Lukshon: You Get What You Get

There's a saying among parents of small children charged with cutting up birthday cake amidst shouts of "I want a star" or "I want the pink piece": You get what you get and you don't get upset. It could also be the motto of Sang Yoon, the proprietor of Father's Office and the new Lukshon who has become known for his refusal to offer substitutions or even provide any ketchup for his burgers.

Now, I try to avoid restaurants that have recently been reviewed in the LA Times, so I was a bit miffed when, two days before my reservation, Irene Virbila came out with a review. The only saving grace was that she only gave the restauarnt one and a half stars, which I figured might cut down on the craziness that usually follows a Times review.

Sitting directly adjacent to the Culver City Father's Office, in the old Helms Bakery building, Lukshon is a pan-Asian restaurant with family style service. It bills itself as Southeast Asian, but the flavors run from South Asia to Japan with everything in between.

Overall, I was very impressed with the food, bright Asian flavors and whimsical concepts resulted in a really good meal. I started with a Lukshon sour, a play on a whiskey sour using Michter's Rye and tamarind. It had a nice sweet/sour/salty interplay which seemed to reference both tamarind drinks and the salty limeade you get at Vietnamese restaurants.

The menu features a number of small plates. Shrimp toasts were satisfying little fried grease bombs. Lamb roti was a nicely seasoned lamb with a raita-type sauce on a deep fried roti, sort of an Indian lamb pizza. From the raw menu, mackerel slices topped with a green papaya salad were pleasant but not very exciting.

Both of our entree sized dishes were big hits. Short Ribs Rendang, a Malaysian treatment, were melt in your mouth soft with a nice crust. They were served with fried coconut rice cakes which had a satisfying combination of crisp and stick-to-your-teeth chewy; they were highly craveable, tasting like deep fried popcorn. Garlic pork belly was a Chinese style stir fry. The pork belly was in small bites, each featuring equal parts of nicely caramelized, chewy meat and luscious, slippery fat. The bowl also included cabbage and little rice cakes, of the tubular variety, that had a nice crispy crust, another nice textural contrast.

While the food was very good, the service was chaotic. We were brought one dish that wasn't ours while our dish was served to another table, we waited a very long time between the small plates and mains and the waiter forgot one of our dishes entirely. Part of it might have to do with the fact that the waiters use hand-held computers to place orders and run credit cards (like at the Apple Store) and they may not have mastered the technology yet (or maybe our waiter just hadn't).

After dinner, they offered Vietnamese Coffee, but they didn't have decaf, so we regrettably passed.

Strangely, there is no dessert menu. Everyone is served a small, complimentary dessert. The night we were there, there were two plates. A mango panna cotta with coconut sorbet was very nice. The panna cotta was creamy and the mango and coconut blended well (there was a citrus element which tied it all together well but I can't remember what it was). The second dish was a Vietnamese Coffee Truffle and a marshmallow. The truffle was a basic chocolate truffle without any discernible coffee flavor and the marshmallow was fine but unexciting.

The desserts are quite small, and the table next to us asked if they could get a bit more of the delicious coconut sorbet. The waiter was fairly gracious in his refusal, but didn't they know this was a Sang Yoon restaurant - you get what you get, and you don't get upset.

Lukshon
3239 Helms Ave.
Culver City, CA 90232
(310)202-6808

RIP Pho Minh

Pho Minh, the much adored house of beef-noodle soup in El Monte, has shut its doors. It's not surprising. Pho Minh had struggled mightily; it opened in 2008 right before the recession set in. When it looked like all hope was lost last year, they were granted a brief reprieve by a feature article in the LA Times about the restaurant's struggle to survive, but the brief surge of crowds was not able to sustain it for the long term, even if it had the Jonathan Gold seal of approval.

I'll miss the intensely beefy broth and chewy noodles, but truth be told, when the hunger for pho hit, I was more likely to stop at Vietnam House in Alhambra than haul myself all the way out to South El Monte. Still, I was glad to know it was there.

Crepes and Nem Nuong Behind the 99 Cent Store - Brodard Garden Grove

Hidden off an alley behind a Garden Grove 99 Cent store, Brodard Restaurant is a Vietnamese restaurant which is home to some wonderful seasoned pork and crispy crepes. While it's hard to find, Brodard is no hole in the wall. It features an almost trendy looking dining room featuring large wall murals, including one of stampeding mustangs, and numerous decorative wall hangings.

Nem nuong, Vietnamese pork sausage patties, are the specialty of the house, and indeed, the awning outside the restaurant says only "Nem Nuong," with the word Brodard listed in small print on the door. Nearly everyone at the restaurant will have a plate of nem nuong cuon, a serving of nem nuong in the traditional Vietnamese rice paper spring rolls. The filling includes a big strip of the tasty pork sausage along with regular accompaniments carrot, daikon, cucumber, lettuce, mint and unidentified crispy bits(fried rice paper perhaps). You can see why this is a popular dish. The pork sausage is juicy and succulent, and the stretchy rice paper and herbs are given perfect texture by the addition of those crunchy bits.

The most perfect dish at Brodard though was the banh khot - luna rice cake (pictured at right), a rice flour crepe filled with shrimp and scallions. The crepe is crispy, slightly chewy and oh, so buttery. Paired with the shrimp, wrapped in lettuce and dipped in fish sauce, it is beyond any other Vietnamese crepe I have had, a taste and textural wonder. I could have easily eaten a whole second order and now long to try their other crepe dishes (banh xeo).

Bun cha Hanoi is bun (vermicelli) accompanied by greasy bowl of nem nuong and thick-cut bacon in the regular sweet lime and chili sauce. It's delicious but can be a bit overwhelming in the grease department.

Not everything at Brodard is spot on. The goi du du bo kho, gan chay, shredded green papaya topped with beef jerky and pork liver is a bit bland, though the beef is good. The egg rolls (cha gio) commit the cardinal sin of being made with flour-based egg roll wrappers instead of rice paper; like a devastating fall in Olympic figure skating, there is simply no recovering from it, no matter how artful the rest of the program. But the truth is, there are a number of venues with excellent cha gio, while the quality of banh khot and nem nuong at Brodard are hard to match.

Brodard Restaurant
9892 Westminster Ave.
Garden Grove, CA 92844
(714) 530-1744

The Power of the Pen: Post-LA Times Pho Minh

Having read the moving LA Times story last week about Pho Minh, a critically acclaimed but financially struggling Pho house in South El Monte, I decided to check it out.

The good news is that for breakfast the weekend after the article came out, the place was pretty bustling. Most, though not all tables were full and lots of pho was coming out of the kitchen.

Pho Minh pretty much does only pho. There are no other noodle dishes and not much else on the menu. They do have cha gio, Vietnamese spring rolls, but while the filling was good, they were made with egg roll wrappers rather than the more traditional, and much more tasty rice paper.

Now, as a preface, I should say that I am not a pho-natic. My Vietnamese meal of choice is the noodle dish bun, but I like pho and can appreciate, though not worship, a great one.

The key to pho is the broth; someone once told me it should be made using the whole cow. It should be the essence of all that is beef, accentuated with whatever seasoning and garnish you choose to add to it. The broth at Pho Minh was superb and magnificently beefy. The broth was so rich and wonderful that I was hesitant to add any of the sauces or chilis, just a squeeze of lime and some herbs made it perfect. I wanted to taste it over and over to get all of that beef flavor. In addition, the noodles were perfectly cooked, nice and chewy. The pho comes in both a small and large size, but the small was plenty for me.

Is this pho "divine," as Jonathan Gold opined? As noted above, I don't really find divinity in pho, but this is seriously good pho, and certainly the richest and most delicious I recall having in the LA area.

In the LA Times article, proprietor Eric Lam talked about expanding the menu, but I like it the way it is. There is something wonderful about a restaurant that does just one thing, but does that thing very, very well.

Pho Minh
9646 Garvey Ave # 109
South El Monte, CA 91733
(626) 448-8807

One Two Three, Look at Mr. Lee: Lee's Sandwiches

Lately, my (very) significant other has been on a banh mi fix, a yearning for the Vietnamese sandwiches which combine meat and pickled vegetables on a baguette. A great banh mi is the perfect gestalt of crunchy and chewy, tangy and savory, sour and salty.

Unfortunately, there is not much choice of banh mi in the mid-city area. We enjoyed the grilled pork banh mi at Gingergrass and the sardine sandwich at Vietnam Soy Cafe, both in Silverlake, but we yearned for more.

So, on a recent trip to Orange County, we had to stop at an outlet of the famous banh mi chain, Lee's Sandwiches (We stopped at the Beach Blvd. location in Westminster, right off the 405).

This place had it all. Large, fresh baguettes, crunchy marinated veggies and a host of excellent fillings. We most enjoyed the chicken with it's big chunks of marinated bird and the creamy, livery pate but also enjoyed the BBQ pork with its thin slices of Chinese style char siu pork. Priced at an amazing $2.20 per sandwich, this may the best deal in Southern California.

Frustratingly, there are 12 Lee's in Southern California and not a single one within the LA city limits. The closest to my area of mid-City is probably the Alhambra branch. This is a commercial oversight bordering on the criminal. A Lee's would mop up in Koreatown...it's a guaranteed success. I mean, I would go three days a week and I'm pretty sure my SO would go five. Come on, if we can have 20 million shops dedicated to boba and tart frozen yogurt, the least we can get is a decent banh mi.

Most offensive is that the menu reveals a Lee's in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City gets banh mi but not LA??!! This is a massive offense and flies in the face of all that is right in the world.

For now, I will drive to get my banh mi, but please, Mr. Lee, go North and fill our empty Los Angeles baguettes with your love.

The Accidental Eater: Vietnam House

So sometimes you find great food by a good tip, and sometimes you luck out. This is a story of me lucking out.

My stories starts, not surprisingly, on-line. If you haven't checked out the food blog My Culinary Adventures by Silverlaker Bon Vivant, you must. Her taste runs similar to mine...cheap, ethnic eats in the mid-LA area. Most of all, the food photography is amazing; I read and a I salivate and I must eat.

Now, as you all know, I have no photographic talent and I'm too shy to whip out the camera during a meal. My original intention was not to include any pix on this blog, but I came to see that the regular blog background is somewhat monotonous and pictures really do help break it up. So now, I include the occasional really bad picture of some piece of food I eat at home or a bottle of booze, complete with glare, smudges, blurriness, etc. Because of my poor skills, I am deeply respectful of those, like Bon Vivant, who can pull off food photography that makes you wish you were pulling up to the table.

So, I'm reading BV's report on Luscious Dumpling in San Gabriel. As a dumpling maven and a lover of San Gabriel Valley restaurants, I'd always intended to try LD, but Bon Vivant's pix sealed the deal.

My dining party and I headed out to San Gabriel last Saturday hoping for an awesome dumpling experience. We found LD with a full restaurant, a large line and a Closed sign hanging in the window, which we assumed someone had just forgotten to flip to Open that morning.

We went out to the line and asked the people in the front what we do to sign up for a table. They told us the restaurant was closed (despite the people eating) and they were just waiting for take-out. The people behind them in line, shocked to hear this, had thought it was open and they were going to be served. Now, this was about 1 pm on a Saturday, which seems an odd time to close, but I certainly have experienced my share of rather odd operating hours in the SG Valley, so we shrugged it off. Disappointed and not a little forlorn from our dumpling mishap, we moved on.

Lucky for us, the San Gabriel Valley is extremely forgiving of the hungry traveler. In the very same strip mall, we found the excellent Vietnam House. This busy place is apparently owned by the purveyors of the famous Golden Deli. We had beautifully fried cha gio (spring rolls), a lovely Vietnamese crepe, and (my favorite) the vermicelli noodle dish known as bun, topped with a smoky charbroiled pork. The pork chop on rice was also excellent, less smoky than the char but amazingly tender. Next time I will try the seven courses of beef, the famous Vietnamese beef sampler which is also on their menu.

Vietnam House started for me as a fallback, but I think it will now be a destination of its own...of course, if it's too crowded, I can always go to Luscious Dumpling.

Vietnam House
710 W Las Tunas Dr
(From Alhambra, head East on Maine from Garfield, and it becomes Las Tunas, strip mall is right past Mission)
San Gabriel, CA 91776-1156
Phone: (626) 282-6327

LA's Best Egg Roll - Pho So 1

Pho So 1 is a small Vietnamese restaurant tucked into a corner strip mall, anchored by a Ranch 99, at the corner of Victory and Sepulveda in Van Nuys. When you pass through the doors, you are immediately hit with the fragrance of Vietnamese cooking: mint, basil, lime, cilantro. Pho So has good pho, but I prefer the bun - vermicelli with vegetables and bean sprouts served with a fish sauce. You can get it topped with wonderfully flavored barbequed pork with just the right balance of sweet, tangy.

The highlight of Pho So, though, is the egg roll. The plump rolls contain a luscious meat mixture (certainly pork, possibly beef, who knows what else) with cellophane noodles and spices packed into a rice paper roll and fried to the perfect consistency, where the outer layer of rice paper browns and blisters.

In my view, any rice paper egg roll beats one made with won ton or other flour based skins. The rice gives it that special chewiness and a lightness that is the perfect complement to the dense filling. And rice paper egg rolls lack the greasy mouthfeel of fried won ton skin. Pho So's are done just right. For my money, the egg rolls here are the best in LA!

You can have the egg rolls with traditional garnish (lettuce, tangy, lightly pickled carrots, daikon, mint and cilantro) or in a bun accompanied by the lovely combination of stringy vermicelli with fresh and pickled vegetables.

Anytime I'm in Van Nuys, which is usually to visit my favorite liquor store, I make a stop at Pho So 1. (Since there doesn't seem to be a Pho So 2 anywhere, I'm guessing that the name, like many pho restaurants, may refer to a restaurant in Vietnam).