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July 31, 2008

lax-c thai market

LAX-C is a giant Thai food warehouse north of Downtown LA where local restauranteurs can stock up on vats of soy sauce, boxes of frozen chicken parts and 50-lb bags of MSG. The rest of us -- or maybe you could use a gigantic sack of cake flour, I don't know -- can buy Asian groceries in moderate quantities, browse the cookware section and enjoy handmade Thai food, including an amazing array of desserts.

The place is called "the Thai Costco" around the Internets and as soon as I walked in, I understood why. The vast aisles are stocked with barrels of this and pallets of that -- but almost everything is also available in normal-sized portions at prices comparable to other Asian grocery stores around town. The freezer section has weird meat parts, all manner of dumpling and a few exotic ingredients I was tempted to buy and keep on hand, like frozen banana leaves and coconut milk cream. The rice selection is especially impressive, offering just about any Asian rice you might be craving (Japanese, jasmine, brown, black, rice mixed with other grains, broken rice) in both small and large bags.

I browsed the cookware section for awhile, checking out the woks and the granite mortar and pestle sets, and eying the hotpots, thoughts of tom yum gai dancing through my head. There are also a couple huge shelves stuffed with all the Styrofoam and plastic packing you could ever want, if you're thinking of starting your own take-out operation. I'm not, so I moved on to the fish. If you buy fresh fish at LAX-C, they'll fry it up for you on the spot. (I'm not sure what happens then -- do you get some chili sauce and eat it there or do you take it home to eat later? It would get soggy in transit, but who's going to eat a whole fried fish on the spot? Clearly I have many questions about this.)

But maybe the best reason to visit LAX-C is for the prepared food, sold both indoors and on the outside patio. Inside you'll find hot dishes like khao mun gai (Hainanese chicken and rice) and various curries, along with lots of desserts. I bought three banana-stuffed cakes of sticky black rice cooked in coconut milk and wrapped in banana leaves. Yum inside of yum cooked in YUM. There were many other jellies and sweet rices and coconut shreds wrapped up on the counter, and while browsing you can peek into the kitchen where everything is being made. People sit and eat their meals or sweets at the tables placed between the fish department and the registers. Romantic, no. But this is the Thai Costco we're talking about.

Outside is where the real magic happens. And by magic, I mean kanom krok. Kanom krok are small, spherical pancakes filled with oozy, delicious coconut custard. Made on big cast iron pans which resemble the ones used to make takoyaki, Japan's infamous octopus balls, they taste like coconut rainbows and custard moonbeams. My favorite kanom krok ever are made by a seller in Chiang Dao, the small town in Northern Thailand where my dad lives. Mae Ting's Coconut Cakes were not nearly as beautiful as those kanom krok -- they were lacking that golden, crisp pancake skin (mmm...pancake skin...) -- but the gushy custard insides made them a worthy contender.

On the patio you can also buy grilled meat skewers and som tam, that addictive green papaya salad, pounded right in front of you with a heavy mortar and pestle. It's probably the closest you'll get to a real Thai street meal in our fair city, and definitely worth the trip.

LAX-C
1100 N Main St
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(323) 343-9000

Posted by anjali at 5:25 PM | Comments (9) | Categories: Downtown | Market

July 25, 2008

clifton's cafeteria & paletería la michoacana

The first floor of Clifton's Cafeteria.

On a recent Saturday my friend Meg and I headed to the Fashion District in Downtown LA for lunch and fabric shopping. We were both hungry (Meg because she had swum probably two hundred laps that morning at the pool and me because I had slept in until 11 AM and hadn't eaten breakfast -- sad, that contrast), so we went to Clifton's first to load up on hearty starches and gravies.

Clifton's Cafeteria is one of the oldest remaining cafeterias in Los Angeles and undoubtedly the most bizarrely decorated. The first and second floors have a cabin-in-the-woods feeling as seen through a Disney lens, with a giant forest mural, faux caves and a moose head mounted on the wall. After shuttling through a narrow mirrored passageway, you step into the sort of bustling, bright cafeteria serving area loved by geriatrics and small children everywhere. There is Jell-O. There is three-bean salad. There is a man getting a medieval-looking, ginormous turkey leg smothered in gravy, with mashed potatoes on the side. Awesome. You pile your tray with the cold sides, breads and desserts of your choice, and then the nice ladies manning the entrees will plunk whatever hot dishes you want onto a plate. To drink, giant cups of fruit-adorned Olé are set out alongside the usual soda, coffee and tea. I always get the Olé.

The non-woodland area of Clifton's.

The first floor has the forest mural and moose head and the second floor has low ceilings and giant light-box photos of idyllic outdoor scenes. But it's the third floor that I always go for, with its red flocked wallpaper and crown molding that you know must have been so chic and elegant in 1935. It's also usually the least crowded. People who frequent cafeterias generally don't like to walk up stairs.

So much ham on my plate....

Too bad the food isn't very good. On this day, the three-inch layer of ham slices paving my plate was far too salty. The biscuits were, as usual, fluffy and inoffensive. The bean salad tasted only of vinegar and had a funky smell. Meg's turkey enchilada was decent, though, and we both finished at least half of our desserts. It's hard to mess up strawberries and whipped cream.

After eating we walked around the third floor, looking at pictures of children's meals at Clifton's through the ages and marveling at the now-demolished South-Seas-themed Clifton's, which had also been in Downtown LA and was notable for the giant waterfall tumbling down around its entrance.

Inside Paletería La Michoacana.

We left the cool dimness of Clifton's and waded through the bustling heat of Broadway toward our next destination: Paletería La Michoacana. Paletas are Mexican ice pops, way better than, say, Rocket Pops because they come in flavors like cucumber-chile, peanut and soursop. I don't even know what soursop is, but it's really fun to say. The freezers in Paletería La Michoacana were stacked neatly with colorful bars, too many to choose from, and when I asked the adorable girl behind the counter what she recommended, she pointed out the mango-chile ("it's so spicy") and guava ("it's so sour"). Meg got the mango-chile and I considered the guava, but wanted to go for something totally different -- there's a pico de gallo flavor on the menu, but I didn't know if I could handle that. I asked about chamoy. "It's so spicy." It was red, studded with yellow chunks of fruit. I got it.

Meg's mango-chile paleta.

My chamoy paleta.

Outside we peeled away the plastic and started in quickly, the bars already starting to drip in the heat. Meg's was full of mango chunks and chile flecks, sweet and spicy and sour. Mine was spicy and salty, the red chamoy frozen around pieces of pineapple. More than anything, it tasted like someone made a popsicle with Sriracha. Which isn't surprising, since chamoy is the brine used to pickle fruit, concentrated and seasoned with chile. It's basically spicy pickle juice. I like pickle juice, but this paleta was too salty for me and I sadly abandoned it halfway through. I might have been better off with the guava. I hear it's so sour.

Paletas stacked, ready to be eaten.

I'll definitely be back to try more paletas the next time I'm in the area; the nut-based flavors sound awesome. But no more pickle juice desserts for me.

Clifton's Cafeteria
648 S Broadway
Los Angeles, CA 90014
(213) 627-1673

Paletería La Michoacana
306 W 7th St.
Los Angeles, CA 90014
(213) 623-2650

Posted by anjali at 3:27 PM | Comments (5) | Categories: Downtown | Restaurant

July 21, 2008

deliciously comatose in los angeles

I started Delicious Coma two years ago as an outlet for my obsession with Japanese food. I was living in a small city in central Japan, teaching English with the JET Programme and eating more and better than I ever had in my life. All I really wanted to write about were the strange and yummy things I was finding on my plate, so I started this blog.

Two years passed quickly and now I am back in Los Angeles, missing cheap kaitenzushi and fresh taiyaki, but mostly glad to be living in a city where you can find roasted duck noodle soup on one corner and carnitas tacos on the next. (In Japan I constantly had dreams about finding a taco stand hidden behind a sushi shop. After waking up, I would be excited for about five seconds before sadly realizing my mistake. I'll never take taco trucks for granted!)

I like street food and grocery stores where foreign grannies shop. I won't say no to anything you put on my plate -- unless it's shirako. (That's fish sperm. I feel no shame about filing that under "Dislikes.") I wish I lived on a farm and did things like can my own tomatoes and raise goats. Or alpacas maybe. When I was two years old, I would eat an entire ice cream sundae by myself on a regular basis, so it goes without saying: I always leave room for dessert. I'm half-Thai. If when I tell you that, you tell me pad thai is your favorite thing, I will feel sad for you. And then I'll take you out for some really incredible Thai food.

If you like this blog, you might also want to check out my personal blog, Giant Jeans Parlor, especially the weekly candy reviews I wrote while living in Japan.

Now, back to the eating....

Posted by anjali at 2:50 PM | Comments (3) | Categories: