STILL EATING IN THE '80s
STILL EATING IN THE '80s
By Arty Nelson
It's so hard to see what's going on out there and not possess the feeling that it's all happening specifically to you. Everywhere a mook turns, things are transcending their original semi-vicious but at least obvious intent, and twisting and turning into something more predatory. And the whole conspiracy thing can really take a John into some dark, sweaty places full of mirrors and liars and double-dealers and often just plain hard-to-identify food. Like Yi Cuisine, for example. Seriously, who knew the 1980s had come back with such a vengeance and in such bright colors?
I mean, sure, clearly we're all paying for oily sins born of the Reagan Era, but how in the hell did this place sneak back onto the map without me having enough time to sew shoulder pads into my Calvin Klein T-shirts? It's been years since I've seen so many of those $600 floral-print shirts on men who are all sporting those working German architect glasses. But that's what happens in life, and more particularly in Los Angeles: One minute everybody's rocking the understated thing, trying to look a little more hard-pressed and tormented, deeper than they really are. And the next thing you know, pastel abuse is running rampant, and the world's soundtrack is sung exclusively by Katrina and the Waves – which, as bad as it sounds, isn't such a bad thing at all.
But I guess when it comes to restaurants, in all fairness, there's the vibe, and then there's the food itself. And one must at least try to separate the two … at least for the purposes of this particular psycho-emotional journey we've all joined for the duration of this page.
And the food, well, some of it's not bad at all, even excellent, as long as you don't mind listening to the half-drunk fashion victim at the next table talking too loudly about his not-riveting exploits for the better part of the evening. (Oh, you people who just moved to town, you'll never really understand how directly you're sprinting into the cliché when you try to do it “your way.”) As a matter of fact, the cubed Kobe beef with peppers and something else I can't quite recall borders on “to die for.” I don't like to throw that kind of term around too casually, but this stuff is worthy of the most serious praise. Also well worth mentioning are these corn-fritter-type things, which are utterly of another galaxy. The pork tenderloin, however, is super-mediocre, too dry to even produce tears on my pillow. The crowning glory, to be sure, are these doughnuts – I believe they call them “Marsaladas” – which come sprinkled densely with sugar and include two lovely dipping sauces. They're so good, it's almost worth buying your own $600 floral-print shirt just to feel like you truly belong.
I can't really go much further without returning to the issue of the patrons, who are a bizarre mix of the wealthy and the Westside-bounding, the mistakenly hip and the fashionably forlorn. What to do with them? What to do? What to do? Well, there's always the tried-and-true: We can make fun of them in that super-boring Alternative Weekly Newspaper way, which implies we are somehow deeper and realer than they are, even though we secretly would love to have their money. Sure, we can do that; why not? But does that really do anything? Does it make us feel better, or more right, or more just, or even semi-clever in any way that's worth the time and/or ink and/or dead trees? Not really. A very, very slight relief can be temporarily won, and not much more.
What it all comes down to in the end is, how secure do you feel about your thing at any given moment, and how will where you're sitting be affected by that simple issue? When I'm in a good way, places like Yi Cuisine aren't much more than fodder for my cranial cannon. Something to mock while I pop crunchy-sweet rock shrimp into my mouth and wait anxiously for my garlic fried rice. Just grist for the grinder I lovingly call life in my town, a place I dreamed of living based on shows like The Rockford Files and, of course, Hart to Hart. A town where women like Cheryl Ladd and Suzanne Somers came rollerblading around the corner every couple of seconds, and sometimes even invited me to join them at cheesy joints like Yi Cuisine. Ciao.Published: 08/26/2004
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