The best food on a trip to California

It’s food weekend! Plus, 25-year-old Melissa Josiah Citrin, a coffee shop-turned-restaurant, pop-up pizzas and grilled French cheese. And robots in the kitchen? Meet Autocado. I’m Laurie Ochoa, managing editor of LA Times Food, with this week’s tasting notes.

Now, this is road food.

Last Sunday I exited California’s Highway 101 at Los Alamos, then climbed the wooden steps of the hall-like building Full of Bread of Life and had the kind of late-summer dinner that best represents the Golden State.

The melon and cucumber salad is what first caught my eye: the melon at its peak of ripeness had been turned into bite-sized wedges, the sweetness of the pickled cucumber, plus slices of red chile for heat and flakes of feta cheese to tame the vinaigrette sauce the fish was plump with. The fish sauce was also one of the most welcome notes of the Full of Life summer michelada with Tutti Fruitti heirloom tomatoes and serrano chiles.

This was followed by a brilliant Waigu beef burger served with a perfect layer of fries – think your ideal brownies, eliminating the need for fries. I can imagine a fast food chain making burgers and fries a nationwide phenomenon, but I’m glad I got to eat the actual burgers first.

Of course, we ordered flatbreads for our group – literally several flatbreads. One with dates, bacon and walnuts; one with beef cheek, caramelized onion, tomato, baked tomato and ricotta; one with Full Life fennel sausage plus onion, mozzarella and Grana Padano; and one with excellent pepperoni and roasted pasilla chiles.

After all, baking is the reason Clark Staub started the business more than 20 years ago, after leaving his life as a marketing executive at Capitol Records. I visited his Los Alamos outpost back in the days when it was known as the American Plains. But getting a table wasn’t always easy. At the same time, the kitchen was only open on Friday and Saturday nights, because during the week it served as an office for Staub’s frozen bread business.

The frozen bread business continued after the name change, but kitchen hours slowly expanded a bit as so many people fell in love not only with Staub’s breads but also with the lively salads and pastas, always using the best local, seasonal produce. I’m sure the food is because Los Alamos is basically a one-street town that looks like the location of a Western movie (if you ignore the excellent artisan bakery and high-end “supply” shops that have moved in), it has become a mecca for foodies…and home to the Michelin-starred Bell Restaurant.

In recent years, chef Jill Davy, who has worked with Hans Rockenwagner, Josie Le Balch and many other chefs, joined Staub as his partner and wife. Her influence is especially strong on the daily specials. Last year around this time, I had a fabulous shrimp and chili dish with green beans. And my friend Margie Rocklin and I still talk about our smoked chicken soup, loaded with seasonal produce.

I think I should take more than one life-filled trip a year.

The star power of Los Angeles cuisine

us LA Times Food Festival is in full swing this week at Paramount Studios. Last night on the LA Times Food Scene, Barú chef Kwang Woo and his wife Mina Park won the restaurant of the year award alongside Raúl Ortega, who was this year’s winner of the LA Times Gold Award. Saturday’s tickets are sold out but still available. Limited tickets left for the Sunday gathering, which is the only day the kids can enjoy the fun. I’ll be on the LA Times Food stage on Sunday with Nancy Silverton of Mozza preparing treats from her latest cookbook, The Cookie That Changed My Life. Sarah Hymanson and Sarah Kramer of Kismet will also be on stage showcasing recipes from Kismet: Bright, Fresh, Veggie-Friendly Recipes.

If you have a ticket, stop by our LA Times food booth where you can purchase our latest LA Asada and Spicy Angeleno Salt Michelada. Spice collaboration with Burlap and Barrel Produced by Deputy Food Editor Betty Hallock, also our original California Heat, Food Editor Daniel Hernandez has cooked with spices and found inventive ways to use them. We’ll have our own copies, too. 101 best tacos in Los Angeles further hats, shirts and colourful aprons made for us by Hedley and Bennett.

And if you’re coming to Saturday’s Food Bowl session, look for TikTok star Owen Hahn, aka the “sandwich king,” to whip up recipes from his upcoming book, Stacked: The Art of the Perfect Sandwich. Hallock featured Han, whose TikTok post about his laffa-wrapped beef shawarma has garnered 52.3 million views. As Hallock notes, “that’s more than the entire population of South Korea.” We also have two restaurants worth checking out: Nonna’s Meatball Sandwich and OG Spicy Chicken Sandwich With Avocado and Bacon.

And here’s another fantastic sandwich from Pasjoli’s chef Dave Beran, the latest star of our LA Times food series “Chef It!” He makes a sandwich that Times restaurant critic Bill Edison called “a grilled cheese for the ages” and that journalist Jenn Harris called the best grilled cheese in the world. At Pasjoli’s, the sandwich, which is only served on the bar menu, is named after former chef de cuisine Matthew Kim’s Croque Matti. Find the complete guide to grilled cheese sandwiches at LA Times Food.

French pioneer of California

Food contributor Heather Platt spent time with Chef Melissa and owner Josiah Citrin as the restaurant recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. “Melisse is one of the few remaining French a la carte restaurants from its era,” she writes in her piece. “It’s not a bastion of 1990s California French cuisine, though, but has thrived on Citrin’s openness to redefining California French food.”

small is beautiful

Critic Bill Edison is crazy about Stir Crazy, the former Melrose Avenue coffee shop that McLean Kasnoff, Harley Wertheimer and Mackenzie Hoffman and a kitchen team led by Carolyn Leff have transformed into a restaurant with “minimal atmosphere, maximum impact.” Addison adds: It’s “a warm renovation that combines form and function. A casual, Euro-Californian menu. An incredible wine program led by Hoffman. In the year since the trio moved in, an old place has been reborn with a new spirit.” It happened.” Read more in his latest review.

appear

Lately, we’ve seen a lot of our favorite pop-ups transition into brick-and-mortar restaurants. But that doesn’t mean we’ve seen a slowdown in pop-ups. In fact, more and more businesses, from wine bars to neighborhood markets, have become pop-up hosts, with owners offering customers a rotating roster of culinary talent who come in as touring DJs. Last week, assistant food editor Daniel Dorsey and summer intern Brian A’Hearn published a guide to some of the most interesting pop-up hosts in Los Angeles working right now.

Pizza pop-ups are still going strong, too. And though it almost sounds like a joke, when LA Times food columnist Jenn Harris describes the location of one of her new favorite pizza spots in Los Angeles — “a wooden table in a corner behind a coffee shop on Pico Boulevard next to a former management consultant who was vegan for a while” — the pie is pretty good. “The bottom is golden and lacy with subtle browns,” Harris writes of Mieve in West L.A. She also likes the bubbly, blister-free Jackson Baugh Caro Mio, available this month at Maury’s Bagels in Silver Lake.

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