I tasted Mother Dough‘s “Baby Clam” pizza ($17) for the first time last spring while on a lady date with Diana. It was one of the evening’s specials, and though we had our eyes set on other pies, we knew that this one had to be ours as soon as the waiter finished giving us the rundown. Since then, the pizza’s popularity has propelled it from limited time offering to menu mainstay. And that’s where it should remain.
Following the tremendous success of Trois Mec, Chef Ludo Lefevre, along with partners Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook of Animal and Son of a Gun, opened Petit Trois directly next door.
Whereas Trois Mec is quite formal, requiring pre-paid reservations and featuring pre-fixe menus, its sister restaurant takes the opposite approach. Both, it must be noted, are truly fantastic places to dine.
The Astronomer and I made our way to Petit Trois for a late lunch on a Sunday afternoon. While all the seats along the kitchen-facing counter were taken at half past two, the ones along the opposite wall were free for the taking. We grabbed two stools and settled in for a feast of French bistro classics.
Seated beside us was a stuffed rooster. The chef’s got a thing for le coq.
Even with an endless parade of new restaurant openings in Los Angeles, my current obsession is an unassuming eight-year-old Vietnamese spot in El Monte. My friend Thien introduced me to Kim Hoa Hue Restaurant a few weeks ago, and I’ve already been back three times since. This place is really something dac biet.
Whereas most Vietnamese restaurants in town serve a menu of the country’s greatest hits, like pho, bun, and the like, Kim Hoa Hue specializes in Central Vietnamese fare, specifically the cuisine from Hue. As Vietnam’s former imperial capital, Hue is renowned for its sophisticated cuisine, developed by the cooks of the royal court.
On each of my visits here, my dining companions and I feasted like kings. Never missing from our spread was the Hue Combo ($6.25), a sample platter of delicate delights: banh beo (steamed rice cakes topped with shrimp and cracklins), banh nam (rice cakes embedded with shrimp and steamed in banana leaves), banh bot loc (shrimp and pork dumplings), cha (steamed pork forcemeat), and banh uot tom chay (rice sheets stuffed with minced shrimp).
While my mother and grandmother were particularly fond of the banh beo during our lunch, it’s impossible for me to choose a favorite—winners all around, I say.