The Wiki seems to at least somewhat side with my thoughts, WeHo, Fairfax, Pico-Union, Palms, Mid-Wilshire are all Westside according to it.
But then again the article starts off saying there is no official definition shrugs
The Times used to have a “Westside” section on Thursdays. The general area described in the wiki was covered, bit don’t recall West Hollywood. I don’t recall if it’s because WeHo wasn’t formalized as a city yet, or if it was something else.
Pali and Malibu were covered as well. If you go by the high school sports extensively covered at the time, those schools’ geographic coverages would mirror everything from Malibu to Westchester, and Venice to Fairfax and Beverly Hills.
yes, we were scattered to the winds over the centuries. Actually these days the black hats over @ Chabad send out freshly minted Rabbis (usually in their 20’s) to countries like China, India, etc. to “spread the light of Judaism”, provide kosher meals and a place to pray for traveling observant Jews. (Personally, I thought your 99% Asian & Jewish FTCer comment was funny.)
Now back to the food discussion……………
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This is a very amusing read.
I’ve been to the PDX Pok Pok twice. It follows the Portland paradigm of white-guy-cooks-non-white-peoples’-food-for-other-white-people that is increasingly common in this city. But we don’t have the critical mass of Thai people here to support a thriving and diverse Thai restaurant scene, though Pok Pok’s success has emboldened some Thai restaurateurs to start experimenting. There’s a Thai-owned Southern Thai place now, and northern Thai dishes creep up on Thai menus around town. And there’s even a Lao-owned place in highly unfashionable Beaverton making homemade Lao sausages, and their khao man gai (Particularly the sauce) is several steps beyond Nong’s. In fact, Beaverton seems to be shaping up to be a micro-Monterey Park. We just got our first Little Sheep (xiaofeiyang) and that ain’t to joke. There’s a place with a “secret” Taiwanese menu where we had a serviceable bawan. Several Korean-owned restaurants, and (finally) a Japanese owned ramen shop, saving us from legions of dreadful hipster ramen (where the raw egg mix-in is standard) as non-Japanese chefs without resources to know how to make a proper Japanese broth copy each others’ flawed executions (see Boxer Ramen). Yeah, Kukai’s ramen sort of stinks, but at least it’s recognizably Japanese. And their kaarage can occasionally be quite good. Can Din Tai Feng be far behind? God, I hope so, as the state of xiaolongbao in Portland is utterly dire.
Mr Taster
Of the Portland Tasters
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So I’m going to try and make that burmese style pork curry because it just blew me away
http://www.kinfolk.com/recipe-kaeng-hung-leh-burmese-style-pork-belly-curry/
but i’m wondering… any cook types here? it seems to me there’s something super aromatic missing from this recipe… maybe they’re keeping it to themselves… like star anise… a bit of vanilla… something else is going on it seems to me.
The recipe in the book calls for “mild Indian curry powder,” which could contain almost any spice.
Cardamom probably.
Cumin, coriander, turmeric, cardamom, dry ginger, and black pepper are all common in mild curry powder blends, but there’s no one recipe.
Yes, please do tell me more about curry powder…
If the generic ingredient is Indian curry powder but he feels something somewhat like star anise or vanilla is missing I’m suggesting it’s probably the use of cardamom pods/seeds. That’s what I’m getting at.
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Interesting article on how ricker fucked up
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nailed it.
There is one thing that I miscalculated pretty drastically. My thought process was that LA people are familiar with Thai food, so we won’t be faced with the same ‘what the fuck is this’ sort of thing, when people look at the menu.
What I really didn’t think through was the fact that because there’s already all this Thai food here, that people might just say ‘Fuck it, we’ve already got great Thai food here, why do we need to go to this place?’ That was a huge miscalculation on my part, and that was … you know, I fucked up. I thought that we’d be a lot busier than we are now, or I hoped we would be. And we’re not.
really solid article though.
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I don’t understand how he made that miscalculation… Did he not consult even a single person in LA?..
i think it might be a mistake to assume the folks here are a typical representation of thai food consumers in l.a.
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Doesn’t seem like it according to the article and the harsh realities Ricker is dealing with…
Maybe he consulted the pollsters.
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all snarkiness aside, i gotta believe he did his homework. at least some.
restaurants are a crapshoot for everyone, arent they?
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solid and sad
Some real estate/food world person/people oversold him on the potential of Chinatown. Actually the potential is there but it is not going to happen in Pok Pok’s life span.
He would have done great if he opened almost anywhere EXCEPT Chinatown, Thai town, or SGV.
I like the food but - and the bar - and would patronize both, if I did not have to drive by (or over) 20-30 places doing equally good food for less money.
He should cut his losses and immediately re-open Pok Pok 2.0 somewhere like Manhattan Bch, Venice/SaMo, Weho, Grove Area, Pasadena. Even fucking Westchester.
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It’s not exactly a miscalculation. This kind of is a weird crap shoot thing.
If you consider how the coffee world came up, Starbucks came out mad hard into cities and looked to see what neighborhoods are current coffee markets, meaning if they saw a coffee shop doing well in an area they opened up right by them and it worked for them. They were able to take away enough business until the others shut down.
You can’t really do that in unique cuisine, where Thai people will continue to support their own and their favorite shops. They never go out of business, white people who go and try Pok and enjoy couple of dishes even love them, eventually decide it’s too pricy for frequent visits etc.
respect the man for copping to it
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