Los Toros Meat Market, Rosemead: All I Ever Need For A Lazy Weekend At Home In The San Gabriel Valley

Everyone in Southern California seems to have their favorite carneceria. Mine just happens to be Los Toros Meat Market in Rosemead. When I'm feeling particularly lazy but am still craving some serious grub, it has everything I need for a weekend at home in the San Gabriel Valley.

What I love about many ethnic markets in Southern California is that they carry a wealth of delicious prepared foods along with their normal grocery selections. Los Toros is no exception. Whoever said "Never go grocery shopping when you're hungry" obviously never lived in L.A. In L.A., we buy the groceries for the stuff we're gonna cook later but get instant gratification from the stuff we can eat now. That's how we roll.

A typical Lazy Los Toros Weekend goes something like this:

1) Put in order for tacos or combination plates at the food counter located in the back of the store. If it's early on a weekend morning, make sure menudo is included in that order 'cause families will come in with pots and scoop all of it up before mid-morning.

2) Pick up some of the market's own tortilla chips and habanera salsa, which, by the way, is my own form of crack as of late. If you like spicy foods, you'll love the slight smokiness of this salsa that burns in a just-enough-to-clear-your-sinuses-a-little way instead of the literally-kick-your-ass way that we often associate habanera anything with.

3) Then you'll wanna go to the meat counter to pick up some carne asada and other marinated meats for grilling that night.


4) Go to cashier to pay for all your stuff.

5) Upon seeing the glass case of carnitas and house-made chicharrones near the door, realize that you want some of those too.


6) Repeat Step 4.

7) Eat the tacos you just bought in your car before leaving the parking lot. Pick up any pieces of cabeza or lengua that may have fallen onto your lap and eat them before you get too many oil stains on your pants.

8) Immediately upon arriving home, put meat & other perishables in fridge. Then bust open the habanera salsa and tortilla chips while you prepare your menudo with lime, oregano, chili flakes and other accoutrements.

9) Savor that bowl of deep reddish-orange broth in front of you. It's got good flavor depth with a nice kick, a good balance of tripe and hominy, and they even throw in a gelatinous pata (foot) or two. No wonder the stuff sells out so quickly.

10) Go about the rest of your morning business, which for me means watching an energetic 2 year old tear up my house.

11) Eat delicious, tender, but slightly crispy hunks of carnitas and rice and beans in combination plate for lunch.


12) Crack a beer open and watch Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew or similar marathon on V-H1 while snacking on more chips and salsa.

13) Take a nap.

14) Fire up grill to cook that meat you purchased.

15) Have a good time at dinner with your loved ones.

16) Wake up hungover, tired and/or lazy, either from what you drank the night before or from life in general. Hungover, that is, in a good way.

17) Crave menudo.

18) Repeat steps 1-16, and 17 if applicable.

Los Toros Meat Market
8210 Garvey Ave.
Rosemead, CA 91770
626.573.8305
www.lostorosmeatmarket.com

Cheaters are Losers: A Spicy, Oily Indulgence at Shufeng Garden, Rowland Heights

I've been good.

I've pretty much kept my daily caloric intake to about 1400 a day.

I've been working out 5 days a week, some days at a pretty high intensity.

And I've lost 15 pounds since I've started this Biggest Loser challenge about 6 weeks ago. Not too shabby, eh?

But that 15 pounds lost hasn't all been a result of me being good. It is also, in my opinion, a result of me being very, very bad.

No matter how many tasty and healthy recipes I have up my sleeve, day after day of low calorie, low fat, low sodium, low carb, mayo-less, bacon-less, whole grain, high-fiber, sugar-free, dressing-on-the-side bullshit makes me want to eat the couch. So if I didn't allow myself to cheat on my diet once a week, I would literally consume upholstery. Topped with cheese and butter, of course.

One of my most recent cheat meals involved an oil-laden, fried, fatty, carbo-loaded feast at Shufeng Garden. And yes, this Rowland Heights mini-mall Sichuan did indeed do its job of fending off those late night upholstery cravings as well as punishing this unfaithful dieter with red-hot, spicy pain that hurt so much I liked it.

I'd remembered photos of an oil-slathered fatty pork dish on some local blogs and knew right away that this was exactly what I needed. Thanks to a Mandarin Chinese speaking coworker, printouts of photos of the dish from local blogs' jaunts to the restaurant's second location in San Gabriel, as well as an email from SinoSoul with the names of recommended dishes in Chinese, my non-Mandarin speaking, non-Chinese reading, Chinese self was able to get some Pork Butt in Garlic Mud into my now-smaller belly.

The cool, thin slices of half meat/half fat stripes bathed in spicy chili oil definitely satisfied my fat-covered-in-more-fat craving. I'd imagined them to be a little thicker and served warmer, but the dish was good nonetheless.

The large pot of Water Boiled Fish we ordered looked like something out a movie: a virtual sea of orangey-red angry with red pepper flakes, like a vast body of fluid over which you'd be rowing a decrepid boat in hell. The cauldron of white fish fillets and assorted vegetables soaked in a spicy red bath wasn't as spicy as I thought it was going to be, which is either good or bad depending on your tolerance for spice. I personally would have liked it to be spicier and perhaps a little more tangy, but it was still a nice accompaniment for a hot bowl of steamed rice.

Zhong's Dumplings were al dente pillows of pork-filled goodness served with a healthy dose of (you guessed it) chili oil. A sprinkling of sesame seeds added a nutty bite to these smoky and spicy little pouches.

It was perhaps the restaurant's Dan Dan Mian that put Shufeng Garden on LA's foodie map to begin with--what with having made Jonathan Gold's Best Dishes of 2009 list--and for good reason. It looks like a none-too-exciting small bowl of noodles topped with ground pork and spinach upon first glance, but after mixing the al dente noodles up with all that's in that bowl and taking a slurp, it's a multi-dimensional flavor experience that will both enlighten and numb your tastebuds. It's spicy, acidic, herbal and smoky all at the same time, with flavors that work together but that are distinguishable separately as well.

A cheat day can't be called a cheat day without something fried, so infidelity in the form of the restaurant's Shufeng Spicy Chicken and Intestines in Chili & Wild Pepper were pure guilty, spicy perfection. Fried meat morsels are fun, but not as fun as when they're fried with as much chilis and pepper as there were pieces of meat. I especially liked the fried intestine which were fried to a beautiful golden crisp on the outside which gave way to a slightly bouncy funkiness on the inside--a funkiness that only offal enthusiasts can appreciate.


After having inhaled three bowls of hot, steamy rice and five tongue-tingly good dishes with enough chili oil to grease up my newly toned biceps, I was more than ready to go back to 400 calorie a meal "budget." Until the next cheat day, that is. Sometimes you just have to be bad to be good.

Shufeng Garden
18459 Colima Road
Rowland Heights, CA 91748
(626) 839-7589

Getting Along At The Gorbals, Downtown LA

In an age where meeting new people is as easy as walking your dog, feeding your baby at the Nordstrom Women's Lounge, or starting a food blog, the number of friends, acquaintances, and internet chat buddies you have in your life suddenly becomes a little overwhelming. And to be perfectly honest, as much as I usually like the people I've met in my lifetime, I tend to like some more than others.

I recently thought long and hard about what the common thread is amongst the people who I get along with the best. And that common thread is simply...

...that the people I tend to get along with the best are not uptight.

People who are open minded, people who love to laugh and who can laugh about others as well as themselves--those are my peeps.

So it was completely appropriate that I met up with WeezerMonkey, yutjangsah, and The Delicious Life--a few of LA's most un-uptight local food bloggers--at Ilan Hall's most un-uptight new Downtown Los Angeles restaurant, The Gorbals.

One might have expected the atmosphere and surrounding environments of a Top Chef Season 2 winner's restaurant to lean somewhat on the swankier, more upscale side, but The Gorbals is quite the contrary. I had to Austin Powers my way out of the bordering-on-sketchy underground parking garage when its valet attendants were too busy trying to cram a car inside a freight elevator to acknowledge me. I finally made may way to the restaurant, located in the dingy lobby of the Alexandra Hotel, a historic hotel-turned-affordable housing complex. The stark rectangular space is, with its few wood and steel accents, minimalist-cool on one hand, and with its rows of wooden tables, a bit reminiscent of a dining hall on the other.

And if the setting wasn't enough to get that stick out of your ass, the food at The Gorbals just might be that extra pull you need. Named after a neighborhood in Glasgow, Scotland were Hall's father grew up, The Gorbals' menu draws inspiration from that neighborhood's post-war culture, where poor immigrants of varying ethnicities lived and ate. Hall created his menu, therefore, to know no boundaries, ethnicities or labels: it's "a spot for new and diverse ideas" and "tasty, oddball food that is there for anyone who is willing to eat something that does not fall into a category."

The restaurant's bacon-wrapped matzo balls with horseradish mayonnaise are probably the best example of Chef Hall's playful tribute to both the Kosher and the non-Kosher. This edible oxymoron was, from what I've heard, something the chef originally created as a joke for a non-Kosher Jewish friend's birthday party. I liked this dish, not only because I am usually a fan of bacon-wrapped anything, but mainly because of the sense of humor behind its concept. Hey, what can I say? I'm a rebel by old school Chinese standards myself.

Manischewetz-braised pork belly with clapshot and apples would also normally be a big no-no in Kosher circles, but leave it to Chef Hall to combine the two into a creation where pork and the Jewish faith can hold hands and coexist in peace. Not the best pork belly dish I've had around town (hint: Animal) but this version certainly works. And the Manischewetz reduction was quite tasty.

Butternut squash latkes with chestnut cream were a welcome alternative to traditional potato latkes, the light-as-a-feather chestnut cream being the star of the show here. Yutjangsah liked them so much that she'd eat Ding Dongs stuffed with this. We also told the chef that we really liked his cream and he told us it was really easy to make. Wait, that didn't come out right, did it?

Octopus with gizzards and lemon is a dish that would normally be right up my alley--I love chewy-tasties! Yutjangsah and The Delicious had already ordered this prior to my and WeezerMonkey's arrival and unfortunately, it had gotten a little cold and glazed over by the time I sampled. I'd totally love to try it fresh out of the kitchen next time.

Sweet oxtail buns with turnip pickles were this particular restaurant's version of everyone's obligatory slider. These were a little reminiscent of Manwich served on King's Hawaiian Rolls, which would normally be totally fine if they weren't one of the priciest options on that night's menu at $15.

Worcestershire sauce-spiked Welsh rarebit with fried egg was something I could probably eat for breakfast everyday if I wasn't fearful of food coma, clogged arteries and weighing 300 pounds.

Roasted marrow with king oyster mushrooms and walnuts was a tasty treat; I loved the acidic bite of the mushrooms against the velvety richness of the marrow. There was also bread to sop everything up. Genius.


Some of the wacky topics of conversation I had with the girls up to this point included white meat vs. dark meat chicken and earwax. I won't go into details but it was damn funny.

See, even Chef Hall is getting in on the humor. Here he is about to serve us our Gribenes sandwich:

Yes, the Gribenes sandwich. Chicken skin, lettuce (well, in this case arugula) and tomato nestled between rye bread and you've got yourself a "GLT." Need I say more?

I have to admit that it wasn't love at first bite with the Gribenes; I was a little concerned about the binding ability of the cold rye against the tower of ingredients, but a couple more bites and I was hooked. Chicken skin crack.

Apparently, the gribenes wasn't the only crack in the Gorbals that evening...

I really wanted to like our dessert more since I've heard good things, but I just wasn't thrilled with our sticky toffee pudding, nutella-buttermilk ice cream with maldon salt. Perhaps it was an off night, but whatever the case, our toffee pudding was dry and the ice cream lacked a little j'ne sais quoi, which is just fancy talk for a little somethin' somethin'. I'd love to give it another shot however.

We ran into H.C. of LA and OC Foodventures and mooched off his Israeli couscous, pumpkin ice cream and bacon brittle dessert, which to me was like a cross between oatmeal and tapioca pudding. Just OK, but I thought the bacon brittle was really cool.

Being relatively new, I think The Gorbals has a little bit to go in finding its groove, but nevertheless, I had quite the enjoyable dining experience. From the wacky, sacriligious, but tasty-for-the-most-part food to Chef Hall's down-to-earth personality to planning a boba/legal/mani-pedi/dry cleaning truck with some awesome bloggers, it was all good. If you're one of those stuffy, upturned-nose kind of people, though, this isn't the place for you.


The Gorbals
501 South Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013
(213) 488-3408
www.thegorbalsla.com

Jon and Vinny Had A Farm, E-I-E-I-O. Animal, Fairfax District

And on that farm they had some pig. E-I-E-I-O.

Is it wrong that every time I try and teach farm animals to my kid, visions of meat and offals dance in my head?

With an oink-oink here.
And an oink-oink there.
Here an oink.
There an oink.
Everywhere an oink-oink.

On a recent girls' night out, my friends J and C and I had dinner at Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo's restaurant Animal, which in my mind pays homage to our favorite creatures in much the same way that the See and Say did when we were young. "How so?" you ask.

Their purpose is to show us that animals are fucking awesome.

Especially when they come in the form of luscious, fatty cubes of pork belly with the spicy-tangy kick of kimchi, peanuts, chili soy sauce and scallion.

Or when that same pork belly shows off its versatility by being transformed into a dish that's completely different yet just as delicious. This time it's barbecued to such tenderness that a sandwich of it, a mini brioche bun, and some cool cabbage slaw can be eaten in a couple of clean bites. (With some welcomed finger licking to follow of course)

Or when crunchy strips of pig ear are tossed in spicy chili and lime and topped with a gift from our feathered chicken pals.

Or when dollops of hearty braised oxtail gravy can be scooped up with crispy french fries in a most naughty poutine.

Or when a perfectly seared, velvety hunk of foie gras sits atop a flaky biscuit smothered in rich maple sausage gravy.

Or God forbid, when salty bits of bacon dot the top of a bittersweet chocolate bar in a combination that people should just stop being curious about and just shut up and taste already because it works.

Or even in a tribute to our lactating furry friends in a tres leches, dulce de leche cake.

Chef Shook's and Dotolo's creations left such an impression on me that my post-dinner tweet that night read: Dinner at Animal so farking good that I'm gonna go floss my teeth just so I can have pork belly and foie gras "leftovers." 'Nuff said.

And to think that I considered becoming a vegetarian almost 20 years ago. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

Animal
435 N. Fairfax Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 782-9225
www.animalrestaurant.com

Rock Star Lunch Tour, Day Two: Partying Like A Broke-Ass Rock Star, Sapp Coffee Shop and Scoops Ice Cream, LA

I may have a paycheck in my future, but I certainly ain't gonna pre-spend it all at one restaurant. What I love about LA is that you can one, have a good lunch at Spago, and two, have about four even better lunches for the price of that Spago lunch. The economy sucks, yo. You gotta stretch your dollar as far as you can; have that Spago lunch and you may not be able to afford those Christian Louboutin's you've been eyeing, especially since your company just slashed salaries by 10% across the board. And God forbid you wear your Payless Shoe Source platform pumps to the next big meeting--you'll surely be the laughing stock of the department, which could lead you to get fired. Then what???

For Day Two of my Rock Star Lunch Tour, I'm going to show you where you can party like a rock star (and with dessert) for a little over ten bucks after tax and tip!

You've probably seen Sapp Coffee Shop a bajillion times when the Travel Channel repeats the LA episode of No Reservations. Hell, you've probably even gone there so that you can sit exactly where Tony Bourdain sat. (Oh, you mean only I did that???) Whatever the case, go there and order what my noodle-whoring friend recommended to everyone's favorite bad boy chef--the Thai Boat Noodles--and you can't go wrong. It's quality and quantity all for under six bucks--a smorgasbord of tasty animal goodies like beef flank, brisket, tripe, meatballs, liver, tendon, and fried pork skins doing some synchronized swimming with rice noodles in a most savory blood-thickened soup. If this genius composition of spicy, salty, sweet and bitter flavors and crunchy, chewy, snappy, and creamy textures doesn't float your boat (pun intended), Sapp's got a boatload (another pun intended) of other Thai dishes for dirt cheap.

No doubt you'll need something to cleanse your palate after all that funky noodley goodness, so take your warm belly a couple miles south to Scoops in the Hel-Mel area for some very innovative gelato. Sure, it's been blogged and yelped about close to six million times over the last three years but I don't care. It's good, the flavors are like none you'll ever have and owner-creator Tai Kim is as sweet as can be. On this particular Tuesday afternoon, I treated myself to a scoop of Brown Bread, texturally interesting with bits of Grape Nuts, and a scoop of Strawberry-Lychee, light and refreshing. Unless you go absolutely ape-shit here and gorge yourself with gelato, Scoops should only set you back a few bucks. (But don't forget to leave them a little something at the counter!)

So there you have it, folks, a rock-star worthy lunch with dessert for next to nothing! Pretty soon you'll have cut your monthly expenses down so much that you'll be strutting down the aisles at Big Lots in your sexy red-soled Louboutin's in no time.

Sapp Coffee Shop
5183 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 665-1035

Scoops Ice Cream
712 N. Heliotrope Dr.
Los Angeles, CA 90029
(323) 906-2649