having dated, worked under, lived amongst many Poles in Chicago, I’ve never thought to myself: hey, you know what’s I really want today? Polish food. Not once. Then, again, this is like that “incidental in Chengdu” response, so strike the whole thing as casually racist. [quote=“set0312, post:228, topic:960”]
Are there any southern French spots?
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Napoleon and Josephine is Corsican French. It doesn’t get further South than Corsica, as far as France goes, does it?
“I’ve never thought to myself: hey, you know what’s I really want today? Polish food. Not once.”
TonyC…Sometimes you just crave what you grew up with…for me it’s Polish & Deli.
Haha I thought about Napoleon + Josephine. It’s quite south, but I always figured it had its own type of cuisine.
As far as your casual dismissal of Polish, I have similar sentiments regarding Hungarian, which was also spoken about. Just spent a month in Budapest and I crave very little except the foie gras and perhaps the roast duck.
I get the deli, really do; used to get salceson from a Polish deli in the Midwest burbs. But a boiled potato & onion pierogi to me is probably like 6MO kimchi to white people…
Strong work.
I make the shlep from West LA to (freaking) Glendora just for Donut Man.
I do the same from Torrance. 
We all have our vices. 
Thai is not arguable. LA has by far the best Thai food in the United States.
I would say LA is relatively weak, compared to other major U.S. cities, in:
High-end Michelin-type restaurants (especially compared to NYC and SF)
Indian (no longer true if you include Little India/Artesia, but I still wouldn’t call it a strength)
LA is weak in many other cuisines (e.g., Spanish, Portuguese, Malaysian, Singaporean, could go on and on…), but so is the rest of the U.S.
Singaporean is explainable. It is a country of 5.5 million and it’s a country that a lot of people don’t wanna leave.
My Singaporean buddy actually had a restaurant open for a couple months (Granivore in KTown) and they faced a lot of problems with health regulation. For instance, they couldn’t serve chicken rice at room temperature, etc. He also struggled on Yelp because nobody knew what the hell Singaporean was supposed to taste like. People were upset when one dish tasted a little Chinese or one dish tasted Malay, etc.
Now I do wonder why the Malaysian scene is as nonexistent as it is.
There just aren’t a lot of Malaysian people here. I think that’s the crux of it.
Fair enough. It’s a slightly smaller country than I thought in terms of population. Are there any major Malay populations in the states?
For Polish there is Warszawa in Santa Monica.
I suppose we all have our own distinct radii for how far we’ll travel for food. I’ll drive 45 minutes to MB Post, Bludsos in Compton (prior to Maple Block opening), or SGV Chinese. I’ll even tolerate it if bad traffic makes that an hour or more. Driving an hour and fifteen in perfect traffic (and much more in bad traffic) to Santa Ana is simply beyond my radius though.
I wish two things…1. That Warszawa was great 2. And it was not the only Polish restaurant in Southern California…
you guys are crazy. and rich. or crazy rich.
happy festivus.
Then I will just keep quiet.
Hopefully Polka will reopen soon. They’re still waiting for LADWP to get the connections back up and running.
Just simple people with simple pleasures.
No different than waiting an hour for “just” dim sum or “just” XLB or “just” Sichuan or busing your own tables for “just” Thai food.
I’m not rich at all. I work retail.
Hey, I drive all the way to San Diego just for beer. Glendora isn’t a big deal compared to that. 
