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Food Tour, Los Angeles edition

General

When I first started thinking about my trip to L.A. and planning it all out, a few thoughts ran through my head:

1) L.A. is home to some of my favorite food haunts. A few places which I have not enjoyed in a long while.
2) A three-day weekend affords enough time to visit quite a few of the places I have missed so much.
3) I know people in L.A. Some of these people like food as much as, if not more than, me.

These all swirled together to formulate my final thought: I am going to organize a Food Tour. The requirements were simple: you had to enjoy food to come and the food had to be good.

Here are the highlights.

In Thai Town there is a most heavenly sanctuary serving authentic Thai desserts. This place is called Bhan Kanom Thai. You will never remember the name, only that it is long, three words long. When asked about it, you might even swear it has an s in its name, but none of that matters. What matters is that you can buy the best bananas in sticky rice wrapped up in banana leaves here. There they are sitting pretty wrapped in those green organic wrappers behind me on the left.

They can be tricky to unwrap but are so well worth it.

They are mind blowing when eaten warm.

This is no ordinary banana tucked furtively inside. It’s a much sweeter Thai banana sent from God. It is that good.

On the West side of L.A., just off of Santa Monica, is my favorite izakaya, Nanbankan.

I have dreams about these mixed mushrooms in their garlic-y wine butter sauce.

Sue and her man provided cupcakes for dessert from Violet’s Cakes. Now I dream about these red velvet cupcakes.

Did I mention we spent a lot of time watching The Food Network, specifically the show The Best Thing I Ever Ate? One of the best things one of the hosts on the show had ever eaten was from a L.A. restaurant called bld (which stands for breakfast, lunch, dinner — so clever, they are!) They were bld’s blueberry ricotta pancakes. They were good, but not as good as I had hoped. The best part, though, was getting syrup in a mini log cabin (upper right corner).

The chorizo home fries were pretty darn good. But aren’t potatoes always good?

Last modified: January 10, 2019