In September, I'm moving to Los Angeles to go back to school. I'm not an L.A. person. I hate the Lakers, and I don't like driving. Huge, expansive, smog-clogged cities I can't wrap my head around make me want to stay home, not go out. That said, I'm warming up, doing my best. I'm fixing to buy a car and invest in less embarrassing sunglasses. A few days a week, I may even trade in my basketball high-tops for a wetsuit and a Costco surfboard. We'll see. I know Los Angeles is a special food city -- from Koreatown barbecue joints, to tamales at Grand Central Market, to Armenian chicken joint chains and Indian regional cuisine in Artesia. Immense, spread-out, far harder to make sense of, sort out, and "get" than San Francisco, a relatively tiny, practically universally food-obsessed, and media-rich place, Los Angeles poses challenges to a dedicated chaser of delicious things, particularly one accustomed to walking to his favorite restaurants. Still, if food doesn't get me out of the house, nothing will. I will be a hermit, confined to my desk, writing about whatever I see drifting past my window. I'm leaving San Francisco. I want to come back, I intend to, but I know, either way, its time for me to log a few years in a new setting. Perhaps doing so will make me appreciate this city even more.

There's nothing like leaving a place to make you want to make sure you know it before you go. For some people, that means tearing through favorite shops, haunting beloved beaches, and catching up with old friends. For me, that means eating. To that end, I've made a list of a few things I need to eat between now and September, dishes I associate with the eight years I've spent here. Importantly, I'm not eating in order to remember my favorite flavors (though I do that too). Instead, I'm trying to leave town only after taking stock of the time I've spent here, and for someone whose evolving eating habits keep time as well as any clock, keeping the hallmarks at the forefront of my mind simultaneously keep me connected to the people I've known and the places I've frequented. I'm not speaking of my favorite restaurants in San Francisco, the institutions, the destinations, the places I've gone to for special occasions. My fairly recent dinner at Coi looms infinitely larger as a meal than the countless times I, as a lunch-breaking paralegal, bought a salad at Foccacia on Sacramento St., but the fact I ate at Foccacia so often means I do have a lot of time tied up there, a period of my life, really, several years during which I ate one of the establishment's salads nearly once a week.

Tasty as it is, Ti Couz's Salade de Maree is similarly not one of the best things I've eaten in San Francisco. It is, however, one of the first things I ate when I arrived. In late 2002, my roommate, a friend from college, and I would go there for brunch, sit outside, drink Bloody Marys, and munch through massive bowls of rice, greens, capers, grape tomatoes, tiny soft scallops, baby shrimp, hard-boiled eggs, cauliflower, green beans, and strips of seared tuna. The dressing was light and lemony. Some people wake up with coffee; I prefer alcohol and acidity.

When I think of the pizza I have enjoyed here, Pizzeria Delfina is tops, particularly a special pie with green garlic and speck they ran last Spring. Nonetheless, for every molten Panna and sweet, blistered Margherita I have downed at lovely lunches and dinners with friends and family, I've eaten a dozen slices without a hint of artisanal pretense at Serrano's. Serrano's sits on 21st, not far from Valencia. Until Fall of 2004, I lived a block away, on Valencia and 22nd, and during that time, the tiny take-out spot was my go-to: Long, floppy, free-form double-slices festooned with an infinitely customizable array of toppings and cooked to order. The routine -- stepping up, asking for a slice, and rattling off the toppings you want -- encourages ordering hubris -- say, extra garlic, spinach, barbecued chicken, corn, feta cheese...

In 2004 -- or was it 2005 -- I played my first show in San Francisco, a mid-week affair at the Hotel Utah Saloon. Over the next couple of years, I played the SoMa venue at least a half-dozen times. I liked -- and still like -- the bar's long, shiny bar, miniature balcony, and prow-like opening into the tiny music room, but a lot of what made playing the Utah so fun was having a bite before the show, specifically an excellent house-made veggie burger patty on a well-toasted bun with good, crispy fries. I associate the Utah's veggie burger with getting started playing music with my best friends in San Francisco, which makes it something to remember, even if I've had plenty of great real burgers on other occasions.

Taqueria Vallarta made me switch from burritos to tacos, at least on occasion. Vallarta's tacos are tiny, inexpensive, and greasy, topped with concentrated, grill-stewed meats and soft onion strips cooked down to their essence. The meats are arranged in pinwheels along the inside of a silver, bowl-like surface. They bleed into each other, cabeza tangled up with chicken, chorizo mussing up the pastor. Tellingly, I don't think I've ever eaten these tacos for lunch or dinner, but for the three years I left at the edge of Potrero Hill, near General Hospital, they were the only snack I had.

Like a lot of San Franciscans, I shop at farmer's markets, but I've never been devoted just out of a desire to obtain nice produce directly from farmers. A lot of why I love getting up early -- even before a morning basketball game -- to poke through the stalls at Alemany has to do with the ready-to-eat wares. Yes, Alemany's row of low-profile tents can't touch the Ferry Building's well-publicized armada of awnings, but the prices there are accordingly higher, the clientele less diverse, and the vibe generally tonier and less regular-feeling. When I started going to Alemany, I ate breakfast as I shopped. Usually -- still -- I buy a cold samosa from the Sukhi's stand, and gnaw at it as I rummage through bins for unpocked sweet potatoes and fresh-looking chard. It's never the most perfectly seasoned samosa I have eaten, but for me, it trumps any muffin in town.

I look back at this list I have just written and laugh. For someone who has dashed all over town to taste new things, my regular noshes don't stray far from where I've lived. I've been all over the Bay Area, but nearly all of my abodes have been in the Mission. Even as far as fairly inexpensive eats go, I've had great Thai at Lers Ros in the Tenderloin, amazing Lao in Oakland at Vientian Cafe, soup dumplings at Yank Sing and Shanghai Dumpling King in the Richmond, a stunningly tasty torta ahogada at Mi Barrio in Fruitvale, and dosas at, well, Dosa, but when it comes to making sense of what I associate with my time here, these five entries, mundane, largely forgettable, are the tastes that came to mind. Even if they don't reflect my favorites, they do reflect the person I've been -- busy, inclined to eat for convenience, often within a few strides of my apartment. When I started writing about food in 2008, I started eating better on a regular basis. The work hasn't been lucrative by any means, but I eat richly, which reminds me: That might be why I got into it in the first place.

The Garden is a documentary film about the life and death of a community garden in Los Angeles. After the 1992 Rodney King riots which fractured the South Central Los Angeles community, the City of Los Angeles allotted a 14-acre piece of property to the community, allowing them to create farm plots for 347 families on the corner of 41st and Alameda (two miles from the location of my grandfather's restaurant). The creation of this garden made it the largest community garden in the United States.

In 2003, after the garden had been in existence for eleven years, the City sold the property to Ralph Horowitz in a secret deal, and the new owner attempted to evict the farmers. The battle went back and forth for several years before the farm was bulldozed in a dramatic action in 2006. I am simplifying this story greatly -- it involves backroom deals, corruption, the promise of a soccer field, infighting among the farmers, inexplicable court decisions, celebrities helping to save the farm and a furious rant by the landowner who ultimately refused to sell the property to the farmers at any price.

And interspersed between all of the drama to protect this property, we see a beautiful, peaceful garden where the families grow bananas, papayas, guavas, nopales, cilantro, and many other crops for their families. It's calm among the chaos that creates a perfect foil for this story.

I can't remember the last time I was so affected by a scene in a movie as I was watching the scene where the garden was destroyed after the final eviction notice was served. In front of the eyes of the farmers who had worked the land for 14 years, after innumerable fights, the garden was destroyed. Ralph Horowitz has not developed the land, and as of the time of movie publication it was still a vacant lot.

The community that developed around the garden is still going strong -- they are looking for land in the area, and have started an 80-acre farm in Bakersfield that sells to Southern California farmers markets, and provides a CSA for local customers.

I highly recommend seeing this film while it's in theaters, and I hope that it gets a wider release. The Garden is now playing at the Landmark Lumiere in San Francisco and the Elmwood Theatre in Berkeley.

Other resources:
The Garden on Facebook
Huffington Post interview with the Director
Chicago Tribune profile

I spent the Thanksgiving in Southern California with family, and on Friday we had a couple of out-of-towners who wanted to see Los Angeles. Mom and I put together a fun trip. It was by no means a comprehensive look at Los Angeles, but it provided the guests with an overview of things that we find interesting and tasty. Last week, I shared with you part of our day including Westwood Cemetery, Milk Restaurant, and Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Today, I bring you the last part of that trip.

Johnny Ramon Cenotaph

Stop #4: Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Anyone with an interest in Old Hollywood should check out this cemetery. We took an amazing tour a couple months ago which really deepened my knowledge of Hollywood of the past. In the shadow of Paramount Studios, this is a great place to take tourists. Some of my favorite grave sites to visit at Hollywood Forever are Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks and Mel Blanc (who has a headstone that says "That's All Folks"). There are also cenotaphs -- monuments erected to someone whose remains are elsewhere -- of several famous people including Jayne Mansfield, Hattie McDaniel and Johnny Ramon.

Potato Tacos

Stop #5: El Atacor Restaurant #11.

I became interested El Atacor Restaurant last year after reading Jonathan Gold's review of El Atacor's potato tacos. It's a small, thin taco that costs about seventy cents. We bought ten tacos for $6.99 and split them among five of us for a snack. I could see eating five or so for a meal, and I have seen men at the restaurant order ten for themselves. What makes this taco special is the attention that is paid to it. The potatoes are flavorful and seem to be mashed before being put into a tortilla and fried. While there is virtually no atmosphere, and the location can seem a little dicey to tourists, everything is forgotten once everyone takes their first bites of taco.

Stop #6: Mitsuwa Supermarket.

After a drive through downtown Los Angeles, and a trip back in time to see Bill's Taco House -- the restaurant that my grandfather used to own, we were ready for a sit-down meal. Our intended destination was not open yet, so we wandered around Mitsuwa Supermarket in Torrance for a few minutes. Besides being the home of Santouka Ramen which is absolutely my favorite ramen shop ever, Mitsuwa is a huge Japanese market that can be quite entertaining for tourists to visit. While mom and I did real shopping -- she bought sake and I bought soba noodles -- our guests gawked at the snack foods and the entertaining English translations.

Stop #7: Musha Restaurant.

Musha is a Southern California izakaya (a Japanese bar food restaurant with lots of beer and small plates) with outposts in Torrance and Santa Monica. It's crowded and smoky and noisy, and one of my favorite places in Southern California. I love taking guests here because it really provides another view on Japanese food. I've had great success taking people here who don't eat raw fish as most of the offerings are cooked. And it's a really great place to take vegetarians. The kitchen is willing to work with vegetarians on changing dishes, and there are automatically quite a few veggie dishes on the menu. This restaurant is a little out-of-the-box for some people, so I really like to take control with the menu, offering to order the first round of dishes and then letting guests find new dishes once they get comfortable. My favorite dishes at Musha are the tofu nuggets (which I mentioned in my Top Tastes of 2006), any of the salads, and the tuna tataki. One guest suggested we order the cheese risotto and I was really glad that he did. Who would have thought that cheese risotto served in a Japanese restaurant could be great? When our Connecticut guest -- an avowed meat and potatoes eater -- loudly requested "more tofu nuggets!" I knew that we had achieved our goal of providing a fun and unusual Southern California experience.

Milk Restaurant
7290 Beverly Blvd. (at Pointsettia)
Los Angeles
323.939.6455

El Atacor Restaurant #11
2622 N. Figueroa (at Ave 26)
Los Angeles
323.342.0180

Mitsuwa Marketplace
several locations in Southern California

Musha Restaurant
1725 W. Carson St. (at Western)
Torrance
310.787.7344

I grew up in Southern California. I lived there until I was 25, and inherited most of my food prowess from my mother. She is great at seeking out hole-in-the-wall restaurants with divine food, and we had very few bad meals during my childhood. After moving to San Francisco, my food obsessions became a little more focused, and I often have a list of new places that I'd like to try in Los Angeles. Combine my careful research with mom's, and we spend most of our time tasting our way through my days in Southern California.

Small tangent here, but our family has another...hobby...that you may find strange. We love to check out old cemeteries. We appreciate the history that can be found in cemeteries and, of late, have become quite enamored of a cemetery in Los Angeles where many, many movie stars are buried: Hollywood Forever. The history of this cemetery would take more time than I have right now, but I truly believe it should be on the "must see" list for anyone visiting Los Angeles.

I spent the holiday weekend in Southern California with family, and on Friday we had a couple of out-of-towners who wanted to see Los Angeles. Mom and I put together a fun trip. It was by no means a comprehensive look at Los Angeles, but it provided the guests with an overview of things that we find interesting and tasty.

Stop #1: Westwood Cemetery.

This tiny cemetery in Westwood is one of my favorites. I used to work at the building next door, and we would eat lunch in the cemetery among the graves of Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, Dominique Dunne, and others. New tenants include Merv Griffin, Rodney Dangerfield, Jack Lemmon, and Peggy Lee. Though our guests found it initially strange that we would be visiting cemeteries, this first stop chipped through their pre-conceptions and they were ready for the rest of the day.

Stop #2: Milk Restaurant.

After a drive through Beverly Hills and some of the Westside, we stopped at Milk for a sweet treat. I learned about Milk last year through an interview on Good Food. Bret Thompson, the owner, is making handmade sweet treats such as ice cream bon bons, drumsticks, red velvet cake, cookies and sorbets. I have only been here for sweets -- they are delicious and worth a stop. The crew ordered a drumstick, a root beer float, some ice creams and an ice cream bar as our first tastes of the day. It's fun to take out-of-towners here -- the restaurant is right next to CBS studios and has the vibe of the entertainment industry. Even if you don't recognize stars, you will hear lots of conversations about scripts, pilots, shows and other stars.

Stop #3: Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

A quick stop at Grauman's Chinese Theatre was necessary to see the kitschy part of Los Angeles. We stayed a very short time until one guest said, "I get it, this is kind of like taking tourists to Fisherman's Wharf, isn't it." An apt analogy, as locals never tour through Mann's Chinese Theatre, but tourists always want to see it. After watching tourists laying down next to George Clooney's handprints, we quickly left.

Next week, I will tell you about the rest of our Los Angeles Tour. It includes potato tacos, and one of my favorite Japanese meals in Southern California.

Milk Restaurant
7290 Beverly Blvd. (at Pointsettia) [ Map ]
Los Angeles, CA 90036
323.939.6455

I'm still in mourning for the afterhour taco stand that was once wedged in front of Taqueria Vallarta. Huddled outside, bundled against the night air and only slightly buzzed, I've enjoyed many a midnight snack. At first, I alternated my orders, enjoying beef and pork, grilled and fried, sausage and offal. Eventually, though, the tender suadero owned me completely.

I know, I know. A 49 on the health inspector's score card justifies, in the modern logic of cleanliness and public safety, the shuttering of a restaurant. I only wish they'd let the taco cart stick around. Bereft, a friend and I recently wandered up and down 24th Street, sniffing the air for potential rebound consolation. We were in luck. A few doors down from our old taco love, inside a tiny space that was a butcher shop by day, an impromptu taqueria had been set up to serve the swing shift. A thin haze of smoke drifted from the shop, and once inside, we realized that three card tables and a portable grill were the only capital investments in this brand new micro-business. No fire extinguisher or ventilation hood in sight. No menu, no music, no English, and no smiles. Still, the minimalist approach was more than justified by the perfectly charred beef. We returned a few nights later but were disppointed to find only a dark, properly locked-up butcher shop.

For all its bragging about being a culinary capital, San Francisco is woefully behind the curve when it comes to good street eats. The occasional downtown hot dog stand and farmers' market tamale stalls are just not enough for this hungry girl. Where I come from, you can't walk twenty feet without someone grilling or steaming or frying or stacking or stirring something good to eat al fresco, but here in America, fast food ordered through a squawk box from your car is apparently safer for you.

Fortunately, immigrants from lands of good food persist in their attempts to share their treats. Whispers of "you want tamales?" from parked minivans have lured me to steaming bundles of masa joy, while contraband rice cakes reach me through trusted intermediaries. In between such priceless finds, though, it's the taco truck that assuages my need for street food.

Returning from a hiking trip in Big Sur one weekend, my hubby and I were craving some filling, warming soup. With San Jose just a few miles in front of us, we plotted a minor detour from 101 around Capital Expressway up Senter Avenue to one of my favorite Vietnamese restaurants on this side of the Pacific. But before we got very far north on Senter, one stoplight to be exact, we saw a line snaking its way from a shining, white taco truck all across a parking lot to the curb on the corner. Hubby's quick reflexes pulled us right up next to Paisa Taqueria, our quest for pho and bun rieu immediately forgotten.

The best way to identify a good taco truck: a long line even in the middle of the afternoon.

Now, this wasn't your normal taco truck. This was a special tricked-out version that boasted large, squeaky clear display windows through which you could watch women patting and pressing corn tortillas to order. A trompo of glistening pork spun invitingly at the other end of the truck. A few feet away was the grill station: what normally served as a hot dog cart was lined with glowing, hardwood charcoal from Mexico. The salsa station included the usual fresh and cooked salsas, lime wedges, crisp radishes, and a delightfully creamy guacamole-style sauce. Large jars of agua frescas sparkled in the sun.

The taco truck was already passing all my usual tests, but when a patrol car rolled up into the parking lot behind us and then two cops strutted toward the line, I knew for sure. We were in for some good food. (And yes, the cops got to cut straight to the front.)

Non-stop tortilla production line.

Fornuately, the wait wasn't as long as my empty stomach feared it'd be. I ordered my usual suadera and carnitas, and then decided to try one of their mulitas, a sandwich of two grilled tortillas and melted fresh cheese. I had barely ladled and stacked my numerous cups of salsa when our food appeared in the window. Like everyone else, we scurried back to our car to eat. The tacos were exactly the way I like them: small and simple. A light sprinkling of chopped onion and cilantro were the only gilding on the meat, while the freshly made tortillas had that perfect balance of softness and toothsomeness. Gone were the soggy pile of beans; the limp, torn, stale tortillas; and the massive, messy hump of filling found in far too many so-called taquerias.

I'm not sure how often I'll get down to San Jose for a plate of tacos, even ones as good El Paisa's. I guess that means more midnight strolls sniffing the air and praying for benevolance from the street food gods.

MORE TACO LOVE

--Learn lots about tacos, including the Lebanese "sheep herder" roots of al pastor and the difference between lard-cooked carnitas, steamed cabeza, and luscious suadero at this informative guide to Mexican street tacos.

-- Spanish speakers can brush up on their taco knowledge while ingesting a bit of taco history at Mexico's official Taco Day site.

-- Anyone heading to LA should definitely compile a list of taco trucks from the impressively well-researched Taco Hunt blog.