There’s a debate rag­ing through­out the Los Ange­les food crowd. No not which Kogi truck is the best but who makes the best Red Vel­vet cup­cake? The trendy choice is Sprin­kles in Bev­erly Hills. But that’s so unin­spired. True cup­cake afi­ciona­dos say that the over rated Sprin­kles is for the unin­formed masses who just like to fol­low trends. They wait hours in line like lem­mings for a $4 cup­cake com­pletely unaware there are other places in LA that make Red Vel­vet so much bet­ter. …really now? I’m not a lem­ming and I’m going to have to decide for myself. So this past week­end, I decided do an in depth taste test and try all three cup­cakes back to back to back. Still on a sugar high, I’m writ­ing to report back to you all that Sprin­kles indeed does not make the best Red Vel­vet cupcake.

Red Vel­vet became pop­u­lar dur­ing World War II when there was a sugar short­age. Sugar was being reserved for our troops and inven­tive bak­ers look­ing for an alter­na­tive sweet­ener for their choco­late cakes stum­bled upon an old south­ern recipe called The Choco­late Cake of the South that used beets for sweet­en­ing. An unin­ten­tional side effect was that the cakes turned red. Nowa­days, the beets have been removed and replaced with red food col­or­ing. Also, the sugar and cocoa pow­der has returned for a more tra­di­tional choco­late cake.  Renamed Red Vel­vet, the south­ern recipe has become so pop­u­lar that even Jes­sica Simp­son had it as her wed­ding cake. But we all know how that mar­riage turned out.

Bas­tard stepchild of real cake and cousin to the muf­fin, cup­cakes in my opin­ion are the ideal size. When done right, you get the right ratio of moist cake mid­dle, firm cupcake-top, and frost­ing in each bite. And there in a nut­shell was my judg­ing cri­te­rion. In addi­tion to look­ing for a great cream cheese frost­ing, I had every­thing I needed to get all Iron Chef on the fol­low­ing three bak­eries: Sprin­kles, Dots, and Aun­tie Em’s Kitchen.

Sprin­kles $3.25

Now, I’ve never actu­ally been to Sprin­kles. Two hours seems like a long wait for a cup­cake. For­tu­nately, I have a friend that works there. She brings over dozens of cup­cakes for free when­ever I have a house party. But in an attempt to get the whole expe­ri­ence, I decided to go and brave the line just like every­one else. The wait was about 45 min­utes and every­one in line was friendly. There was a good mix of reg­u­lars and tourists tak­ing pic­tures, “Look Ma! I went to Sprin­kle!” Now even though I didn’t think Sprin­kles had the best cup­cake, what they did get right was their frost­ing to cake ratio. The other two cup­cake pur­vey­ors either had way too much frost­ing or way too lit­tle. But although they had just the right amount of frost­ing, it was by far the sweet­est of the three and in my opin­ion way too sweet. Sprin­kles also uses a lot of pow­dered sugar which ends up giv­ing the frost­ing a gran­u­lar mouth feel. But my biggest quib­ble is that their frost­ing doesn’t have the nice tang that I look for in a cream cheese frost­ing. I also had a minor gripe about the cake itself because it was a lit­tle doughy. But this wasn’t that notice­able when eaten with the frosting.

Dots $2.75

Dots runs their busi­ness out of a small lit­tle store in Pasadena and had almost sold out for the day. Although still damn good, Dots was unfor­tu­nately the worst of the three. The cake was way too doughy and their ane­mic amount of frost­ing was not able to hide it. As for their frost­ing, it was too sweet and not cream cheesy enough for my taste.  But even though not my favorite, they can’t be doing that bad because they opened up a new loca­tion in Old Town Pasadena.

And the win­ner is:

Aun­tie Em’s Kitchen $3.50

Although Aun­tie Em’s had way too much frost­ing on their cake, the tart­ness was refresh­ing. The cake was moist and sup­ple and by far the best. It had a nice springy tex­ture that popped back up after tak­ing a bite. And if you didn’t force your­self to fin­ish all the frost­ing, you had the per­fect Red Vel­vet cup­cake. They were also the only one to get inven­tive by adding a touch of coconut sprin­kles around the edge. Aun­tie Em’s has the feel of a casual neigh­bor­hood restau­rant and I ended up eat­ing brunch there. They have free help your­self, all-you-can-drink cof­fee and a great selec­tion of omelets. You can’t go wrong with this place and of the three, this is prob­a­bly the only place that I will go back to.

So there you go. Try them for your­selves and let me know what you think.

Yes you read my title right, Kogi BBQ stole their Korean taco idea from me. Really! It was a cold Fri­day night and I had just fin­ished K-clubbing at Vel­vet Room. My party found its way over to El Tau­rino on the south­ern bor­der of Kore­atown. The late night line was extra long with the usual mix­ture of drunk Kore­ans and Mex­i­can cow­boys, and I found myself talk­ing to the guy behind me. He intro­duced him­self as Mark and we started talk­ing about the menu. “No, I’ve never had the brain taco”, I told him. Then in a moment of bril­liance, I pro­claimed, “But what I could REALLY go for is a Kalbi taco …with like Kim Chi.” BAM and there you have it.

No, not really. Mark Manguera founder of Kogi BBQ didn’t steal the idea from me, but I’m pretty sure a scene like this has played out hun­dreds of times over at El Tau­rino. You get a bunch of drunk Kore­ans eat­ing tacos on a nightly basis and it was inevitable for one entre­pre­neur­ial chef to put 2 and 2 together. In fact, this seems to be the story that Kogi alludes to on their web­site:

…Kogi may never have become more than a ran­dom idea after a late night out on the town.

After all, the Los Ange­les Kore­atown has the largest pop­u­la­tion of Kore­ans out­side of Seoul. Seoul! That’s more Kore­ans than any other city in Korea except Seoul. So as Kore­atown expands, it was inevitable for Kore­ans to start infring­ing on other eth­nic neigh­bor­hoods. There’s cur­rently some increased ten­sion in Lit­tle Tokyo where the num­ber of Korean owned busi­nesses and res­i­dents are start­ing to rival the num­ber of Japan­ese. For­tu­nately, Kore­ans and their His­panic neigh­bors to the south of K-town have found a way to har­mo­niously coex­ist.  On any given night, it is pos­si­ble to find a 50/50 mix of Kore­ans and Mex­i­cans stand­ing in line at El Tau­rino and a hand­ful of Mex­i­cans shop­ping at Korean gro­cery stores. Kogi BBQ is the inevitable child of this  cul­tural inter­min­gling. But inevitabil­ity aside, the inter­est­ing cul­tural mash-up that is the Korean taco is not wholly orig­i­nal. After all, Nobu Mat­suhisa made his name by mix­ing Japan­ese tech­niques with South Amer­i­can ingre­di­ents. But lets not take any­thing away from Mark. It took a true entre­pre­neur to do what he’s done because even a great idea is noth­ing with­out the right vehi­cle; and his vehi­cle of choice was a taco truck.

On another note, Kogi BBQ is the next in a line of food crazes fol­low­ing Pinkberry and Sprin­kles to hit Los Ange­les. Remem­ber them? Two hour waits for a $4 cup­cake? It’s as if LA has an addic­tion to wait­ing inor­di­nate amounts of time in line for good, but not great, food. As if track­ing down a taco truck and wait­ing an hour in a park­ing lot before the truck even arrives cements their sta­tus as true food­ies and ver­i­fies their devo­tion to great cui­sine. As if such an act was on par with trav­el­ing halfway around the world for the per­fect cup of joe or going to Paris for a baguette. I think the Kogi craze just proves  LA’s lemming-like devo­tion to trends. Hell, if movie stars are going then it must be good. I mean, THEY really CAN go to Paris for bread. Add on top of our desire for foodie sta­tus our obses­sion with star stalk­ing and how can Kogi not be a win­ner. We order over-priced drinks at the bars of celebrity restau­rants we can’t afford to eat at on a weekly basis hop­ing to be there on the same night that Paris Hilton shows up drunk. Why? So that we can say we’re liv­ing the Hol­ly­wood dream. “What did you do last night?” “Oh, I went to the same restau­rant as Paris Hilton.” Well with $2 tacos, Kogi makes that din­ing expe­ri­ence acces­si­ble to the masses. I have to admit, I got caught up in the hype. I was curi­ous what I was miss­ing out on. I mean seri­ously, a 600 per­son line for tacos? It can’t be that good.

My Kogi cherry got popped when I spot­ted the truck in Sil­ver Lake. Just by luck, I was dri­ving when I spot­ted a hip­ster crowd con­gre­gat­ing in a park­ing lot. Notic­ing a yet to be opened taco truck, I knew what I had for­tu­itously stum­bled upon. With only about 20 hip­sters in line, I knew I couldn’t pass this up. Skinny jeans, fedo­ras, scarves, and Amer­i­can Apparel were all in atten­dance. The talk of the line was micro-blogging and it seemed like every­one had their cam­eras out, myself included. I ended up wait­ing in line for roughly 30 mins, which now after try­ing them is the max that I’d be will­ing to wait.  But before I had left, the line had dou­bled. As I got to the front of the line, I looked up into the truck to see if I could rec­og­nize any of the taco magi­cians from their press blitz. Roy? Roy? There were four peo­ple cramped into the rolling sar­dine can. The guy tak­ing the orders was Korean but not Roy. The rest were …Mexican?

I guess some things stay the same. Either way, I was not deterred. I ordered 1 Tofu, 1 Kalbi, and 1 Spicy Pork taco. After hav­ing my name called, I found a spot behind the truck to gob­ble down my treats. I put on my Iron Chef face and took my first bite. To my dis­ap­point­ment, my kalbi and spicy pork meat were over­cooked. After fin­ish­ing my order, I came to this sad con­clu­sion …they all tasted the same. If I took a blind taste test, the only one I could pick out would be the tofu because of the tex­ture. Over­all, on a scale of 1–5, I would give it a 3. If I had a taco crav­ing, this wouldn’t sat­isfy it. If I had a kalbi crav­ing, this wouldn’t sat­isfy it either. It’s some­thing all its own. I guess the real judg­ment is that, yes, I would eat it again. I wouldn’t drive across Los Ange­les for it like Father’s Office, but if I was drunk and they were parked out­side a club, it’d be worth wait­ing in line for 30 minutes.

So if the tacos weren’t that great, then who are the real stars? I’d have to say Twit­ter, the inter­net, blog­ging, and those damn Asians with their damn cam­eras.  That’s an even more annoy­ing trend that I’ve noticed hap­pen­ing around Los Ange­les — Asians show­ing up at five star restau­rants and whip­ping their cam­eras out to take pic­tures of their food. Talk about rein­forc­ing a stereo­type. Sadly, I’m one of these Asians. I was at the Gor­don Ram­say restau­rant last month and was unabashedly orga­niz­ing a pho­to­shoot with my salt and pep­per shaker when i noticed I wasn’t the only one. There were three other tables doing the same thing! Flash. Flash. Flash. The reg­u­lars must think we’re crazy …or never get out. “These Asians. They’re not used to see­ing food with­out dog in it.” Any­way, this whole Kogi craze wouldn’t be pos­si­ble with­out our obses­sion with cam­era phones, an addic­tion to post­ing all of our pho­tos on Face­book, and the on-demand updates that Twit­ter makes possible.

I can’t say that I was dis­ap­pointed. Over­all, I got what I expected. Pinkberry was good but not 2 hours in line good.  It’s the same with Kogi. If you’re up for some­thing unique and if the line is not too long or you don’t have to drive around like you’re look­ing for a secret rave, Kogi is worth the $2. I guess I went look­ing for an epiphany and I shouldn’t have. A new way to expe­ri­ence Korean food, a rab­bit hole through which I once entered, I would never return. But what I got instead was a slightly salty per­spec­tive on the chang­ing cul­tural demo­graph­ics of Los Ange­les. But take this from me, if you don’t want to brave the lines, give it some time. I’m sure it’s just a mat­ter of time before the idea is copied across Kore­atown and you’ll be able to order kalbi tacos every­where. Because after all, that’s what we Asians do best, copy a good idea. But if you want to do what Los Ange­leans do best, suf­fer through a line so that you can say you were one of the orig­i­nal devo­tees, go here.

We’ve all been there. We went stayed out a lit­tle too late night before and had our fair share of feel good juice. The next morn­ing, we might not be hung over but we’re def­i­nitely not in the best of shape. Now, every­one has their own list of favorite reme­dies for this morn­ing after ail­ment and here are mine. In order of my pref­er­ence, here are the five restau­rants that I have cho­sen and the dishes I recommend:

5. Pho Pasteur

8821 Val­ley Blvd. Rose­mead, CA 91770
(626) 292‑5888

What to order: Pho Dac Biet

4. Porto’s Bak­ery

315 North Brand Blvd. Glen­dale, CA 91203
(818) 956‑5996

What to order: Any one of their fan­tas­tic sand­wiches, just make sure you get their potato balls on the side.

3. The Grid­dle Cafe

7916 W Sun­set Blvd. Los Ange­les, CA 90046
(323) 874‑0377

What to order: Banana Pan­cakes the size of your head

2. El Tepeyac Cafe

812 N Ever­green Ave. Los Ange­les, CA 90033
(323) 267‑8668

What to order: The Hollenbeck

1. Mar­ios Peru­vian & Seafood Restaurant

5786 Mel­rose Ave. Los Ange­les, CA 90038
(323) 466‑4181

What to order: Lomo Saltado

I made crab cakes the other night and they were so deli­cious I decided to name them. Here’s the recipe for “I gave my girl crabs cake”:

Ingre­di­ents:

1 pound Blue crab meat or other lump crab meat
6 tbls panko bread crumbs
1 egg beaten
2 tbsp may­on­naise
1 tsp mus­tard
1/4 tsp Worces­ter­shire
1/2 tsp Old Bay sea­son­ing
2 strips of bacon
1 tbsp shal­lots finely minced
6 1“x.5“x.25″ slices of Gruyère (cheese)
salt to taste

Prepa­ra­tion:

1. Care­fully check the crab meat for any car­ti­lage. Put meat in a bowl and set it aside.

2. Ren­der bacon in a fry­ing pan over low heat until you get about 2 tbsp of bacon fat. Set aside fat for later. Chop up bacon in to lit­tle bits.

3. Except for the cheese, mix the bacon bits with all the other ingre­di­ents. Gen­tly fold in the crab. Only mix enough to com­bine the ingre­di­ents. You don’t want to break up the crab into fine shreds.

4. Shape into 6 crab cakes and insert the slice of Gruyère into the mid­dle of the cake.

5. Refrig­er­ate for at least 1 hour so that the cakes don’t fall apart dur­ing cook­ing. This is what they looked like after an hour in the fridge.

6. Heat the bacon fat in a non-stick fry­ing pan. Sauté until golden brown on each side. This will only take about 3–5 min­utes per side.

7. Gar­nish with pars­ley and serve.