Redondo's Cantina: Ortega 120

Ortega 120
1814 South Pacific Coast Highway,
Redondo Beach, 90277
(310) 792-4120


With a suggestion from my girlfriend's mom, we ended up at Ortega 120. She told me the location had previously been a lobster shack not too long ago, and then an Italian restaurant before that. Guess it must be a bad location.

The restaurant itself was comfortably airy. Tables were far apart, giving you room for just your group. They project some old movies on a wall and have several large TVs showing various sporting events. Noticing loungy couches along the wall, I could see how the place could easily be converted into a night club.

More after the jump...

Positioning itself as a somewhat more upscale, but still festive, Mexican restaurant, Ortega 120 does a great job of walking that line. The food is excellent, created by Thomas Ortega, formerly of Water Grill, Lucques and Patina. In LA, that seems to be the mark of a decent chef. Patina grads seem overly abundant in this town. My carnitas were juicy and delicious. The pork falling apart as my fork cut through the mound of meat. Speaking of mounds, the portions are rather large.

My main criticism comes from the tables and chairs. They have the leather topped tables with the large weaved seating that never seem to fit comfortably at the table. I might be able to bare it at a taqueria, but at a more upscale place like this, I'd like to sit comfortably.

Ortega 120 has everything it takes to be a success. I want to publicize it as much as possible so it doesn't take the route of the old lobster place or Italian joint. As much as it's a shame those places didn't last, the real shame would be to let this new restaurant falter as well.

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Bland Indian, Isn't that an oxymoron?

Addi's Tandoor
800 Torrance Blvd
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
(310) 540-1616
http://www.addistandoor.com/
$20 per entree

Given my frequent visit to the South Bay, I figured I needed to acclimate myself with the available restaurants in the area. It seems that no one eats in the South Bay, at least no one eats anywhere worth mentioning. Perusing some of my favorite food blogs, I am hard-pressed to find reviews in the area. Even FoodDigger and Yelp don't seem to have very much either. Since I felt open to any cuisine that night, I decided to simply go to one of the highest ranked restaurants in Redondo on FD--Addi's Tandoor.

More after the jump...

We made a reservation a few hours before arrival at 7:15 on Saturday night. Good thing we did; every table had a little "RESERVED" by the time we got there. It put me at ease to see many regulars who seemed to know Addi personally and also to hear several British accents. Seeing as how British cuisine is devoid of anything close to flavor, they've successfully assimilated other cultures. India, of course, was no exception. Now London is actually one of the dining capitals of Europe.

Our waiter seemed polite, but it took a good ten minutes or so before he even approached our table. Although he was a nice guy, the rest of the night was also marked by negligent service as he chatted up the other tables. It's one of those situations where I would have been very satisfied if I was on the other side of the looking glass, but since I wasn't, I'll have to dock Addi's for service.


Mirchiwalla Wings

As an appetizer, I wanted to taste how spicy their spicy chicken wings can be. The dish came out colorful and visually pleasing. The interplay between the fiery red of the drummettes against a bed of yellow, orange and green bell peppers made the plate a canvas. A conveniently wrapped lime gave the chicken some last minute zest. I eagerly bit into one of the wings, only to immediately recoil. What was this? I thought I was eating Indian food but it tasted as dry as British humor. Isn't "bland Indian food" an oxymoron? Well whatever came out certain was lifeless and overcooked, such a shame considering how pretty it looked.


Starting counter-clockwise from the left: lentils, lamb khorma, vegetable makhani, basmati rice

The entrees all come either a la carte or with naan, rice, raita (yogurt)and dal makhani (stewed lentils)as a "dinner" option for $5 more. We got all the above, but only because I needed something to eat my lamb with and an order of rice is an outrageous $4.25. I don't care how special your pilaf is, that's too much to pay for rice alone.

For awhile now, I've been ordering lamb khorma at most of the Indian restaurants I go to as my standard measure of quality. It is a rich curry made of ground nuts (usually almonds or cashews), yogurt and coconut milk with other spices, making it extremely rich. As for lamb, I've always loved it. Of the less-exotic meats, it would be my favorite by far. My first reaction with the khorma at Addi's is the intense concentration of lamb flavor. The meat they used must have been an old animal, because the flavors were so concentrated. However, the meat itself was tough. Despite the lambiness, which I admired, the curry was one-note. The vegetable makhani was too sweet for my tastes. Plus I don't like tomato based dishes like makhani.

I'll have to be honest here. I didn't realize it until I got into the restaurant, but I was actually mildly congested that night. Being a little sick, I wasn't able to taste as well as usual so I can't offer a completely unbiased review of the food. I did however, bring some home with me to try again when I was feeling better. Eating it as leftovers, the food definitely tasted better, but still not as amazing as I had hoped. If each Indian household makes its own curry mixes, this is one home in which I wouldn't want to be a guest.

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Where to Buy Me Some Banh Mi: BC Deli in Oakland

I am testing out my newly formatted entries thanks to help from Drew of How to Cook Like Your Grandmother. This new addition allows me to create summaries of entries to give you a taste before you jump right in. So for the first entry, I decided to write about a backlogged place that I've been eager to share. It's in Norcal, not Little Saigon in the OC, but BC Deli Sandwiches makes the best Vietnamese sandwiches.

More after the jump...


Sandwich menu

This familiar sight has greeted me ever since high school when I used to come to BC Deli, buy five sandwiches and get one free. Vietnamese sandwiches, or banh mi, are hot commodities in predominantely Asian schools. With their old prices, I used to pay $10 for six sandwiches and sell them for $5 each during lunch. Twenty dollar profit easy. Now that they've raised their prices, the profit margin is not quite as large, but they are still a steal compared to a similar sandwich at any American sandwich chain. Everytime I come here, I always buy six sandwiches at a time, even if it's just for myself. They're just too good to pass up.

My favorites are the grilled pork and the grilled chicken sandwiches. They have a char-siu sandwich as well, but they don't appeal to me that much. Nothing about their meat is particularly great, but the way the mayonnaise, soy sauce and possible fish sauce blend together make each sandwich an umami bomb. Also, they have the best pickled daikon and carrots in the Bay Area. Now they have a special toaster to heat up the baguettes, giving each sandwich a satisfying slightly browned, yet always flaky crust. For the record, can anyone tell me what the Vietnamese name for the white and orange pickles is? I've heard a few things, but many Vietnamese people can't seem to agree on what it's called. One of my friends told me she's only called them "sour things" in Vietnamese. For a while, I kept a picture on my phone to order them visually at restaurants instead of butchering the tongue instead.


Grilled pork sandwich, my trusty #5

Though I always buy six at a time, the right portion is about one and a half for me. I could probably stop at one, but the half inevitably gets eaten as well. Otherwise, the rest of the sandwiches keep well in the fridge. They are fun to give out (or sell) but are amazing the next day too. I've tried the banh mi at some other places including the Lee's Sandwiches chain and I still come back to BC everytime. There's just something magical about their sandwiches.

On another personal note, the pickles are extremely easy to make. Just combine white (or rice) vinegar, sugar and a little salt with carrots and daikons cut julienne and leave them floating in the pickling juice for a few hours. Keep them chilled for a week or two and put them on anything or make your own sandwiches.

BC Deli Sandwiches
818 Franklin St
Oakland, CA 94607
(510) 286-9978
$2.50 average for a sandwich or $12.50 for six like I always get.

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Destination Peru #13: Apu Salkantay Puno

City of Puno

We were in Puno to visit Lake Titicaca. Quick, someone tell me something they know about the lake besides it being the highest lake in the world be elevation...yea that's all I knew about it also. However, my mom had remembered reading about it when she was in grade school so we made sure to check it out on our trip to Peru. We arrived after a long ten-hour bus ride with my brother painfully sick the entire time. Too bad for him, he missed out on all the alpaca along the way. When we finally got to the city, I actually thought the town was kinda dumpy and the lake not that magnificent. It wasn't until we got away from the town and went up into the mountains that we got a better view of the nearby lagoon.


Like the hat?

For dinner, we walked along the main tourist drag without any real direction. I had a few restaurants scribbled in my Moleskine, but nothing particular worth searching for. We ended up at the restaurant with the largest crowd, but there was too long a wait so we went across the street to here instead.

Apu Salkantay
JR Lima, Puno

After some extensive research (the kind that involved my Wikipedia search bar), I found out Apu is an honorific term for mountain spirits in Andean culture. Salkantay is the name of one of the Andean peaks. Fittingly, the menu was Peruvian heavily slanted towards Andean cuisine. My dad and I decided on the trout and pejerrey respectively. These are two of the four types of fish indigenous to the lake. Though the English translation of pejerrey on the menu said "kingfish," Wikipedia tells me that it's actually a neotropical silverside. Well whatever fish it is, it wasn't very delicious. The flesh was rather bland and fell apart too easily. It came with vegetables cooked in black bean sauce, seemingly Asian influenced. After trying the dishes, my parents and I were convinced the chef was Chinese. My dad's combination platter, the Fiambre Salkantay, had the aforementioned trout and also alpaca loin and Andean cheese. The loin was among the better alpaca meat I had in Peru. My mom opted French with a lomo a la pimienta, a pepper steak in a brandy sauce. While the reduction was excellent, it tried to cover up the inferior quality beef. Bad meat, bad dish, no matter what you do to it.

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Lunch Around the Corner

Corner Bakery Cafe
1019 Westwood Blvd
Westwood, CA 90024
(310) 824-1314
http://www.cornerbakerycafe.com
$7 or so for a sandwich

I've been enthralled with the idea of microliterature, four word movie reviews and twelve word novels. I think that restricting yourself to only four words allows for some amazing bit of creativity. Plus the puns come out en masse and God knows I love wordplay. So from now on, I'm going to try to sum up my reviews in four words or less as the title to this entry suggests.

Corner Bakery Cafes are a chain of restaurants similar to Le Pain Quotidien. The comfortable seating and atmosphere brings a varied customer base of students, business people and bored Bel-Air housewives eager to gossip about the summer after dropping their kids off for the first week of school. When I used to work in Westwood and order my lunch to go, Corner Bakery was usually my top choice. We all know how much food suffers when it is not served immediately or whether it'll even survive the journey from restaurant to desk. But it's hard to completely dismantle a sandwich in a to-go container. My favorites are the DC Chicken Salad on Steakhouse Rye (pictured below) and the Chicken Pesto on Ciabatta. The chicken salad has large identifiable chunks of chicken with light dressing and raisins. The crisp green apples add variety in texture, a satisfying crunch to an otherwise squishy salad. My one complaint about the sandwich is its difficulty in eating. I found myself reaching for the fork to finish off the remaining pieces of chicken. The chicken pesto on the other hand, doesn't suffer from this lack of cohesiveness.


DC Chicken Salad Sandwich

I bought my lunch for take-out today, explaining the photo taken at my desk. First off, it was 10:30 in the morning and I wanted to save it for later. Secondly, I feel awkward eating in restaurants alone. The only exception is fast food which I can purchase, consume and be out the door before the other patrons realize that I'm by myself. The appeal of Corner Bakery is not its uniqueness, there are a million other bakery cafes, but in its familiarity. A wide chain like this must be popular to continue expanding. The public has spoken, and Corner Bakery is in.

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Destination Peru #12: Peru has Pizza?

Amaru
Agua Calientes, in the town square with the Incan fountain

I apologize for the lack of addresses or more specific directions, but this is probably the easiest way to find the place paired with the above photo. Restaurant Amaru is upstairs, providing a scenic balcony view of the square.


View from the restaurant

I wonder if you noticed something peculiar about the sign of the restaurant in the first picture. "Bar,restaurant..." yes those all make sense, "...pizzeria"? Now in itself it may not be quite so strange, but pizzeria is actually a fairly common site in Peru. How many of you knew that Peru has pizza, and lots of it? After passing by many of these places, I couldn't help but try it.



And it was good. In fact, so good, it beats most of the pizza I've had here. Maybe it even holds a candle to NY style pizza. Though they are quite different types of pizza, I'd be hard pressed to choose a NY slice over a Peruvian one. The crust was thin, like a slightly risen cracker but crisp from the wood oven. This pizza is a pizza mixta, with ham, palm hearts, olives, bacon, cheese and oregano. As much as NY pizza is defined by the dough and the sauce, I think Peruvian pizzas are characterized by the cheese. I'm tempted to say it's queso fresco, but I can't confirm that. All I know is the the way the ham paired with the gooey strands made me go back to another pizzeria the next day.

Besides the marvelous pizza, I also had an empanada which I regrettably forgot to photograph. The crust was different than the Argentinian ones I had before. It wasn't flaky as much as it was smooth. I think they messed up my order and gave me a pure cheese one. Ultimately, it was too much dairy for me to handle.

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White Meat Society

One thing I never understood about Americans, speaking as a native born and raised in California, I never understood the American fascination with white meat.

[A simple scientific primer on white and dark meat

The color of the meat is determined largely by the presence of myoglobin, a protein that carries oxygen in muscle tissue. Through some interaction with iron, myoglobin forms the red pigments we associate with meat. Muscles that are designed for endurance, such as legs on chickens, have much myoglobin to supply oxygen because these endurance activities typically require oxygen. Breast meat on the other hand, has less myoglobin because the quick bursts of activity can happen without oxygen. ]

Growing up Chinese, we ate the cheapest parts of the chicken. Drumsticks and thighs were always cheaper than breasts and so that's what I ate. However, breast meat is also significantly leaner. As I mentioned in my post on veal, fat conveys flavor. As anyone who has had a well-marbled steak can tell you, we like our meat fatty. Let's accept for the moment that everyone likes flavor, then why would you voluntarily choose the meat that has less of it?

I've heard many reasons for the white meat preference. Among them, one that occurs most often is for health reasons. True, white meat chicken is a good source of protein without too much fat. But do you know why we describe so many meats as tasting "like chicken"? We usually say this when the meat has no flavor of its own, therefore tastes like chicken. Chicken does not need to be relagated to this level as generic protein, but it has to be treated right. Okay, if your health is so much of an issue that you need to give up the good stuff, then white meat is better than tofu.

Another thing I hear often is that breasts just tend to have more meat. I think this has much to do with the accessibility of the meat. It carves nicely into slices. Americans just seem to be lazy in what they eat. God forbid they need to eat deal with a bone, or worse yet, a whole fish unfileted. There's much flavor in the bones and cartilage so often neglected. Consider that stocks are made from bones.

In reality, I think the biggest reason for the preference of white meat is brainwash marketing. How often have you heard the term "all-white meat"? I've never understood the appeal of that. Perhaps it's to assuage you that they didn't stick some chicken feet into your chicken nugget. You accept that it's reconstituted meat anyway, why does it matter if it's all-white? But because advertising as position white meat to be so appealing, the public has fallen for it. I don't know whether this preference developed before the advertising or vice versa. I suppose it's the same problem of the white chicken and the egg.

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