It's here, it's here!

Los Angeles and I have a love/hate relationship. It may be the urban hood I call home, but it doesn't often feel welcoming. This city will Beat. You. DOWN, but then give you a little love tap on the rear, just so you know there's no hard feelings.

One thing Los Angeles has? Food. Lots and lots of food. And the king of the castle: Mr. Jonathan Gold, meandering though the seedy back alleys of this metropolis, scouting the next big taco. To introduce his latest annual list of the 99 Essential Restaurants in L.A., he writes:

"The best enchiladas I've ever tasted were made by a woman whose makeshift stand occasionally pops up around the corner from a more established stand whose location I can never quite figure out. The most celebrated young chef in Los Angeles imports his restaurant into a different kitchen every couple of months, like a soufflé-happy hermit crab inhabiting a new shell. At one of the most popular new places in town, your dinner may be prepared one night by one of the most famous chefs in Mexico; the next by a moonlighting lackey from a place you wouldn't eat at with somebody else's mouth.

Is the restaurant the empty taqueria where the cook watches Lucha Libre between customers, or is it that taqueria's truck out in the parking lot, with lines stretching down the block? Is reality the hamachi with pig's foot that you eat at a famous restaurant, or is it that same hamachi with pig's foot handed over with a smile at a charity benefit buffet?
The mantra of Local, Seasonal, Sustainable, Organic has become so persistent in Los Angeles, and the crush of chefs at the farmers market is so pervasive, that the menus at some restaurants seem almost identical to one another at certain times of the year, and completely different from their own menus in spring. Heraclitus once wrote that it is impossible to step in the same river twice. In Los Angeles, it can be nearly impossible to eat in the same restaurant twice.

This is, I believe, what the economists call creative destruction. And it is not impossible here to experience extremes — restaurants that are born and die in a single evening; restaurants in suburbs so distant that they may as well be theoretical; restaurants so hard to get into that they may not actually exist outside of blogs.
Los Angeles is where the modern restaurant was born, the good, the bad and the ugly of it, and we're too far gone to stop now.

Read The List here, then meet the master, here.

DineLA October 2009

FYI, my J. Gold Essential Blog Part 2 has been updated to reflect those restaurants on the J. Gold 105 that are also participating in DineLA Restaurant Week 2009.

Check it out here.

The Essential Blog Part 2: 99 err...105 in '09

**9.17.09** Updated- those restaurants on the J. Gold list that are participating in Dine LA Week have been noted. Click here to see a list of all participating restaurants and their special, Dine LA week menus- valid October 4-9 and 11-16.

Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic, Jonathan Gold (@thejgold on Twitter), of the LA Weekly, published his updated list of the 99 Essential Los Angeles Restuarants on Thursday. That afternoon, I spent the better part of an hour tracking down a west side newspaper box still stocked with this essential edition of the weekly Los Angeles rag.

Sure, I could have read the list online, but this was equivalent to the difference between casually downloading the latest single or being first in line at Best Buy the morning of your favorite band's newest release.

Having The Hard Copy somehow validated my J. Gold obsession. And because I dug through the bottom of the box to get the most pristine copies, (knowing full well I would never need all four of them, but would love and cherish one with the same pleasure my younger sister relishes on her prized, "old school" copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), I have somehow proven my devotion to the gods of journalism. They are sooo gonna find me a job.

But I digress. Gold writes of food with delicate, poetic passion and grace. Here's to another year of eating my way through LA, GoldStyle.

The Title: A Sidenote I numbered this list after typing it out...and came up with 105 Essential LA Restaurants. I checked it twice against the LA Weekly's website and couldn't seem to find a mistake. Thinking perhaps this had something to do with the accidental omission of the beginning of the list in print (see LA Weekly's editor's note here), I went to the source.

"Has to do with the missing As: we knew the count was short, but not why; added some. Once in print, hard to rescind," said the man himself, @thejgold in a direct message via Twitter.

More is better I say, though I have to wonder which restaurants were added after the fact. In any case, rock on.

Links open to Yelp page, except for Street and Tavern, both of which seem impossible to find on Yelp.

*been there
#new to the list

1. *Akasha- DINE LA
   
2. Alcazar
3. Angeli Caffe
4. Angelini Osteria
5. *Animal
6. Anisette- DINE LA
   
7. A.O.C.
8. #Auntie Em's
9. Babita
10. Beacon: An Asian Cafe- DINE LA
    
11. Bistro LQ
12. BLD- DINE LA
    
13. *Border Grill- DINE LA
14. #Bottega Louie
15. Bulgarini Gelato
16. #Cache- DINE LA
    
17. Campanile- DINE LA
    
18. Casa Bianca
19. Chameau
20. Chang's Garden
21. #Chaya Downtown- DINE LA
    
22. Chichen Itza
23. Chung King
24. #Church & State
25. *Ciudad- DINE LA
    
26. Comme Ca
27. Cora's Coffee Shoppe
28. Cut
29. Daikokuya
30. #Drago Centro- DINE LA
    
31. 8 oz. Burger Bar
32. *El Huarache Azteca
33. El Parian
34. Elite
35. *Euro Pane Bakery
36. Fab Dogs
37. Flame
38. Fraiche
39. #Gjelina
40. Golden Deli
41. #Golden State
42. Golden Triangle
43. #Good Girl Dinette
44. Grace- DINE LA
    
45. The Grill on the Alley
46. Guelaguetza
47. #Huckleberry
48. The Hungry Cat
49. Il Moro- DINE LA
    
50. Jar
51. JiRaffe- DINE LA
    
52. *Jitlada
53. Kagaya
54. Kiriko
55. Kobawoo
56. #Kogi
57. Krua Thai
58. *Kyochon
59. La Casita Mexicana
60. La Mill
61. *Langer's
62. Larkin's
63. Let's Be Frank
64. *#Little Dom's
65. *Los Balcones del Peru
66. *#Loteria Grill- DINE LA
    
67. *Lou
68. Lucques
69. Ludo Bites
70. M Cafe de Chaya
71. Marouch
72. Meals by Genet
73. Melisse
74. #Mo Chica
75. #Moles la Tia
76. *#Mozza
77. Musso and Frank Grill
78. *The Nickel
79. Nobu Los Angeles
80. *Oinkster
81. Palate Food + Wine
82. Park's Barbeque
83. Phillip's Barbeque
84. #Pho Minh
85. Pollo a la Brasa
86. Providence
    
87. Renu Nakorn
88. #Riva
89. Rivera- DINE LA
    
90. Rustic Canyon
91. Sanuki No Sato
92. Sapp Coffee Shop
93. Sona
94. Spago- DINE LA
    
95. *Square One
96. #Street- DINE LA
    
97. Tacos Baja Ensenada
98. #Tavern
99. Terroni
100. Tirupathi Bhimas
101. Urusawa
102. Vincenti
103. Wolfgang's Steakhouse by Wolfgang Zwiener- DINE LA
     
104. #Wurstkuche
105. Zelo Gourmet Pizzeria

Photo: One I wish had made the list: Don Chow Tacos

9.1.09- Amended to add Providence, thanks to a savvy commenter at Eater LA. :)

The "Phenomenon" of Tipping

BBC has a pretty interesting article written by a British journalist about the U.S. custom of tipping for services.

Now, from personal experience, I can tell you foreigners definitely seem confused by the whole "what to tip" question. But that doesn't mean I'll give them any worse service. I may try to trade a table or two, but I'd do that with some of you Yanks too. Call it ageist, call it sexist, whatever you'd like. But when a server sees a table of four women over 80 sitting in their section, he's running for the hills. You may be the sweetest woman in the world, but your $3 tip on a $75 bill for a two hour meal is not enough to convince me that I want to take great care of you.

But I digress. Read this article. The author writes,

"Americans think it is the most natural thing in the world to pay for a service, at the point where you receive it, person-to-person. First, they reason, it keeps whoever is doing the serving on their toes."

He continues,

"A young man in Jackson, Mississippi, once recognised my accent: "Like the Beatles, right?" he said and asked nervously if I knew about "the tipping thing".

I confirmed that rumours of it had reached our side of the Atlantic, but had been received with widespread disbelief."

Now, to his credit, the author does point out that this whole thing is probably based on the fact that Americans are paid far less in service industry jobs, and therefore live on tips. This is true. In California, a server gets paid minimum wage- $8.00/hour. However, an ex-New Yorker tells me he earned somewhere around $2.50/hour in his brief restaurant gig. And according to the U.S. Department of Labor, any employee who is tipped more than $30 in a shift, needs only to be paid $2.13/hour by their employer.

Read that again. Two dollars and thirteen cents. Now, from what I understand (and readers, correct me if I'm wrong), an employee in Britain is paid the Living Wage of 5.53/hour (pounds of course). That's not a lot- it's around $7.70/hour. But it's a definite improvement over $2.13.

The point here is, tipping at a sit-down restaurant IS customary in the U.S., and should be expected when traveling to this country. In Hawaii, it's customary to take your shoes off before entering a home. I can follow that. In Europe there's a lot of air-kissing, whether on two cheeks or one. I can handle that one too. In some parts of Asia, it's customary to present any host with a small gift. So what's wrong with following this tradition as well?

The point of going to a restaurant is to receive service. You eat out so that you don't have to refill your own beverage eight times, retrieve your own ketchup, then ranch dressing, then more bread, then extra napkins, then clean up after yourself. If you are frequenting an establishment specifically for the purpose of getting served, then tip your server.
They work hard, running circles around you to fulfill your every need. They often have kids and families to feed, just like you. They may be from another country, trying to fulfill a dream. They may be a college student trying to pay the way through school.

It's my personal belief that if everyone had to work as a server for just one day, there would never be a bad tip left again. One comment on the BBC article was from a woman who wrote about a restaurant where "the food was so bad, I couldn't leave a tip."

So, what does that have to do with your service? Feel free to complain about your food. You'll probably get it taken off the bill, or at least discounted. But in that case, your tip should only be bigger. Your server is not your cook. He didn't come up with the recipe. Why is he punished? By the way, in punishing him, you've also punished the bussers, the bartenders, the expediters, and the hostesses, all of whom share in a server's nightly take.

One final thought here. Watch the movie "Waiting." Yes, it's disgusting, but it's actually pretty accurate. Well, not the part about the dandruff on the steak. But really, why do you want to mess with the person who controls your food on the other side of the kitchen door? You don't.

Photo credit: Evoke Photography