380: Los Angeles Restaurant Highs and Lows with Bill Addison

0:00This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. Resi is a digital platform that connects restaurants to restaurant lovers by elevating dining experiences, providing original industry content, and helping to fill some of the country's most exciting dining rooms. Because restaurants have always been more than just places to eat. The amazing world of restaurants is just a few taps away in the Resi app and at resi.com. Before we get to the show, we have Pat Stango here, our producer. Pat had an idea. It's a brilliant one. What are you saying, Pat? All right. So here's my idea. They hear a lot from us, but I want to hear from the taste audience.

0:36I'm excited to hear from them. Matt, I know where you're eating and I know what you're cooking, but I want to hear what are the tasters out there cooking? The super tasters. That's our fan base. Write us in at hello at tastecooking.com and let us know where you've been dining out in your town. What products have you been buying at your local Air One or whatever the Air One is in your town? Yeah. Hot takes. I want to get some hot takes on food culture from our listeners. And we'll do a mailbag episode. We'll do a mailbag episode. It's not just for us to read them. We're actually going to read them on air.

1:05Exactly. There is a point to putting this before the show. We're going to read them on air. Liza and I and Pat are going to read some of these on air and discuss them. So write us. Again, hello at tastecooking.com is the email. Put listener question or listener feedback in the subject line so we don't miss it. Hello at tastecooking.com. Now on to the episode.

1:31I miss the places that I miss. You know, I wish that I had gone deeper into New Jersey. I wish that I'd gone into Alaska. There are places that I'm still just like curious about and my impression of them is just frozen in time. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbarg.

2:23and we catch up about Los Angeles and all of its beautiful colors and stripes and flavors and smells and all that. I love L.A. so much. We talk about the modern Korean scene, which Bill wrote beautifully about in a long essay. And Bill also gamely takes the taste check, which is one of my favorite four minutes in audio. I know you love it, too. Bill's is an instant classic. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

2:57Bill Addison, welcome to This Is Taste. In the flesh. We haven't done this since 2018. This is your third visit. Wild. Yes. I love seeing you. You have great shoes. Oh, thanks, man. What are they? My partner gave them to me. They're cool. They're Jordans. Yeah. I don't really know. Somebody stopped me in an airport to tell me how cool they were. They're blacked out. They're cool. And yeah, so. That's all I'm going to say about your physical appearance. It's just your shoes. How was dinner last night? Where were you at? I was at Uchi last night, which is the first California location of a restaurant that's been populating through Texas for the last decade.

3:37They started in Austin. And it's a case-by-case situation for me, whether I'm interested in restaurants. Yeah, in imports, exactly. And I was the restaurant critic at the Dallas Morning News from 2007 to 2009 and went to the original in Austin there. And so because I have history with it, I'm interested. I'm interested in seeing kind of its evolution. It was interesting to see like, you know, it's in West Hollywood and there was definitely like an industry crowd happening. Yeah. Yeah. I've been to Uchi and Uchi Co. in Austin and the Houston location as well. So I've been to Uchi quite a bit. And Tyson is an interesting character for sure.

4:23And interesting is a loaded term. And I don't mean that negatively. I'd love to talk to Tyson one day. Yeah, exactly. I'd love to listen to that. I'd love to talk. But we have a lot to cover, Bill. Okay. I could have you on every six months because as we've established, LA is like the most exciting scene and city for food in terms of just writing because there's just so many narratives and I just want to go into a real general grab bag of topics because are you ready to go? I'll do my best. Okay. Let's talk about private clubs in LA. I think San Vicente Bungalows comes up, Soho House of course.

5:01You know New York is having a moment with like the Frog Club which I don't even want to mention ever again in this podcast and the New Carbone which I do I think Mario is going to come on the show and we're going to talk about it. It seems important to acknowledge that the club is having a bit of a moment, Bill. What do you think about the private dining scene or the private club scene, we'll call it membership club in L.A.? I think that what's happening in New York with the restaurants that you specifically mentioned or the clubs that you've specifically mentioned and what's going on here are two very different things.

5:36when I think of the San Vicente Club, which a friend belongs to, so I've been. And it's more about meetings and community and drinking and hanging out and less about like I'm going very specifically for a culinary experience and particularly with like a named chef. So yeah, and I feel like Soho House, kind of the same thing. I'm not ragging on Soho House. I feel like it's just like everyone's, you know, public meeting place now that that none of us go into offices on a regular occasion. So, you know, so like brunch at Soho House in West Hollywood is a total thing. And and I've been to some a cool party that's happened in the downtown Soho, like a big art focused party.

6:28But, yeah, it's not it's not about the food here. Not yet. Yeah, yeah. So it's not really a topic that you would cover as your remake, but it is a thing. Not unless it crossed over. I mean, there are like, you know, instances of like very private situations. I know that those are interesting. But I don't see. I haven't even been because if I can can't get in without like really wrangling an invite in some ways, then then I'm not sure how it serves the reader. So, yeah. What about Sunset Tower? Is that? Well, I am, you know, I'll be writing about this at some point. So I guess I'm giving myself away.

7:08But I am really obsessed with martinis right now. And I mean, like, the purity of a good gin martini. And Sunset Tower is really, like, the place to begin that conversation. I love it. I think I'm kind of, like, hewing into, like, exclusivity in L.A. And, like, the idea of exclusive dining is quite fascinating in L.A. There's just a lot of it going on. I mean, yeah, I'd be interested in hearing more about what you're thinking about that. To me, the exclusivity lies in places like Hayato, which serves, you know, 35 people a week. And you can hardly it's just takes so much. You know, I mean, I have all these alarms set and and, you know, I try every month to get in there.

7:59so that hopefully in a 12-month period I can succeed. Yeah, we review it for 101. Yes, exactly. So I can go once a year and check in for the 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles, an annual guide that the Los Angeles Times puts out to be clear to listeners. And so I think about that. I think about how hard it is, like the disparity of how much good food there is in Los Angeles and how much of it is in places that aren't in the center of the city or not in fine dining spaces that's very easy to access versus these restaurants that are just impossible to get into or take months and what that disparity is like and how regulars certainly have favor to get into places like that or their email addresses.

8:49But that rides the fine line, right, because these are all technically public restaurants we're talking about. Technically public, right. And that's a really good distinction. I want to ask you about Stay Zero Proof in Chinatown, which it seems you enjoyed your experience there. I've been hearing about this place, and I've been very skeptical of the N.A. bar, but it seems like in L.A. there's a really unique one happening. Yeah, so I'm into it. It opened to no surprise right at the beginning of January when that's the month for NA, Dryuary, however we're calling it these days. It was interesting to me because I felt like if every year there's sort of a mandatory covering of that topic around the end of the holidays, it felt like this year was the year that everyone in media wrote about it.

9:44I wrote kind of a, well, first, you know, most NA cocktails really suck. oh brother yeah i'm with you they just have no body to the texture they're they're they're just a mixing of usually like one pre-concocted na spirit which is usually not delicious if you try it on its own and then you're the worst trend in drinking yeah pretty much ever yeah so there are two bartenders at a restaurant that i love very much called kato which is you know a super high fine dining restaurant but these two bartenders han and austin are just geniuses with na cocktails neither of them happen to drink anymore and so they have this extra investment um but it has everything you're looking for the complexity the the sort of like the thing that your mind does when you take a sip of a cocktail and go oh cool what's this and like oh what's happening yeah the body too and the body right we don't want to drink kool-aid kool-aid has no body and drinks that aren't kool-aid have more body and like we want to drink but we want body we want texture want acidity we want balance yeah exactly so i think they're really on their way with stay um two women who have long been in the film industry here who partnered on this project um it's in Chinatown.

11:11They have attempted to be very mindful with the space that has some history in the city. There was a punk club there once upon a time. It's just stunningly gorgeous. And I like some of the cocktails more than others. There's one called the Ox that's kind of almost in the bourbon profile. That's the one that I would recommend for people first. And yeah, I just think that That subject has a long way to go, but I think the people are kind of on it, and so it's exciting to see where it'll go. Thanks, Bill, for taking the interest in writing about N.A. and thinking it through as writing about a destination, a bar that does it, and having a real discerning palate for N.A.

11:55Because I wish there were more critics in our world who gave N.A. a fair shake. Yeah. I mean, again, I've been doing this for 22 years now, which is shocking. if life goes by in a blank. And I'm not the young man that I was when I started this. And so I'm interested in just drinking less as a means of self-preservation. Survival is a big thing. Although I don't intend to stop drinking alcohol, but I like the idea of drinking less of it. And I like the idea of having nights where I'm drinking something delicious and interesting that doesn't have alcohol. So yeah. Next grab bag topic is Evan Funke.

12:37Okay. Evan Funke has had a pretty amazing couple years in LA. I've only been to Mother Wolf. I haven't been to Funke. I know you've been to both. Let me ask you about him specifically. What does he mean to LA Dining right now? Oh, that's an interesting question. What I think is interesting about Evan Funke is his nexus of his very personal passion for Italian cooking with the kind of notions of power and Hollywood and celebrity that surround what he does. Wow. Well, you hit something there. That's so great. So great. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, his father is a cinematographer and and so he grew up in that space.

13:26And if I'm not mistaken, without having notes in front of me, he cooked at Spago or definitely like was in the sphere of Wolfgang Puck, who is, you know, the progenitor, the grandfather of of Hollywood power dining. And I think that that funky absolutely owns the mantle on that. And I think that there's a crowd that the duly follows him wherever he goes with that. It's interesting because his first kind of independent restaurant that that he really had his stamp on as a part owner is Felix and Venice. Which I've been to is what I've been. Yeah, I really liked it when I first went during my Eater years as Eater's national critic.

14:16And Jonathan Gold and I shared the opinion that maybe he was a little too attached to the notion of like molto al dente, just really too firm. Yeah, as like a mission statement, as like a statement. Yes, but he's honestly, I haven't had a direct conversation with him about that, but he's let up on that. I don't know. I don't know why, but certainly my meals at Funky, you know, of course you want pasta to have a little bit of bite of resistance of, you know, toothiness, however you want to phrase that. Oh, my God. It can't be like hard and have no dexterity. It needs to actually have a nice mouthfeel.

14:59Yeah, some suppleness to it, too. Suppleness. Yeah. We can just do word salad all day. A really great. Yeah. So, you know, and my take, which I've I've said in writing, is that the best funky restaurant is where funky is present. Yeah. And that that is funky in Beverly Hills. Yeah. So he's Chicago or Chicago. Or in Vegas. Yeah. So I haven't been to to funky since the fall when funky the restaurant, when funky the man was still very present. and so we'll see how it goes there. Bill, let's unpack Poltergeist. It made your 101 list. It seems like this is performative cooking for a very small audience, but that's me having never been to Button Mash and had this very experimental cuisine inside an arcade.

15:48I'm just like slightly cynical, but I haven't tried the food, so I'm going to be super open-minded. Sure. What is going on there? So we're talking about a chef named Diego who cooked at Bestia, one of our most celebrated and long-running modern Italian restaurants, who ran a pop-up called AstronoThings that was making things like mashing up notions of Taco Bell with traditional Italian cooking and the lines. It might have been one of the longest lines I've ever stood in for food. uh strano things both both because it was so um enthusiastically received by its fans and also because they would kind of famously like take their time getting the evening started so um so he popped up in this in this crazy space that is just a a very lively throwback arcade that's especially busy on the weekends and and the menu is is really crazy and all over the place he does this one thing that is kind of universally beloved.

16:58It's his Thai Caesar salad. So the ubiquitous salad of Los Angeles kind of through this really deconstructed mulchy lemongrass explosive lens. And it's delicious. And not everything on the menu is delicious. And he's like stubborn about like not giving up. You can criticize this kind of horchata panna cotta with spiced crisp rice sprinkled around it that he puts on the tail end of a take on honey walnut shrimp. And he won't take it off the menu, man. He believes in it. Yeah, I've heard the honey walnut shrimp actually slaps, but you seem to not be a big fan of it. Well, I like the shrimp itself, but I don't like the panna cotta on there.

17:45But you don't like the panna cotta on there. Which I've already said. Yeah, you've already said a piece. Yeah. But what's interesting is as the national food writers make their rounds for the annual lists of best restaurants, I, you know, I have no insight as to what what anyone ever chooses. But I will say that everyone expresses interest in poltergeist. I think because, too, we're also talking about I don't mean this as criticism. I mean, this is reality check. I'm sure like all anyone ever talks about on your podcast is the difficulty of this industry. And so it's not a time for taking risks on which unless you think they can really pay off.

18:34And I think that there's this was a low bar of of overhead for him. And so he gets to just be as insane as he wants to be. And there's something incredibly exciting about that. Yeah, I love that you said that. I think it's clearly there's like a different P &L for the button mash, like selling the cheese fries and, you know, NBA jam crowd. Yeah. And then you've got this cool. I mean, it's obviously set up for the national critics because you've got such a you got a pedigree. He's been a chef here, best you in and with the pop ups, but also hyper hyper creative, which was what we want. We seek out chefs to do that.

19:11And good for him to be doing it in a situation that is maybe a slightly lower risk. Yeah. And a good, and as always, as we look for in Los Angeles, like the personal narrative to go with. Of course. You know, he's a he's of Ecuadorian heritage, grew up in the valley, went to Thai restaurants with his mom is like a special like bonding outing. And that leads you to like, you know, reading Thai cookbooks incessantly and a Thai Caesar salad on. I want to meet Diego. I want to try to meet him. You should. Switching gears in our grab bag. a little more serious note and please be honest and speak freely as you always do how do you negotiate the deep struggles of downtown you know in one way you want to pull for it you want downtown to survive but also you want to it's a service journalism job you want to make sure you're reviewing restaurants and sending people to neighborhoods that are safe and accessible you've got readers in Orange County you've got readers in Ojai and SGV.

20:11Bill, how do you debate reviewing and writing about downtown Arts District restaurants? Yep, I'm always just going to side on reviewing them and if there's something particularly worth celebrating in that area, I'm going to send people to those areas. It's a block by block situation in downtown and that's the reality and I try in my reviews to even and frame a bit of what the context around might be like, not to scare people off ever, but to just give them a taste, a sensory taste of what's going on. But downtown remains such a vital place, and particularly it's hard to talk about because the issue of where is safe or where is not safe is really hard for me to parse as a critic because there are a few places where I'm not going to go for the sake of my job.

21:14And the arts district, there's no reason not to go to the arts district. There's no reason not to go check out Yangban. There's no reason not to check out Beru, which are two examples of the great modern Korean cooking that's percolating in the city. So it is absolutely something to be aware of. And, you know, kind of the tricks of journalism and online where like if my colleagues in other sections of the L.A. Times are writing intelligent things about this subject, I'm happy to link to them in my own work. Things like that. Well said, Bill. I think that I agree fully. I think you have to obviously review where the good stuff is and not necessarily think about too much about the subtext or where the safety because you agree.

22:08Same with New York, it's block by block. You never know what's going to happen in certain neighborhoods. And I'm glad that you wouldn't penalize and I never think you would a restaurant for operating in a certain neighborhood. And speaking of downtown or arts district, I think I haven't been, but the restaurant, yes, with two S's. I like checked in with your friends and it was like kind of polarizing. But I but I don't I hate to talk about a restaurant without dining there myself. But you have what's going on. Yes. Yes. Yes. Is it is a polarizing restaurant. A chef, Junya Yamasaki, who was at a very celebrated London restaurant called Koya, took some time off, went back to Japan where he was born and came to Los Angeles and is doing this kind of cool, very like grill forward seafood and vegetable focused cooking.

23:13I thought it needed to find its footing when it started. And then it went through this phase where it like everything clicked and it was so good and so interesting. And he does this this churashi that I really like that was just like vegan, but with textures like through nuts in there. It was really outside the box. But I like in the summertime, particularly, you can imagine like all the incredible like mix of fruits and vegetables on there. And then it closed to do some like final construction on the restaurant. And it reopened with this semi prefix menu. And a lot of people was just tough timing.

23:59I wrote my review. Others wrote about it. It closed. It came back. And then it was kind of different from what it had been when we reviewed it. And a lot of people were like, the feedback was like, I'm not like I'm not having experience that you're having. And I'm like, not loving this. Yeah. And it's a tough part of the job. It illustrates why restaurant reviews are timestamped with a date. Yes. And it's a moving target, especially in places like L.A. And why I, you know, I feel like something like the 101 guide is important because it's an opportunity. I'm so grateful to have it as part of my job to go revisit restaurants, to give kind of fresh impressions.

24:43And I have such mixed feelings about ranking, but even ranking kind of tells its own story about how a restaurant is hitting in my experience. So I think, yes, it's in an interesting state of evolution, and I will be going back soon. I really like this look inside your process and the way it really does change and how 101 is a catch-all for the year in dining. Yes. And you should definitely look for that. That comes out in the fall? It comes out in December, early December. We'll look for that coming up, or actually in a while. So it's probably going to be a lot of changes. I'm starting. It's all happening again.

25:24So, Bill, I read your bagel map, and it seems L.A. is firmly, squarely, possibly roundly, joke, has won the bagel wars with New York. I mean. I'm going to let you speak most, Matt. I'm scared of the New Yorkers. Oh, my God. No, I'm like a New Yorker, and I'm like, honestly. Okay, here's my take. I feel like L.A. is just full of life and invention, and I'll link to that in the show notes, the bagel map of L.A. and I'm sorry New Yorkers us we honestly there ain't shit happening there's a few places in Brooklyn but like there isn't a lot of life when it comes to the bagel right now and there's a lot of standard places but I like life I like writing about life so that's my take yeah I'm gonna just agree with you on the fact that like it's always funny about Los Angeles too because every city has its tropes but then it also has its like anti-tropes too you know what I mean and like we I think the food writers of los angeles are just now getting to the point where we don't couch everything we write about pizza here to be like well los angeles has never been known as a pizza town because frankly like ever since pizzeria mozza opened you know i think in 2009 although i could be wrong about that it could be older but like it's been like a growing amazing pizza town and And now, like, I have no envy of other cities except for maybe, like, Chicago for the one time that I want, like, a deep dish pizza annually.

26:56And that's about all I crave it. But I do crave it that one time. And there's just so much good going on here. So I think that's happening with bagels. I think, like, you know, baked, like, something, you know, Montreal style but that isn't. And where you can get into heated debates about is it even a bagel or what is a bagel? I think that's fun. What's on the top of the list right now in LA? Did you rank them? I can't remember. I did not rank them. And that was absolutely a group effort. of course that is a group effort. So, um, I love courage and Virgil village, which has lines down the street and which Tejal Rao of the New York times wrote about and really put that place on the map kind of as the, uh, the worst of the pandemic was, was lightening up.

27:41And, and, you know, I, Tejal, she's right. She's talking about. Yeah. Great pal at that. It's a joke around. New York Times newspaper based in New York City, Colin, L.A. Yeah, one of the best food writers in America. Hey, Bill, do you miss the roving eater critic days? I was such a fan of your work, the tenacity, the calories, the endurance when you were traveling the country. And there really isn't a role like that. I know, like, you know, guys at Every New Wine and BA and others are doing similar work. But you were doing, like, weekly reviews. Do you miss those days? Yeah, I traveled year round for that job.

28:18So it wasn't just a seasonal thing. The truth is, Matt, I do miss it. And I wish that I could be allotted to lives because I was a splintered human at the end of five years on the road with no sense of home. A year and a half before I was hired at the LA Times, I sold my home in Atlanta. So I just was on the road about 20 days out of the month and stayed with friends in Brooklyn or Atlanta when I wasn't working. And so there is that. Right. I have a partner. I have a home. I love our life. I love Los Angeles and the world is in Los Angeles. And so that that part is always exciting for me. But I'm such a wanderer.

29:11Yeah. And I miss it. And I miss not just like diving into places, but I miss I miss the places that I miss. Yeah. You know, I wish that I had had gone deeper into New Jersey. I wish that I'd gone into Alaska. I there are just there are places that I'm still just like curious about. And my my impression of them is just frozen in time. um when i when i left the job in 2018 i miss i miss the sense of knowing america and i i mean the the the privilege of that job is is you know unspeakable and i'm very aware of that and very grateful for it but the short answer is yes yeah i miss it i'm glad you're honest i mean i i feel like you clearly you know it had a shelf life but man you know digging into greenville south Carolina must have been cool like just rolling into a town so cool just having optimism and having this like idea that there can be the next great restaurant you know in Charlotte yeah maybe not even right but I mean sure I hope in Charlotte honestly and I um and not even just like sort of for me it was about the sense of like the next hot food town right falling away and just meeting every place where it was and digging into communities, understanding what makes Dearborn, Michigan, an incredibly special place.

30:38Why, why people love Portland, Maine so much, you know, the, just the, even like Amanda Kluge, my editor encouraged me to just go somewhere I wouldn't have expected to go. And I wandered around Montana and that was weird and wild. And, and I, I just saw things I couldn't have expected to see Was there ever a town where you wanted to stay 48 hours and you ended up staying a week just because you just loved I love Houston Me too, I was just there in September I love it, and I'm so jealous, another one I haven't been to in 2018 I can give you all the obvious ones New Orleans is still like you just want to love that city, you want to understand what's like the culinary glue that holds that place together sometimes but yeah Houston is just a I'm sorry that I don't get there yeah between like Tatamo the tasting counter in the north side of town and like Trillburger I mean there's like there's like bullshit happening in Houston.

31:38You're like speaking language that I have forgotten which makes me so sad like I don't know those places they're cool they're up there well I want to wrap this grab bag and talk about a piece that you're working on that we've discussed a little bit and I'm not I think it'll be out by the time we run this, but I'd like to know, it's a really cool idea and it's comparing LA and New York Korean American restaurants, the modern Korean scene. And I just want to get a sense about where you're at right now in LA with modern Korean and really some of the big questions that you're debating while working on this feature.

32:14Yes, and I will be honest and say that by the time people hear this, it will have been written, but I am very much in the thick of writing it right now. So I don't know exactly what's going to be there, but it it was because Korean cuisine is such a fundament of dining in Los Angeles and because Koreatown is the beating heart, the epicenter of the city in both terms of food and geography. You know, I think about Korean food a lot. So it was hard not to notice throughout last year that every major outlet that writes about food was doing really thoughtful pieces about this moment in modern Korean dining.