Gastronomy Blog by Cathy Chaplin

Now Closed

17 Jun 2013

Weekend Breakfast at Good Girl Dinette – Los Angeles (Highland Park)

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Good Girl Dinette’s Chef Diep Tran loves breakfast, especially ones taken leisurely without consideration for time or caloric intake. She’s been toiling behind the scenes, crafting and tweaking her breakfast menu for the past year now, and she recently rolled out the goods for all to devour and crave.

“The menu for me is a snapshot of what it felt like to grow up in the ’80s, in Cerritos, being Vietnamese,” explained Diep in a recent Q&A. Among her sources of inspiration for the new menu were “Breakfasts of porridge, pho, and fried eggs splashed with Maggi; Lucy Maud Montgomery, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and MFK Fisher books from the library; weekend cooking shows on PBS.”

As Diep was developing the menu and testing recipes, The Astronomer and I served as eager guinea pigs as she perfected her Red Boat-cured bacon, Croque-Garcon, and toasted pound cake.

After months of anticipation, we finally sat down this morning to experience the perfectly edited menu in its entirety. And it was well worth the wait!

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Downtown

15 Jun 2013

L.A. Weekly’s Tacolandia: A Sneak Preview with Mo-Chica, Tamales Elena & Coni’Seafood

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My friend Bill Esparza of Street Gourmet L.A. is curating a taco-fueled food fest next Sunday, June 23rd called Tacolandia. Held from noon until 5 PM at the Hollywood Palladium, Tacolandia promises a stellar line up of the best taqueros from Los Angeles, Orange County, and Baja (a complete list of participants below). In addition to terrific tacos, and lots of them, Tacolandia will include music and a tequila garden! I can’t think of a better way to spend $20 and a Sunday afternoon, really.

Last Saturday, Bill coordinated a taco tour for a group of friends and food writers to highlight three of Tacolandia’s talents. This cross-town jaunt took us to Downtown Los Angeles, Watts, and Inglewood, where each restaurant provided a sneak peek of the dish they’ll be preparing for the event.

The first stop on the #Tacolandia media blitz was Ricardo Zarate’s Mo-Chica for a Peruvian-Mexican mashup.

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Restaurant Review

13 Jun 2013

Marugame Monzo – Los Angeles (Downtown)

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I fell hard and fast for Marugame Monzo’s made-from-scratch udon noodles. As a testament to my infatuation, I haven’t dined on sushi or ramen while visiting Little Tokyo since the shop opened a few months back. It’s been pure, unadulterated affection for these chubby darlings from the start.

According to a write up by Miles Clements on the subject, the man behind the magnificent noodles is the restaurant’s general manager Kenji Tateishi. Marugame Monzo is his first stateside restaurant after training in Japan.

The process of transforming a hunk of tough dough into slurp-able strands is simply mesmerizing. The glass-encased workshop guarantees that nearly every seat in the house has a stellar view of the magic in progress from start to finish.

I was seated near the front door on my first visit and at the bar on my second. The latter’s so-close-I-can-almost-taste-it access was much preferred.

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