniest hint of alcohol (less than .5 percent) – a marriage of tea and Champagne. The SCOBY set loose a zoo of probiotics, as well, which seem to soothe, strengthen and calm my innards. WebMD will tell you there are no double-blind studies proving the stuff works. But kombucha has been around 2,000 years longer than WebMD.  

We poured some kombucha into a jar for my booch-loving niece and headed down to Grand Central Market to meet her. It was a Sunday afternoon, and the place was packed, brought back to life by dozens of artisan food stalls. At Wexler’s Deli, Micah Wexler was selling house-cured lox and pastrami. There was falafel on freshly baked laffa, or flatbread. The longest lines were for tacos with hand-formed tortillas and stewed meats – recipes centuries older than the hipsters who swarmed the food stalls.  

After lunch, we walked down Spring Street to The Last Bookstore. It, too, was packed. Two warehouse-size floors of new and used books and a line at the cash register that made me wonder whether print is the new digital.

On our way home, we passed a large, well-lit music store on Santa Monica Boulevard and, on a whim, pulled over. As we crossed the threshold, I noticed the motto on the sign: “The Last Record Store.” It turns out that LPs, too, are making a comeback in their own niche. The Last Record Store didn’t have only gently used albums from the ’70s, such as “Yaffa Yarkoni Sings Yiddish” and “Tov ‘L’Shir B’Yahad — Best Songs of Camp SWIG” (really!); it also had the new, shrink-wrapped double-LP soundtrack from “The Hateful Eight.”

Everything old is new again, right? We had started the day tasting an ancient drink we had learned to brew ourselves. We ate lunch at a long-dormant urban space brought back to life with good, handmade food. We shopped for books on paper and music on vinyl. And in none of these activities were we alone. 

In droves, Americans are drawn back toward the traditional, the handmade, the old. Nostalgia may be a factor. In the chaos and constant newness of modern life, it’s easy to romanticize the past. But we also go back because sometimes what was is irreplaceable, if not better.

A new longitudinal study released late last month found that the best diet is the simplest: heavy on grains and vegetables, light on meat, minimally processed. Not sugar- and/or fat-free or vitamin-enriched or fast and quick, but real. A little bit of gribenes — chicken skin and onion fried in chicken fat – is good for you. Coke and Diet Coke – bad for you. Homemade kombucha, which costs about nothing to make, is awash in probiotics and has 35 calories a serving — great for you. Because it’s the real thing.

The lesson goes far beyond food, and books, and pieces of vinyl. It’s the reason not to worry too much about the future of Judaism, as well, thinking it is in inevitable decline.

“We assume Jewish life is linear — thinking every generation is less engaged than its predecessor,” the historian Jonathan Sarna said last November at a Brandeis University conference. “But anyone who properly studies history will actually see that it is not linear at all, as is the case with any other religion. Jewish life in America is cyclical, not linear.”

By focusing on what works, what has stood the test of time, what is literally good for us, we reinvent, revive and renew the gifts of food, culture and tradition — not such a bad lesson from a simple jar of tea.

No need to reinvent the kombucha wheel. The recipe I followed to make homemade kombucha can be found here.

The kombucha SCOBY I purchased can be found here.

Rob Eshman is publisher and editor-in-chief of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal. Email him at robe@jewishjournal.com. 

Follow Rob Eshman’s food life on Twitter and Instagram @foodaism. Sign up for Jewish Journal’s curated weekly Foodaism newsletter at bit.ly/JJfood.

Breaking good: recipes for the High Holy Days

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By the time break fast comes along, I’m broken.

I’ve spent 25 hours without food or water. Much of that time I’ve been in synagogue. In the morning, I’m sure I’ll never make it, especially because God seems to wait precisely until Yom Kippur to deliver the hottest day of the year to Los Angeles.

There’s a rhythm to the fast. The first challenge is going without coffee. Make it through that affliction, and it just gets easier. Sitting in the midst of Nashuva’s services in Koreatown, there’s the music; there’s my wife, Rabbi Naomi Levy, on the bimah; family and friends surround me. I can go hours without thinking of food — a record for the year.

The dip comes when services let out for an afternoon break, from 2 to 5. That’s when I usually notice: There are a lot of places to eat in Koreatown. A lot. How much can Koreans eat, anyway?

By Neilah, the closing service, the hourslong Yom Kippur liturgy has forced me to look back over the year — over the decades — and pay special attention to where I’ve fallen short. At the same time, the ecstatic singing, my wife’s sermon — those send my emotions in the opposite direction. I am emptied out and filled up. I am exhausted and invigorated.

And by the time three stars appear in the night sky, and the fast is over — I’m not hungry. Fasting plays tricks on your appetite. You think you can’t live without food, then you realize you can, then you think somehow you have reached a spiritual place beyond hunger, beyond need — and then you almost faint.

But what to eat? That’s always been the trouble with break fasts. After going foodless for so long, I want something good — but simple. I’m also not looking to start cooking, so the food should be prepared before Yom Kippur and ready to eat right when it’s over.

That’s why the go-to break fast meal is light: smoked fish, sweets, vegetables. You want to slowly awaken your senses, not put a blow horn next to their ear.

Here you can go one of two ways. Order a lox platter or make one yourself. My favorite lox these days comes from Wexler’s Deli in downtown L.A. Like everything Micah Wexler prepares there, it’s made in-house, smoked low and slow over applewood, and sliced so thin you can read a machzor through it. Wexler’s (which is not certified kosher) has smoked fish platters that are expensive, but, hey, you’ve just saved a day’s worth of food bills.

Alternatively, smoke your own. My single best food-related purchase of the year has been a Traeger barbecue, which uses pure hardwood pellets. It doesn’t maintain a low enough temperature to make lox, which needs to be cold-smoked at around 70 degrees, but it does hot-smoke cured salmon into something more deeply flavored and substantial. Serve with an Israeli salad with yogurt and za’atar dressing and some late-summer ratatouille, and you will feel the hunger dissolve, the weight of atonement lift, and the promise and joy of a new year to come.

HOT-SMOKED SALMON

  • 3 tablespoons brown sugar

  • 1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt

  • 2 teaspoons smoked paprika

  • 1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

  • 2 pounds wild or naturally farmed salmon filet (preferably center cut)

 

Combine brown sugar, salt, paprika and pepper; rub mixture liberally onto both sides of salmon filet. Let rest on wire rack for 1 hour or more so some liquid drains. 

Heat barbecue smoker on lowest setting. Place salmon skin-side down on rack and close lid. Smoke until cooked through, about two hours. If needed, increase temperature to finish cooking. 

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

LOS ANGELES ISRAELI SALAD WITH YOGURT ZA’ATAR DRESSING

  • 2 cucumbers, peeled and diced

  • 3 tomatoes, diced

  • 3 radishes, chopped

  • 1 avocado, peeled and diced

  • 1/2 cup plain yogurt

  • 2 teaspoons za’atar

  • 2 tablespoons good-quality olive oil

  • Salt and pepper

  • 1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice, or to taste

 

In a large bowl, gently fold together all ingredients. Adjust seasonings to taste. Refrigerate until serving.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

See more recipes at jewishjournal.com/foodaism.  Follow on Instagram and Twitter.

Fried food is good for you! Spanish eggs with fried potatoes [RECIPE]

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Fried food is good for you.

I always suspected as much, and I certainly have lived my life as if it were true. Even in the dark days of the nonfat cabal, when entire lives were wasted ordering nothing but ”toast, dry” and “steam-sauteeing” skinless chicken breasts, I continued to eat falafel and fritto misto.

But, like everyone else, I got caught up in the anti-fat craze of the last two decades. When I did eat fried foods, I felt like I might as well be lighting up a Camel.

Now, a few things have happened to allow those of us who eat butter, full-fat yogurt and the occasional latke to come out of the closet.

The Sept. 2 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine reported on a now-famous study that showed obese individuals lost more weight on a low-carb, high-fat diet, than on a high-carb, no-fat diet. Levels of “good” HDL cholesterol increased among the low-carb eaters as well. 

Science proves (with a few caveats) what has always struck me as obvious: It’s why French women stay thin while eating butter and cream. It’s why CrossFit gurus pound down steaks and kale and MCT oil, not low-fat SnackWell’s. The key, though, is not to replace those carbs with cheap proteins and bad fats.

“Research shows that a moderately low-carbohydrate diet can help the heart,” a Harvard School of Public Health report said, “as long as protein and fat selections come from healthy sources.”

That means olive oil. Real butter. Nut oils. Organic cream. Grass-fed beef. And not gobs of any of it. In moderation.

I found further evidence in Diane Kochilas’ new cookbook, “Ikaria: Lessons on Food, Life, and Longevity From the Greek Island Where People Forget to Die,” which I recently wrote about on my Foodaism blog.

On Ikaria, people live into their ninth and 10th decades of life, far out of proportion to the rest of humanity (including the rest of Greece), and they do so with no instances of Alzheimer’s or other types of dementia. 

Lifestyle plays a role, of course. But Kochilas, a native Ikarian, focuses on diet: The very old Ikarians eat very little meat (mostly goat and pig), a lot of local greens and vegetables, wine (three glasses per day) and a variety of fried foods.

Fried zucchini pancakes. Pumpkin fritters. Tiny fried fish. And the occasional fried dessert. On that, Ikarians live to be 90, 100, with all their marbles.

This has got to come as good news as we celebrate Chanukah,

The common wisdom is that we eat fried foods on Chanukah to symbolize the oil that lasted for eight days in the Temple. But I have a different theory. Chanukah is a celebratory holiday — and fried foods make us happy. Simple as that. No one in the history of food ever said, “Bummer, I have to eat a doughnut.” You can’t say that about matzah. 

Because Chanukah goes for eight days,  it’s good to have more than latkes in your fried- food repertoire. Below is a breakfast recipe  I like to make during the holiday. Actually, it’s two separate recipes — one for eggs, one for potatoes — that can easily be combined into one dish. Both are simple, both use olive oil for frying. And the truth is, I make them both all year round. Because, yes, fried food is good for you.

SPANISH EGGS WITH FRIED POTATOES 

This is dramatic and delicious. It’s as simple as cracking a fresh egg into a bath of hot olive oil. Stand back in case of splatter, and have your spoons and plates at the ready.  

  • 3 baking potatoes

  • 1 cup olive oil

  • Salt and pepper

  • 6 eggs

  • Smoked paprika

  • Salsa or shakshuka sauce (optional)-recipe follows

 

Peel the potatoes; rinse, towel dry. Cut into uniform 1/4-inch dice. Heat olive oil in a large skillet — cast iron is best. The oil should be about 1/4 inch deep. When very hot but not smoking, add potatoes. Stir to coat with oil. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. Let them get good and brown on all sides. Remove to a plate with a  slotted spoon, draining well. Season with salt and pepper.

Reheat oil or use fresh oil if necessary. Crack eggs, one at a time, into the well of a large serving spoon. Lower spoon to the oil, then gently turn and slip egg into the oil. Repeat with remaining eggs. They will bubble and spurt. Be careful, but don’t be a chicken.   Gently ladle some hot oil over tops of eggs, basting them until they become opaque and puffy. After they are set, with the yolks still runny — a matter of a minute — remove with a slotted spoon and place on a plate.

Put a scoop of potatoes and two eggs on each plate. Dust with smoked paprika and nestle with good salsa or homemade romesco Sauce.

Makes 3 servings.

SHAKSHOUKA SAUCE

This is a way to get the flavor of shakshouka on your eggs without making actual shakshouka.

 

  • 4 ripe tomatoes, chopped

  • 1 medium onion, chopped

  • 1 small green bell pepper, chopped

  • 2 cloves garlic

  • 1 T. tomato paste

  • 1/2 t. hot or mild paprika

  • 1/4 t. chili flakes or I T. diced fresh jalepeno

  • 1/4 c. olive oil

  • 1 t. ground cumin

  • 2 fresh bay leaves

  • salt and fresh ground pepper

 

In a medium skillet, heat olive oil.  Add onion, peppers, garlic, cumin, chili flakes, paprika and bay leaves and saute until soft.  Add tomatoes and tomato paste book over high heat, stirring, until bubbly.  Turn down heat, cover and simmer 15-20 minutes.  Taste.  Add salt and pepper to taste.   Spoon over eggs.

The death-defying pomegranate tree fruits again!

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I’ve written about terminally ill children, three-legged abandoned mules, terror victims, parents whose children were killed, Holocaust survivors and battered wives, but I have never received such an outpouring of sympathy and concern as when I wrote about my pomegranate tree and how I needed to cut it down.

This was back in January. Our home had been invaded by something called powder post beetles, whose appetite for wood makes termites look finicky. The only way to get rid of them was to tent our home for a week, fill it with four times the usual dose of gas, and inject more chemicals around the perimeter. 

My beloved pomegranate tree fell just within the zone of death. I suspected it would wither or be poisoned. In any case, the beetles are attracted to moisture, and a parade of mold inspectors warned us not to water within three feet of our foundation — ever.

So I wrote a farewell to my favorite tree: How I’d planted it as a sapling, how it grew to give off hundreds of pounds of fruit, how I charted the waning of summer and the coming of the High Holy Days by the redness of the fruit, how I used its boughs to decorate our sukkah. I cannot tell a lie: It was going to break my heart to chop it down.

And, it turns out, not just mine. Readers rose up against the idea.

 “Please do not cut your tree!” screamed one email, “I promise, you will regret it big-time! Lots of other ways to kill mildew. I am a crazy old woman and in love with pom trees!”

Another woman wrote, “Your article grand-slammed into my heart.  Can’t you simply destroy a few roots and carefully re-plant or re-pot it?”

Several people offered alternate solutions, and a man who spent years as a landscape designer offered to come out of retirement and redo our backyard, for free — if I would spare the pomegranate.

For a month, one reader signed all her emails to me, “Hope you and the pomegranate tree are doing well.”

There were many more letters, and comments, and, every day, people approached me in person with puppy dog eyes, saying how sad they were about my tree.

How to explain the depth of the affection? Deep down, we humans know our very lives depend on trees. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa once told me that he got endless grief because he didn’t fulfill his promise to plant 1 million trees, though he did plant a helluva lot. People take their tree love seriously. Every tree is a tree of life.

I told the exterminators to work around the tree and told the mold inspectors to go work over another client. I gave the pomegranate a drastic pruning and hoped for the best.

The tree lost its leaves. Spring came. Leaves sprouted. Fruit formed and ripened. At Rosh Hashanah, I picked one that had already burst. My wife and I said the Shehecheyanu blessing and devoured it — amazing. I wanted to cry.

It’s going to be a good Sukkot.

A POMEGRANATE SALAD FOR SUKKOT

This recipe, from the Israeli chef Erez Komarovsky, showcases fresh pomegranate seeds.  Komarovsky lives in northern Israel, close to the Lebanon border, and his food takes advantage of local Galilee ingredients. To capture his flavors, gather as many ingredients as you can from farmers markets and local produce sections.  If you need pomegranates, call me.

  • 1 cup parsley leaves

  • 1 cup light basil leaves taken from the tops of stems

  • 1/2 cup young arugula leaves

  • 5 small radishes, sliced

  • 1 cup pomegranate seeds

  • 1 teaspoon wildflower honey

  • 2 tablespoons fresh-squeezed lemon juice

  • 1 tablespoon natural pomegranate syrup without sugar

  • 1/2 cup fine olive oil

  • Coarse salt to taste

  • Freshly round black pepper to taste

  • 1/3 cup almonds, roasted and broken (with a mortar and pestle) 

Rinse and dry the parsley, basil and arugula leaves. Put them into a bowl.

Add radishes and 1/2 cup pomegranate seeds. Add honey, lemon juice, pomegranate syrup and olive oil; season with salt and pepper.

Add roasted almonds and remaining 1/2  cup pomegranate seeds. Serve promptly.

Makes about 4 servings.

 From “Erez Komarovsky Cooks and Bakes,” by Erez Komarovsky (Keter, 2011, translated from the Hebrew by Rob Eshman). 

What Roy Choi can teach the Jews

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I was sitting in Commissary, Roy Choi’s new restaurant on the pool deck of the Line Hotel in Koreatown, thinking about the secret of Choi’s success. 

It was my fourth time in the restaurant in the hotel Choi helped resurrect out of the dry bones of an abandoned Radisson.   

Choi transformed the place. He plopped down a giant fantasy of a greenhouse, filled it with rustic chic decor, and fashioned a menu that incorporates his beloved Korean ingredients with California, Mediterranean and Mexican flavors. The food is delicious; the place is always packed. These days, people even swim in the pool.

Choi revels in the hybridness, the mixed-ness of Los Angeles. Born in Seoul, he came of age in an L.A. that offered the tastes and sounds and colors of some 200 cultures, the most diverse city on the planet.

One fateful day, Choi combined the flavors of Korean barbecue with salsa roja on a soft tortilla, and the Kogi taco was born — and, along with it, the food truck craze that revolutionized American street food.

“There it was, Los Angeles on a plate,” he writes of that first Kogi taco in his new autobiography, “L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food.”  

“Maybe it wasn’t everyone’s L.A., but it was mine. It was Koreatown to Melrose to Alvarado to Venice to Crenshaw crumpled into one flavor and bundled up like a gift.”

How did he do it? Not just by blending but by standing out. And I’m not talking, of course, just about tacos.  

Last month, a new business and website launched, The Mash-Up Americans (mashupamericans.com), to celebrate the multiethnic, multicultural America and the fact that we’re not just meeting and mixing, we’re mating. Founded by Brooklynite Amy Choi (no relation) and Angeleno Rebecca Lehrer, the site reflects the reality that the fastest- growing category for race on the U.S. Census is “mixed.” The number of people who reported a mixed-race background grew by 32 percent — to 9 million — between 2000 and 2010. The single-race population increased by just 9.2 percent.

Amy Choi describes herself as a Korean-American married to a Colombian-Mexican-American, and as a mom to “a feisty Korombexican-American.” Lehrer is a self-described “Salvadoran-Jewish-American married to an American-American” — though her Salvadoran side is Jewish by way of Holocaust refugees. In any case, if their children don’t check the box marked “mixed,” the odds are their children’s children will.

“Increasingly,” Census official Nicholas Jones told Pew Research, “Americans are saying they cannot find themselves” on census forms.

Of course in the grand sweep of human evolution, mash-up makes the world go round. That’s why we Jews look more Belgian than Bedouin. Cossacks, Berbers, Templars and others splashed in our gene pool.  After all, is a Kogi taco all that different from a pastrami sandwich, which mashed together basturma, a dried meat that originated in Ottoman-era Turkey, with Eastern European rye?

None of this should surprise us, but it does pose a challenge. In an increasingly mashed-up world, how do we know what our roots are? How do we ground our children in an identity? How does “mashed” not become just “mush”?

Roy Choi has succeeded precisely because his work is founded in his Korean-ness. His embrace of his traditions, his flavors, is what made him unique — it’s what he brought to the party. 

Identity is, after all, not just a funny-sounding last name on a family tree. It is the things that name represents. Not just the foods people cooked, the stories they told, but most important, the values they lived by. What are the bedrock values that a strong Jewish identity brings to the mash-up? The ones that may get mixed but are too valuable to lose?  

This same week, I came across “Judaism’s 10 Best Ideas: A Brief Guide for Seekers,” by Rabbi Arthur Green. At just 100 pages, it speaks to members of the Mashed-Up Generation whose attention span has been calibrated by BuzzFeed.

But Green is a serious scholar, a kabbalist, and he doesn’t reduce, he distills. He manages to deliver what for me is the essence of Jewish teaching, the key values that shape a Jewish identity.

They are: 1) Joy. 2) The fact that we are all created in God’s image. 3) The idea of halacha — walking after a divine path. 4) Tikkun olam — the desire to heal the world. 5) Shabbat. 6) Teshuvah — our capacity for change; 7) Torah — the wrestling with text. 8) Love of education. 9) The embrace of life and death. And finally, 10) The idea of one God, the unity of all things. (I think he missed humor, but no one’s interested in a Top 11 list.)

Many of these values are not unique to Judaism. But taken together, they are what being Jewish stands for — our stories and rituals convey them, our holidays and traditions elevate them. And while we will inevitably blend and mix and mash in the free market of American love and ideas, we need to cherish this identity, nurture it, and offer it to our children and to others, bundled up, as Roy Choi would say, like a gift. 

Rob Eshman is publisher and editor-in-chief of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal. E-mail him at robe@jewishjournal.com. You can follow him on Twitter @foodaism.

A High Holiday Restaurant Guide to Koreatown

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Each year my wife Rabbi Naomi Levy holds the High Holiday services for her outreach congregation Nashuva at the large, round ecumenical Church of Religious Science in Koreatown, at Berendo and 6th St.  Over a thousand people attend.  They ask my wife, “Can I really change?”  “Can I overcome my challenges?”  “Can I achieve my dreams?”

And they ask me, “Hey, where can we eat?”

You tell me which is the more urgent question. 

Most Nashuvites come from the Westside, and nothing boosts  the holy, meditative spirit of the holidays like finding a place for dinner in Koreatown so you can beat the eastbound traffic on the I-10.

Since the Jewish Journal offices have always been in Koreatown, I’m the person to ask. There’s dinner Rosh Hashanah evening, pre-fast dinner on Yom Kippur, and for those who are so inclined, after service lunches and dinners (and drinks) in the neighborhood.

Two big caveats here. The first is that there are no kosher restaurants in Ktown. Just the opposite: for the strictly kosher, Koreatown is the Red Light district.  Just how bad is it? There are restaurants that specialize in live seafood sushi, where the chef sets a living, squirming shrimp or octopus on your plate and you’re expected to swallow it as is.  What’s that like?  I have no clue, ask Jonathan Gold.  I’m not kosher, but I draw the line at eating things trying to crawl out of my mouth.

Second, Korean food is heavy on garlic, chili and vinegar.  Keep that in mind when you’re on your way to an event where you’ll be sitting really close to the people you love for a couple of hours.

But if you are a bit adventurous,  kosher-style, or treyf-light, Koreatown is one of the great food neighborhoods in the USA.  You are in luck—being able to combine the uplift of Nashuva or other  nearby services (Wilshire Blvd. Temple, or Ohr HaTorah, or Temple Israel of Hollywood) with the opportunity to leave the Ahi Caesar and Turkey Cobb confines of the Westside and taste some of the great foods of LA.  Good food, served with hospitality and warmth—for me that is always a spiritual experience.

So, where do we eat? My picks are below.  It is in no way the Wiki of Ktown.  For that click on the Yelp link at the end, and you’re on your own.  There are more restaurants per square block in Koreatown than any other part of Los Angeles.  I haven’t tried them all, and I’m not listing places I haven’t been. I’m also focusing on places close to 6th and Berendo, in alphabetical order (though by chance my favorite is first, and it’s not Korean). 

Here goes (and please email me or comment below with your own suggestions/corrections):

My Favorites

Anima


698 S Vermont Ave


Los Angeles, CA 90005

(213) 738-0799

How fitting that my top High Holiday pick actually means, “soul” in Italian. This happens to be my favorite Italian restaurant in all LA, much less Koreatown.  Giuseppe Musso, the Rimini-born chef of Amarone and, formerly,  All’Angolo,  is at the stove.   Be nice and patient to him, and he will make you feel like you’re at his mother’s house. His pastas are homemade, his pizza, is hand-stretched, his Bolognese made the co-owners of Capo swoon when I brought them there for lunch.  If fried zucchini blossoms are on the specials boards, order them.  If you lived in a quiet neighborhood in any great Italian city, the local place would be a lot like Anima.  That it’s two blocks from my office in Ktown is a small blessing.  One downside: no liquor license, yet.

Beer Belly (and other bars)

532 S Western Ave

Los Angeles, CA 90020


http://beerbellyla.com

May not allow children–CHECK.  But good gastropub food and beer, open after 5 pm. 

There are dozens of bars including several hip new ones, in the area.   Beer Belly is among the new crop, which includes Biergarten and Lock and Key. Brass Money is an old standby (post-atonement karaoke, anyone?) along with The Prince, which serves Korean sports bar food.  I left the bars off this list because they are more for drinking and snacking—but if you want to start the new year with OB and duck fat fries, be my guest. 

Bob’s Café

3130 Wilshire Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90010

(213) 387-6554

This place gets my vote as the most deceptive restaurant in Los Angeles.  You think it’s just an office sandwich joint at the bottom of a nondescript building.  But Bob and his lovely wife Kurdia are Kurds from northern Syria (yes, there).  They and their efficient sons run a place that has northern Syrian food to rival that of other local greats like Marouch.  Try the lentil soup with Aleppo pepper, the hummus, kebab, and Kurdia’s homemade kibbeh.  Of course, you can also get a turkey sandwich.  A few seats, and a TV set tuned to CNN for atmosphere, but you'll go back for the soup and kibbeh.

BCD Tofu

3575 Wilshire Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90010

(Wilshire and Ardmore)

Open 24 hours. Really clean and efficient and inexpensive. The organic tofu soup—which is the reason to go here– has a meat broth so beware.
 But they have jop jae noodles that are veggie and excellent tofu salad, as well as BBQ chicken, etc.  

Chinese House


3280 W 6th St


Los Angeles, CA 90010

(213) 385-9799

You want the full American immigrant experience?  I got your dive right here.  Take an honest hard-working Korean family, set them up on a street corner in LA, and watch them work their asses off turning out one solid Korean-inflected Chinese dish after another, day after day, until their children graduate Harvard.  I’ve been to Chinese House a dozen times for lunch.  Cheap, friendly and very fresh. 

Chosun Galbi

3330 W Olympic Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90019

Phone number

(323) 734-3330

Not my favorite BBQ, but clean and popular with the Westside crowd. Bulgogi and other dishes are all at a high level. By the way, there are many All You Can Eat BBQ places in Ktown.  You pay one price per person per table, and as much lower-quality meat as you want comes out of the freezer.   I've tried them and generally you get what you pay for.  

Dan Sung Sa

3317 W 6th St

Los Angeles, CA 90020

Deep Ktown—just across the street from Nashuva’s services.  A noir-ish, dark but often packed place (at night), this bar also has way above average Korean bar food. Skewers, wings, soups—that sort of thing.

El Cholo

Western and Olympic

A short drive away and an old standby.  What can I say, it’s not going to make anyone’s top ten list, but it is convivial, good for large groups and dependably Mexican-American. Plus many many years ago they gave me a paycheck on their catering team, so I’m loyal.

EMC Seafood and Raw Bar 

3500 W 6th St
  Ste 101
 

Los Angeles, CA 90020 



(213) 351-9988 
emcseafood.com

Crowded at times, always popular, especially at Happy Hour.  Good for seafood (of course).

Escala

3451 W 6th St

Los Angeles, CA 90020

A new South American place with a limited menu of curated dishes and drinks.  Very pretty and comfortable.  Try the whole fish with garlic sauce and a tropical salad.  Escala is in the old Chapman Market complex, one of LA’s prettier buildings, though a parking nightmare.

Gualeguetza

3014 W Olympic Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90006

Phone number

(213) 427-0608

The temple of Oaxacan gastronomy in LA is a short car ride away or a long stroll.  Moles as complex as Mexican politics, and lighter tlayudas and other regional specialties as well. Spacious and friendly too, with live entertainment and a constant sense of celebration.   This place also has the city’s first mezcal bar, with dozens of hard-to-find varieties of tequila’s far more interesting cousins.  The bartenders will hold your hand (metaphorically speaking) and walk you through what silver tequila drinkers have been missing. Go easy.

HMS Bounty


3357 Wilshire Blvd


Los Angeles, CA 90010


(213) 385-7275

Moderate prices and nothing more or less than moderate food.    Dark bar atmosphere with a nautical theme, a throwback to when Sinatra ate here (he was a co-founder).  Steaks, fish, chicken and martinis are good, and the service staff  is friendly and familial.  Want more than steamed veggies and a plain potato with your plain grilled meat?  Where do you think you are, Gjelina?

Jun Won
 

3100 W 8th St
  Ste 101
 

Los Angeles, CA 90005 



(213) 383-885

Jun Won is more graduate school Koreatown food.  Slightly hidden, a largely Korean clientele (but a friendly,  American-Korean owner) and one of the best dishes of steamed cod you’ll have.  Steamed cod of the gods.  Excellent banchan and seafood pancake as well.

King of New York Pizza Pub  

3281 Wilshire Blvd
 

Los Angeles, CA 90005
 

(213) 389-3500
  konypizzeria.com

Despite the tone deaf acronym (don’t these people watch YouTube?) KONY  pizza is the best in Ktown after Anima, and there is a good selection of beer.  Don’t expect anything great in the salads or sides department.  Plenty of space—check out the back room.

Kobawoo 

698 S Vermont Ave


Los Angeles, CA  90005


(213) 389-7300

Next to Anima.  When Yotam Ottlolenghi came to LA for the first time, he told me this was the only restaurant on his list.  He wanted to try the acorn noodles, and you will too.  A rare vegan Ktown treat, cold and soothing.  Kobawoo—which is always crowded—also specializes in seafood pancake.

Marouch

4905 Santa Monica Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90029

(323) 662-9325

This is two miles from KTown, but on the way if you come via the 101.  Still some of my favorite Middle Eastern food in LA, with Lebanese wine to go with it.  If you can’t stomach Korean, this is a good place to stop on the way to shul.

Novel Café


3760 Wilshire Blvd


Los Angeles, CA 90010


(213) 388-3383

In the Wiltern building. You can get salads, entreees, sandwiches…. very decent, comfortable and safe, like Novel Cafe in Westwood, but larger.

Parks BBQ

955 S Vermont Ave


213-380-1717


High quality, not cheap. Many consider it the best.  I’m in the Soot Bull Jeep camp.

Pot/Commisary/Café


3515 Wilshire Blvd


Los Angeles, CA 90010


(213) 368-3030

The new restaurants in Roy Choi’s empire are at his newly made-over LINE Hotel.  For years I ducked in to this place when it was a cast-off Radisson– I could write my columns in utter silence because the hallways had more ghosts than guests.  Now it is hip, beautiful and happening.  Like his fellow Korean-American innovator David Chang, Choi isn't satisfied doing the nicest possible versions of peasant food, which is what comes out of a lot of high-end roasting ovens in LA (and not that there's anything wrong with that).  His food is playful, packed with flavor and constantly new.  Downstairs the bar serves until 5 pm.  A brief menu features tuna sandwiches, burgers, shrimp cocktail, LA chowder, grilled cheese– bar food.  But the chowder comes in a Stanley Thermos (piping hot) and the main courses come nestled in dumpling steamers, wrapped in kitchen towels.   As for  Commisary, it  is a fully realized flight of fancy– a greenhouse on top of a once-neglected pool deck, removed from the city and deep in the heart of it.  Don't rush a meal here. The menu is pictograms– point to a drawing of a scallop, sea bass,  steak or asparagus, and the waiter will describe how the kitchen is making it that day, and you will not be disappointed.  Scallops come seared in an avocado/garlic/tomatillo cream.  The tomato salad is confit heirloom tomatos with nectarine and jalepeno slices.  The finest salad of a long hot summer.  You'll want a cocktail too.  If Line is the epicenter of the Ktown revival, Commisary is the neighborhood's first non-Korean destination restaurant. 

Seongbukdong  

3303 W 6th St


Los Angeles, CA 90020
 


(213) 738-8977

Right across from Nashuva’s location, in a minimall, small and crowded, with the best Korean braised short ribs in LA.  Bar none. Pricey,  but…wow.

Soot Bull Jeep


3136 W 8th St


Los Angeles, CA 90005


Your clothes will smell like smoke and garlic. They use real charcoal, and high quality ingredients.  Their banchan include a spinach salad that I find addictive. No kosher or vegetarian option. My favorite Korean BBQ in a city full of them.

Taylors Steak House


8th and Ardmore


Dashiell Hammett ate here, along with every USC alum of a certain generation. Dark. Clubby. Great martinis, steak and grilled fish. Expensive. 

Inexpensive and/or Fast Food

Chipotle


3183 Wilshire Blvd


Los Angeles, CA 90005


(213) 884-4094

At the corner of Vermont and Wilshire.  This block on either side of the street features Coffee Bean, Starbucks, a sub shop, one of those frozen yogurterias, a mediocre Japanese place (Wasabi) and a few other Metro subway-stop-close fast food places.  Cross Vermont and there’s  a Denny’s.  No one will judge.

Dino’s Chicken

2575 W Pico Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90006

Dinos has a few more seats than Pollo a la Brasa, and the chickens here are cooked El Pollo Loco style on a grill.  They come with a mound of fries that could carb-load you for a marathon.

Pollo a la Brasa

764 S Western Ave

Los Angeles, CA 90005

Phone number

(213) 387-1531

My theory is this place breaks every code in the books, but that the city inspectors give it a pass because the food is so damn good.  It’s a dive with just a few tables, bus stop adjacent (A “No Free Restroom” sign is the  décor).  Garlic and chili- rubbed chickens spin over a roaring fire of cured oak.  Everything else is commentary. Inexpensive, fast and maybe among the top three chickens you’ll eat in your life. In Mexico and Peru places like this are a dime a dozen, but here in LA, this place is a rare gem.

For a complete listing of restaurants in the area, click here:

YELP!

Again, please email me or comment below with your own suggestions/corrections.  Shana Tova!

Koreatown Lunch

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At night Koreatown is Manhattan– packed restaurants, backed up valet stands, lines out the doors to even the diviest BBqs.  By day, it's a different story.  You might be the only customer. You'll see the families behind these family-run places.  You'll see the servers plucking the stems off a haystack of sweet peas piled on a dining table. Or you'll see this: the daughter sitting alone in a place that by midnite wll  be crammed full of hipsters.  She'll be watching educational cartoons in English.  Her immigrant parents will be peeling a pile of fishy-smelling brown roots, getting ready for the dinner rush.  And the girl?  She'll be going to medical school.

I took this picture when I had a lunch meeting at Yan Bian on 3rd and Western Friday afternoon.  We were the only customers. We let the owner bring us three of her favoirte Korean-Chinese dishes, all of them spiked with pointy red chilis.  My favorite things: Spicy chicken. Beef with mushrooms and chili.  And this picture.