We Southern Californians live in a mystical land of year-round farmers markets which in the dead of sunny, 80-degree winter feature tables of dazzling citrus, local avocados and vials of unicorn tears collected by blond virgins under a blue moon.

Fine. Not quite that mystical -- but almost. All the farmers markets near my mom's neighborhood outside Seattle shut down between October and May, which to my spoiled LA ears sounded like a joke the first time I heard it. The market between October and May is my very favorite time, months of beets and black kale and crinkled Savoy cabbage. Remind me not to complain about the lack of weather and weird winter heat the next time you see me. Just say: "Meyer lemons and Oro Blanco grapefruits" and I'll get it.

Or just point to my new calendar: the beautiful Southland Produce Calendar from Krank Press, a Christmas gift from my sister Joanna, who obviously knows my love of seasonal vegetables and efficient time management. Each month features a linocut of a different vegetable and a list of what is in season, alongside a list of what to plant in your garden, all done in striking red and blue letterpress. It's a perpetual calendar, which means I'll be able to use it year after year as a garden journal, although at the moment I'm happy to just admire it on my wall.

Also cool is the fact that Krank Press is based in Silver Lake, just down the street from me. If seasonal produce isn't your thing, check out their Odd Birds of LA or Los Angeles in History calendars. Then go outside in short sleeves, just because you're in LA and it's January and you can.

Outside a temple in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

There are days when I wish I lived anywhere but LA. I can't face the traffic battle to my job in Beverly Hills, can't stand the looks from women with Botox-frozen faces and their tiny dogs, can't fight the tide of noisepeoplesmogmallscarsbillboardsmoney. It makes me want to find a small cabin in the woods and move right in.

But then I go somewhere like Wat Dong Moon Lek, a new Thai restaurant just a few blocks from my house, and remember there are no Thai noodles in the woods. It's a major flaw in my plan.

The chalkboard menu.

Wat Dong Moon Lek has been open for a few months, but since a write-up in the LA Times last week, business has exploded. I stopped by with Jessica, who has been talking to me about the place for several weeks, and the owner immediately recognized her and greeted us warmly. "You came here even before the article!" she told Jessica. On this Tuesday night all the tables were full, but service was speedy and exceptionally attentive.

Rambutan salad.

I had to get the rambutan salad, cool slippery orbs of fruit dressed with coconut milk and garnished with sesame seeds, sliced onions, Thai chilis and cooked shrimp. Rambutans are a pink, prickly-skinned, lychee-like fruit which I don't think I've ever even seen in the U.S., let alone eaten in a salad that so expertly balances the sweet and the savory. Tiny explosions of nuttiness and heat went off in my mouth as I chewed, the sweet rambutan flesh mingling with the salty coconut milk, and I was reminded of how when I was growing up my dad would fill a plate with sliced pineapple from the salad bar at Sizzler and eat it dipped in salt. Sweet, salty, sour -- it's a synergy even my nine-year-old self appreciated, though I still found the whole pineapple-with-salt thing super weird.

Wat Dong Moon Lek noodles with beef.

We both got small bowls of the restaurant's namesake noodles with beef, surprisingly large portions of medium-rare meat, rice stick noodles and bean sprouts swimming in beefy broth, garnished with thinly sliced lettuce and a sprinkle of white pepper. The broth tasted familiar though I had never before eaten this style of noodle soup, which is the specialty of a particular shop adjacent to a temple in Bangkok. I realized it reminded me of beef Cup Noodles, which sounds terrible but listen! Obviously the fresh broth in Wat Dong Moon Lek's noodle soup is worlds away from the thin, sad stuff you find in a paper-topped cup, with a body and intensity Nissin could never replicate, but to tell you the truth I loved beef Cup Noodles as a kid. And these noodles are like the grown-up version I never knew existed.

Chile peppercorn with pork.

I had wanted to round out the meal with khao man gai, Thailand's version of Hainanese chicken rice, but they had already run out so we ordered chile peppercorn with pork, tender pieces of meat in a dry red curry speckled with Thai basil leaves and a branch of soft green peppercorns. Each mouthful was a spicy, balanced blast of flavor and I found myself picking out the peppercorns to nibble on even after I was full.

Coconut smoothie.

Linda Burum's description of the sophisticated dessert offerings had my betsu-bara rumbling, but unfortunately they had run out of dessert so I had to content myself with the icy dregs of my refreshing, not-too-sweet coconut smoothie.

I couldn't be happier to finally have a good Thai place in Silver Lake. A GOOD Thai place with inventive food, friendly service and an exuberant turquoise interior complete with colorful chalkboard pictures of Obama and Elvis. The LA Times coverage has the small space bursting at the seams right now and a midweek visit is the way to go, but hopefully things will settle down soon. I'll be checking back for khao man gai and desserts next week.

(Psst...it's cash only, so bring your Hamiltons.)

Wat Dong Moon Lek
4356 Fountain Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90029
(323) 666-5993

My kimchi.

Sundays are inextricably linked with pickled cabbage for me. When I was small, Sunday was jook day with my dad, a post-church ritual involving hot rice porridge, tiny dried shrimp and a can of pickled cabbage.* My mother, fearful of her children OD-ing on salt, always put away the pickled cabbage before I had my fill, so I remember those mornings as warm and slow and filled with an aching desire for more slippery, crunchy, salty bites of pickled cabbage.

Making red cabbage sauerkraut.

So when I heard about Machine Project's Krautfest '09, a Sunday dedicated to learning how to make not one but two types of pickled cabbage, it was a no-brainer. I was there, despite the long list of items to bring and the napa cabbage brining that had to happen the night before. No one ever said love was easy.

Shredding cabbage on a giant mandoline.

Machine Project was less crowded than it had been during Fallen Fruit's Public Fruit Jam, but the attendees were just as friendly, a buzzing roomful of people excited about making pickles. First we learned the simple art of sauerkraut making from Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen, the couple behind the blog Homegrown Evolution. After shredding a head of cabbage, I massaged in about a tablespoon of salt by hand, then dumped it into a small bucket and beat it to a juicy pulp with the bottom of a glass jar. (Others used beer bottles or their fists.) Dump in the other half, beat, repeat -- until all three heads of cabbage sat, mashed and juicy, in the bucket. That was it. In order to age properly, the cabbage must remain submerged in the brine, so we were given plastic zipper bags to fill with salt water and use as sauerkraut weights, along with the instructions to "Pick out anything that looks weird" as the cabbage ages, a process which should take anywhere from a few days to two weeks. To figure out if it's done, "Just taste it," said Kelly. "It's done when it tastes ready to you."

After writing our names on our buckets and stowing them away, it was time to master the slightly more complicated art of kimchi making from the mother-daughter team behind Granny Choe Kimchi, Oghee and Connie Choe. The kimchi ingredient list had sent me to California Market on Beverly the day before, where I had no trouble finding ground Korean chili pepper, a ginormous head of napa cabbage and gat, Korean mustard greens. We were instructed to brine the napa cabbage the night before, peeling off all the leaves and soaking them in a gallon of water mixed with half a cup of salt. We also had to bring a small shredded daikon, a whole head of peeled garlic, a piece of peeled ginger, an onion (which actually should have been a bunch of green onions) and a little sugar and salt.

Mama Choe instructed us to cut up all the cabbage and put it in the bowl along with the chili pepper. Many people had brought the wrong type of chili powder, so Daughter Choe walked around with a giant sack and a teacup, dispensing Korean chili powder to anyone who needed it. Then came the garlic and ginger, crushed in a garlic press, followed by the onion, chopped fine, the daikon and the chopped mustard greens. A tablespoon of sugar and two teaspoons of salt were mixed with a cup of water and dumped in, along with a bit of cooked rice to aid fermentation.

Passing out kimchi samples.

I pulled on plastic gloves and set to work mixing everything in the bowl, massaging the cabbage to soften it. The Choes walked around adding a few pieces of their own mature kimchi to each bowl to help jump-start fermentation. I packed my young kimchi into a big jar and sat back to admire it, pleased at how much it looked like real kimchi.

Choucroute garnie.

Kimchi making was over, but there was one last pickled cabbage pleasure: choucroute garnie, the Alsatian specialty of cooked sauerkraut and smoked meats, made for us by Jean-Paul Monsche, an Alsatian friend of the Homegrown Evolution crew. Before we dug in, Jean-Paul told us a bit about the history of the dish and the special place it holds in Alsatian culture. He claimed his rendition wasn't perfect, but I thought it was fantastic, redolent with smoky meat, the sauerkraut mellow and tender. Perhaps I should have been born in Alsace, where my consumption of massive amounts of pickled cabbage would have been a point of regional pride rather than cause for alarm.

I'm so proud of my kimchi.

Oh well. The 10 pounds of cabbage currently fermenting in my kitchen will hopefully help me get over the childhood trauma of never having enough pickled cabbage.

* Pam of Rants and Craves recently wrote a lovely post about her own weekend jook mornings with her family. She strikes me as the kind of mom who would let her boy eat as much pickled cabbage as he wanted though.

The two best things about summer are:

1) That it is acceptable to eat ice cream at least once a day, every day.

2) That riding my scooter becomes the perfect pastime.

Don't get me wrong, I almost always like riding my scooter. But chilly midwinter scootering can't compare to a sunny August afternoon ride, sunglasses on, arms recklessly bare, my little Buddy 125 humming happily beneath me. There's nothing better than that. Except maybe ice cream.

Which is why fellow scooter rider Javier (a.k.a. Teenage Glutster) and I decided to combine the two and have an ice cream scooter crawl, starting with scoops at Scoops, ending with beer floats at The Golden State and trying to avoid any sugar-fueled collisions in between.

We met at Scoops in the early afternoon, so early that the ice cream was mostly untouched, still mounded in creamy swirls and somehow looking even more irresistible. Javier, his lady friend and I split two double scoops: one cup of vegan salty chocolate and coffee-cardamom, which Javier wisely sprinkled with chopped peanuts, and one cup of black currant-sour cream and vanilla-whiskey. I view the combining of two flavors of ice cream in one cup something of an art form and I think we really nailed it this time, especially the salty chocolate and coffee-cardamom with the peanuts. The peanuts were crucial. The other cup worked just because the black currant-sour cream was one of the best Scoops flavors I've ever eaten, rich and tangy with a deep berry taste.

As we were finishing, Jessica -- my passenger/lady friend -- arrived and we worked out a game plan while she polished off a scoop of ice cream.

The next stop was Helados Pops, just a couple blocks away. A tiny shop specializing in sorbets flavored with Central and South American fruits, it was the place I was most excited to bring Javier to, mainly because I was so curious about all the flavors. Javier immediately started chatting with the woman behind the counter, who dished out brightly colored samples of nance (a yellow crabapple-like fruit with a slightly funky taste), arrayán (a kind of guava), marañón (cashew apple, a yellow fruit with a sweet taste reminiscent of pineapple) and lúcuma (egg fruit, a dry-fleshed fruit from Peru with a unique caramel flavor). We ended up getting scoops of the last three in a pint container, along with a half-scoop of the nance because we asked nicely. Lúcuma, the only non-sorbet of the bunch, was the flavor that most interested Javier due to its rarity outside of South America. My favorite was the arrayán: green, slightly sour and utterly refreshing. They also make arrayán paletas!

Next we made a brief savory stop at Mush Bakery for fresh lahmajun, to halt the onset of acute sugar shock. At 90 cents each, they were an amazingly affordable curative.

Bhan Kanom is my favorite place in Thai Town for sweets, so I assumed they would also serve a good Thai slush, but although the ingredients were intriguing -- palm toddy? -- the ice was chunky rather than slushy and drowned in a syrup that tasted like children's cough medicine. Never again.

Thankfully, our last stop was a sure thing: award-winning beer floats at The Golden State. The ride from Thai Town to Fairfax was the longest of the day, so by the time we arrived we were more than ready to get out of the sun and relax with our floats. Jason, one of The Golden State's co-owners, welcomed us with his usual laid-back friendliness and set about making us a couple floats when we told him our ice cream mission. First up was Old Rasputin with Scoop's signature Brown Bread gelato, a now-classic combination of rich, dark stout and creamy, brown sugar-tinged ice cream. Our second float was a lucky off-menu score, a summery combo of The Bruery's Hottenroth Berliner Weisse and strawberry-basil gelato. Jason pointed out that the sour ale makes the float taste almost like it's made with champagne. It was light and refreshing, undoubtedly my favorite of the two, at least on that warm summer day.

After draining our glasses, we sat back and sighed, contented and full of ice cream, looking forward to a leisurely ride home. We're already discussing our next scooter crawl: a San Gabriel Valley winter hotpot marathon. Who's in?

Scoops
712 N Heliotrope Dr
Los Angeles, CA 90029
(323) 906-2649

Helados Pops
1010 N Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90029
(323) 660-2900

Mush Bakery
5224 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 662-2010

Bhan Kanom
5271 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 871-8030

The Golden State
426 N Fairfax Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 782-8331

Communal jams.

It is perhaps not surprising to hear that people who devote half their Sunday to making and sharing fruit jam with a bunch of strangers are really nice. But I didn't know what to expect this past weekend when I attended the Fourth Annual Public Fruit Jam at Machine Project in Echo Park, hosted by Fallen Fruit Collective, a group that organizes occasional public fruit-gathering walks in LA. I had a great time and learned a lot, so in the spirit of sharing, here are some of the tips I picked up.

DO bring fruit to share from your own trees or that you've gathered from public land (in parks, hanging over sidewalks, etc.). I saw bags of homegrown oranges, crabapples, jujubes, lemons, nectarines and tiny plums the size of cherries. Jessica (my jam-making partner in crime) and I ended up incorporating everything but the jujubes into the second jam we made.

Raspberries, peaches, lemon verbena and lemon zest.

DO set aside any special fruit you want to use for your own jam. Jessica had made a stop at the Atwater Farmers Market that morning and the first jam we made used all the raspberries and peaches she bought, along with lemon zest from some shared lemons and the lemon verbena I had clipped from my backyard.

But DON'T be a jerk and if someone asks if they can have a little of what you brought, DO share. A woman sitting next to us had brought a piece of ginger she was mostly using for herself, but she kindly gave us a knob when we asked.

Cooking the jam.

DO fill the bowl you're given with chopped fruit. The proportions are somewhat flexible, but you'll need about five cups of fruit, five cups of sugar and one packet of pectin to make about four small jars of jam. You cook the jam by yourself, with the assistance of the jam-making experts floating around, but it makes it easier for them to guide you if you start with the correct proportions.

DON'T just chop up a little bit of everything and throw it into a bowl to become an unappetizing pile of mush. Remember finger-painting in kindergarten? When you thought mixing every color together would result in the most beautiful color ever, but instead turned a mucky, ugly brown? It's like that. DO have a plan, even a vague one.

Simmering plum-nectarine-citrus-basil jam.

But DON'T be afraid to experiment. The second jam we made included plums, crabapples, nectarines, basil, oranges, grapefruit and ginger. Sounds like a scary mess, but it's actually quite good: slightly bitter from the grapefruit, sweet from the stone fruit, a tiny bit gingery and tinted a lovely coral hue.

Plum-jam-maker standing in front of us. Love the matching apron!

Perhaps most important: DO talk to the people around you! We met a father and son from Culver City who were there because the son, who was around ten years old, loves gardening and cooking. I wish I had been that awesome as a kid. Standing in line for the cooking stations outside, we befriended the people ahead of and behind us, which made the 30-40 minute wait bearable, and we ended up swapping jars of jam with them at the end. (And regarding the line, DO wear sunscreen and DO get there early, so you aren't waiting outside under the relentless afternoon sun.)

Clockwise from top: blueberry-lemon-mint, plum-citrus-basil, raspberry-peach-lemon verbena.

Finally, DO leave a jar of your jam for the communal archives and DON'T be afraid to enjoy the rest yourself! Stored in the refrigerator, the jam will keep for 2-3 weeks, longer if frozen. I've been slathering it on toast and PB & J sandwiches and mixing it into Greek yogurt at breakfast. I've also been peeking covertly at the pretty row of jars in the fridge, remembering one of my favorite passages from the canning chapter in my grandmother's old edition of the Joy of Cooking:

"I should like to begin my chapter with the assurance that it is a thrill to possess shelves well stocked with home-canned food. In fact, you will find their inspection (often surreptitious), and the pleasure of serving the fruits of your labors, comparable only to a clear conscience or a very becoming hat."

So true.

Southern barbecue is sort of the antithesis of parking in LA. Think about it: barbecue is slow and generous -- piles of meat infused with the sweet scent of smoke, tended for hours and often served at large gatherings -- while LA parking is quick and ruthless, a hair-pulling experience liable to leave you hating your fellow man. So it was in the spirit of slow and generous living that I proposed a Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24 meal* for my friends on May 30th, with food from Territory BBQ & Records, a brand-new Southern-style barbecue joint just at the end of my street. No car required.

Territory is the brainchild of Tony Presedo, a former indie record label co-executive, and Curtis Brown, ex-frontman of the band Bad Wizards. A North Carolina native, Brown is also behind the Brooklyn taco truck Endless Summer, so he's used to bringing regional foods to the hipster masses. The restaurant itself is sparse; all the seating is at outdoor tables covered with checked tablecloths, alongside a refrigerator that diners can open up to grab sodas in glass bottles. It's charming, but no match for my own apartment, where my friends and I can stay as long as we want and go back for seconds or even thirds -- slow and generous, remember? I got our meal to go.

Back at my apartment, my friends gathered around the kitchen table as I opened to-go containers brimming with pulled pork, beef brisket, fried chicken, fried catfish, collard greens, mac and cheese, baked beans and gigantic biscuits. Two small boxes were filled with apple butter, caramel-brown and flecked with spices, to be slathered on the biscuits. One container held only sauces: pepper vinegar and sweet red barbecue sauce, to appease fans of various barbecue styles. To drink there were sodas from Territory -- Bubble Up, Jolt cola, orange and grape Crush and cherry-flavored Cheerwine -- or the fresh mint limeade I had made that morning. Without ceremony, just a communal "Let's eat!," we started loading up our plates and filling our glasses.

The chicken with its thin, crunchy skin and juicy, flavorful meat was quickly voted a crowd favorite, as were the baked beans, which had a big ham bone planted like a flag in the middle. The cornmeal-dredged catfish was crisp yet succulent, but tasted a little bland until I dabbed on some of Territory's tartar sauce, a light, wonderfully smoky version of a condiment I normally dislike. Of the two barbecued meats, the brisket seemed more deeply flavored than the pork, more redolent of smoke, and was a great match with the fresh-tasting barbecue sauce and plain white bread.

Speaking of bread, let's talk about the biscuits. When I picked up the food, there had been a short wait because the biscuits were still in the oven. Freshly baked biscuits? No complaints from me. I carried them home in a roasting pan, their toasty, buttery smell drifting into my face, tempting me to just bite into one there on the street. I refrained, just long enough to get inside and grab a plate. Then I split one open, spread on a thick layer of apple butter and bit into warm biscuit heaven -- one stop past cinnamon roll paradise, just before croissant nirvana -- a place of moist, buttery layers and browned, deliciously crusty edges. If you love bread, you will love these biscuits.

Some of us went back for seconds. A few of us even went back for thirds. Miraculously, though I had ordered enough food for 15 people, the nine of us managed to finish almost all of it. This was not due to paltry servings on Territory's part, I feel, but to the general spirit of the gathering. We ate a little, we talked a little, we ate a little, we listened to some records, and then we ate some more. Slowness and generosity and eating till you bust -- isn't that what Southern barbecue is all about?

Territory BBQ & Records
534 N. Hoover St.
Los Angeles, CA 90004
(323) 662-4100

* Every month Foodbuzz, the company that sponsors the ads on my blog, chooses 24 bloggers in 24 different places to have a meal within the same 24 hours, paid for by Foodbuzz. The meals are all wildly different in concept, so it's an interesting snapshot of eating around the world. You can see all this month's meals here.

Chef Don Dickman, slicing.

I first moved to Silver Lake when I was 19. Going out for dinner and a drink back then often meant choking down a watery chicken tostada at El Conquistador while sipping a potent margarita and being dazzled by the explosively colorful decor.

Ten years later, my tastes have changed -- and so has Silver Lake. How else to explain my thoroughly enjoyable evening at Barbrix, the sleek new wine bar on Hyperion? Seated at the back bar, I got to watch the kitchen action while looking over the menu and reasonably priced list of wines by the glass. I picked the Kogl Mea Culpa Saemling, a white wine from Slovenia our server described as "crispy" -- yes, it is difficult for me to resist crispy things -- which turned out to be a great match for the meal.

Veal meatballs were juicy and delicate, sitting in a pool of herb-butter sauce that was so good mopped up with chunks of the La Brea Bakery bread, I had to get a second round of bread. The McGrath Farmer's Plate was like a slice of garden on the plate -- dark, earthy beets, sweet sunshine carrots, curling green pea tendrils -- exactly right for a cool May evening. We asked a passing server about the saba mentioned in the menu description (the only saba either of us knew was the Japanese mackerel) and he deferred to the chef, Don Dickman, who came over and gave us a quick but thorough explanation of the process of making saba, a sort of unfermented, deeply concentrated grape juice. He squeezed a few droplets of balsamic vinegar onto a plate for us to taste and contrast -- an unexpected and welcome lesson from a chef who undoubtedly had better things to do.

The Greek sardine, grilled until the skin was crisp and slightly blackened, was meaty with an oiliness nicely offset by a squeeze of the lemon wedge served alongside. Is there any better way to get your omega-3s? I only wish it had been sardines, plural, so I could have eaten more.

The roasted halibut with sunchokes, chard and mushroom was slightly overcooked, veering from Silky-Supple Town into Dense-Flaky-ville. The flavors were spot-on though, and I loved the contrast between the slightly crunchy sunchoke slices and slippery mushrooms.

We didn't order dessert, though I was sorely tempted by the ginger shortcakes with berry compote that kept passing by. Jessica, the ideal dining partner in so many ways, seems to unfortunately lack betsu-bara (literally "another stomach" in Japanese), the affliction I was diagnosed with during my first week in Japan when I could eat five courses of food and still have room for dessert. I always have room for dessert.

The dining room.

I'll undoubtedly be returning to Barbrix, and not just for the shortcake. The service was friendly, the space intimate without feeling cramped, and everyone in the room, whether patron or employee, seemed genuinely happy to be there -- including me.

Silver Lake, it's official. We've grown up.

Barbrix
2442 Hyperion Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 662-2442

Buying beans and grains in bulk. It sounds about as appealing as a patchouli-drenched hippie sitting on your couch and clipping his toenails, but I can't help it -- I love buying beans and grains in bulk. Lucky for me, Naturewell opened a few months ago in Silver Lake, not far from my apartment, so I have access to all the lentils, barley and quinoa I could possibly want. This may not excite you. But if you find yourself oddly pleased or even mildly intrigued by this news, then please read on.

The store itself is clean and bright, and manages to pack a lot into a fairly small space. Narrow bins hold all manner of bean, grain and pasta, as well as various types of flour and healthy-ish snacks like trail mix and chocolate-covered raisins. One refrigerated case carries specialty dried fruits -- something I haven't seen before in a bulk goods store -- and another offers cold drinks, mainly every flavor of kombucha imaginable. Shelves tucked under the counter hold a large selection of herbs and spices, priced higher than those at Super King, but good for those times when you don't actually need a bag of mustard seeds the size of a chubby chihuahua.

If buying beans and grains in bulk leaves you cold, you still might want to visit Naturewell for their juices and smoothies made to order. I'm usually too hopped up on coffee from Intelligentsia to think about drinking a carrot, so I can't speak for the juices, but they all look terribly fresh and nutritious and seem reasonably priced. Of course if I were you, I might decide to instead get my juice at the pupusa joint across the street, where a giant freshly-made jugo is a mere $3 and you can get a cheese and loroco (a type of flower) pupusa for just a couple dollars more. Yes, I choose melty cheese over a scoop of immunity booster. So sue me.

Despite all that, I'm happy Naturewell is in the neighborhood. My collection of repurposed pasta jars are filled to the brim with enough beans and grains to see me through the zombie apocalypse in style. Assuming there is running water. And gas, for the stove.

....Huh. Time for Plan B.

Naturewell
3824 West Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
(323) 638-5894

In front of Zanzabelle.

"Wait, this is a toy and candy shop. And it's closed."

Rob sounded mistrustful. But I couldn't really blame him. I had, after all, told him we were going to a prix fixe dinner at a sort of supper club in Silver Lake, but I had forgotten to mention the location -- Zanzabelle, a candy-slash-toy-slash-ice-cream shop on Rowena. No wonder he was confused.

But once we stepped onto the wooden porch and saw candles twinkling on the butcher paper-topped tables inside, we knew we were in the right place. As our eyes adjusted to the dim interior, we saw six tables fit neatly into the small store, four of them occupied by diners happily eating and chatting.

Jackie, half of the husband and wife team behind Freight, welcomed us as warmly as a hostess greeting her dinner guests, then showed us to our table and opened our bottle of beer. "How do you say your name?" she asked. "Anjali. Is that right?" Rob looked at me in surprise -- I hadn't given my name when we walked in. But I had emailed for a reservation and Jackie had been the one to respond, so she remembered my name. And even said it correctly the first time, no mean feat. I relaxed into my seat and sipped some beer while we waited for our meal: bourbon-glazed tri-tip, cowboy beans, homemade pico de gallo and buttermilk cornbread.

But after a moment we had another reminder that we weren't at just any restaurant. Matt, the chef, appeared at my elbow, greeted us and said he had our meat seared rare at the moment. How did we want it? "That was kind of cool," Rob said after he left. Having the chef come to our table to inquire how we'd like our meal cooked made the dining experience feel intensely personal and very friendly.

The meal.*

And then there was the food: tender slices of perfectly cooked beef edged with bits of crunchy char, plump beans with a drizzle of crema, fresh pico de gallo and a big hunk of cornbread, soft and light as a newly fluffed pillow. Or a just-born baby chick. Something soft and wonderful anyway. As I worked my way methodically around the plate -- topping a bite of the meat with a tangy smidge of pico de gallo, taking a buttery bite of bread -- I glanced over at Rob's plate. His bread was gone. But Jackie had only just put the plates in front of us. I peered closer and saw he was holding his chunk of cornbread and eating it pretty much exclusively. "Yeah," he said when I pointed this out. "I picked it up and never put it down again. I think it was the best cornbread I've ever eaten." A bold statement from a man whose pronouncements usually involve nerd movies and video games.

Oh, and by the way? The cost of this meal? An incredible $12 per person.

Jackie stopped by to ask how we were enjoying the food and told us a bit about how Freight at Zanzabelle got started. She and Matt were on the lookout for a place where they could bring a nice bottle of wine and eat dinner without breaking the bank, but they came up empty -- so they decided to create the sort of place they were looking for. In October of last year they had their first dinner and have been quietly giving weekend prix fixe meals ever since. They've been written up on Eating LA and Eat: LA, but the bulk of their promotion is a weekly email letting people know the menu and cost of the upcoming meal. They don't even have a website. It's like the anti-thesis of the Kogi phenomenon, which is I think what makes it so special, like you've stumbled onto this rare and wondrous treasure and NOBODY ELSE KNOWS ABOUT IT which makes it a hundred times more precious.

But ironically, because it is so special and wonderful, you want to tell everyone about it. And so this:

Get yourself onto the Freight email list by emailing info@freightfoods.com. Or, if you like the sound of this week's meal, just email or call 626-243-3686 to make a reservation between 6-9pm. There's no corkage, so bring along a nice bottle of wine or your favorite beer. This Friday and Saturday they are serving roasted celeriac soup with candied lavender; lamb osso buco with firm polenta, sauteed greens, fennel and gremolata; and a Calvados panna cotta with caramel sauce and bruniose apples for dessert. All of that for $26 per person. Sound good?

...I thought so.

Freight at Zanzabelle
2912 Rowena Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90039
(626) 243-3686

* Sorry for the blurry, craptastic food photo in this post. It was really very dark. To make up for it, here's a (blurry, craptastic) photo of Rob taking out his Invisalign, which those who eat with him know is the prologue to every meal. It's like saying grace, but with more saliva.

Outdoor produce area.

I like how foreign grannies shop. They poke, they prod, they know exactly what they are looking for and woe to the vendor who doesn't get it right. Granny-watching -- a completely innocent pastime, I assure you -- is one of the reasons I love going to Super King Market in Glassell Park. There, foreign grannies (and their families) from around the world converge to shop for interesting and affordable produce, cheeses and meats, packing the store's aisles with carts crammed to the brim.

Fresh almonds.

Super King's produce section is not to be missed. I always make a beeline for the mountain of Persian cucumbers and extensive (and cheap!) selection of fresh herbs before exploring the seasonal specials like verdolaga (purslane), fuzzy fresh almonds and bright green fresh garbanzos. Next to the produce section is the largest array of spices I've ever seen in a supermarket, with huge bags of any dried herb or spice you might need for Middle Eastern, Latin or Indian cooking, fresh and inexpensive enough for even the most discerning granny.

The yogurt section is also exciting, if you're the type of person who gets excited about yogurt. I am, so I'm always happy to see the many brands of all-natural, whole milk yogurt, just tart enough to be eaten plain or with a drizzle of honey for breakfast. I haven't even branched out into the world of yogurt cheese and yogurt drinks yet, but when I do, Super King will be waiting for me.

Full carts, full aisles.

I always take a deep breath as I leave the yogurt section and plunge headfirst into the cheese and cured meats corridor that runs along the back of the store, which is always ALWAYS an insane jumble of people and overstuffed shopping carts. On weekends it feels like rush hour on the 405-101 interchange; on weekdays it is only slightly less grim. If you are braver or more patient than I, you will take a number and wait to place your order. I usually just head over to the refrigerated cheese aisle and grab a tin of feta in brine.

I'm trying to be better about knowing where and how my meat was raised, so I usually avoid the butcher's counter, which is nearly as crowded as the cheese counter. On my first visit to Super King, I overheard one of the butchers, an Armenian man in his 60s, say, "Next...next... Is anyone waiting?" No response. "Oh my god," he said softly, acknowledging the miracle that is an empty butcher's counter at Super King Market.

Bakery treats.

Instead of meat, I buy breads. Various types of dark Russian bread line the shelves below the meat cases and across from the bakery counter are stacks of lavash, pita bread and those enormous rounds of flat, yeasty Armenian bread. Yum. The bakery itself sells an impressive number of different baklava as well as dainty French-style sweets. A separate bin holds big sugared Mexican pastries.

After browsing the deli counter for tabbouleh by the pound, hot-from-the-oven lahmajune (Armenian pizza) and whole rotisserie chickens, it's time to brave the checkout lines, which are always less daunting than they first appear and also give me the opportunity to do some cart-peeking -- another completely innocent pastime -- at the people around me. Once I saw a man buying only bananas, an entire cart filled to the top, and on my last trip saw someone with two plastic bags impossibly fat with fresh garbanzo beans, like cartoon money sacks minus the giant dollar bill sign.

Surreptitious cart-peeking.

The best thing about cart-peeking at Super King is that everyone is buying whole foods -- chard and olive oil and loose mate tea and pomegranate molasses and crema and pickled grape leaves -- so you can only imagine the meals that will come from what they're buying. Have you ever had the depressing experience of standing behind some lonely soul in a supermarket line on a Friday evening, watching him buy three packets of Top Ramen, a jar of Skippy, a frozen Lean Cuisine enchilada and a six-pack of Bud? Suddenly his whole weekend cracks open in front of you, quivering and too vulnerable, an egg you never meant to break. Standing in the Super King line is the opposite experience for me, full of wonder and curiosity at the meals in the making all around me.

Unlimited granny-watching and cart-peeking: now do you understand why I love this place?

Super King Market
2716 N. San Fernando Rd
Los Angeles, CA 90065
(323) 225-0044