Weird Food Road Trip
Journey by limo to sample some strange dishes around town
By Richard Foss
At a recent party, someone asked where I would go for the strangest food in Los Angeles. The problem, I replied, is that there are places all over town with odd items, so you’d have to drive around to try them all in one night. Imagine doing it in style, I mused, with a limo so you wouldn’t have to worry about parking or drinking and driving.
The person with whom I was talking is an event planner, and she liked this idea. Just a few weeks later I found myself at Typhoon, looking at a plate of scorpions on toast. The meal had actually started with a welcome drink of chiew, the house special made of vodka infused with ginseng, black mushrooms, deer antlers, seahorses, and fuzzy black caterpillars. It tasted like Chinese herb stores smell, and with good reason – chiew is a popular tonic that Chinese herbalists believe strengthens the immune system. I have no idea whether it works, but it was exotic and refreshing.
The scorpions were less interesting, beyond their fear-factor weirdness; they looked bizarre but didn’t have much flavor. Not so the fried crickets, a popular snack at Taiwanese beer gardens. Think of them as land shrimp, and you’re in the ballpark. Tiny, dry land shrimp tossed with very skinny French fries, salt, and a dash of chilies – beer gardens probably serve them because they make you thirsty. We shared a bottle of Pinot Grigio instead of beer and thought it worked just fine. We also had Filipino-style fried squid, which might have seemed exotic in other situations but was comfort food compared to the insects.
Then it was out to the limo to catch our appointment with a bowl of curried crocodile. We met our fellow culinary adventurers – a Belgian photographer, an IT project manager, a travel consultant, a martial-arts instructor, and Camille, the event planner. All had signed up for the trip out of curiosity and were giddy over the prospect of eating strange creatures in different restaurants. We laughed and chatted as the limo moved through rainy streets to Thai Town.
Crocodile isn’t usually on the menu at Jitlada (reviewed here last week), but owner Jazz found a recipe and prepared it just for us. As with most reptiles, the flavor is a cross between chicken and fish, and the Thai red curry with vegetables that works with both of those meats also complemented the crocodile. The curry was mild curry for this famously spicy kitchen – a good choice that let us savor the reptilian flavor. I’d brought two wines to test with the dish, a Sokol-Blosser Evolution and a Donati Pinot Blanc. Both had the balanced sweetness to set off the curry, but the Donati was better with the croc. The Evolution was superior with the mango salad, however, and both were good with our other entrée, lemongrass shrimp soup.
Then it was back to the limo and off to Ciudad, downtown L.A.’s bastion of South American fusion. Executive Chef Kajsa Dilger had opted for simplicity – corn and flour tortillas flanked a vast tray of meat that included tripe, fried rabbit liver, beef heart, pork kidneys, and (most dauntingly) chopped pig snouts and ears. The IT manager had a wide grin on her face as the list was read, while others looked nonplused to slightly horrified. Everyone did try everything, helped along by glasses of a very good Tempranillo. It wasn’t all to my taste; I liked the rabbit, the heart, and, surprisingly, the kidneys, but tripe and snouts aren’t on my list of items to repeat. What I must try again, however, is the goat milk flan we had for dessert – it was spectacular, the best flan I’ve ever had. Not sure whether that’s some property of goat milk or a secret of Ciudad’s kitchen, but I mean to find out.
Reboarding the limo, we were sated and happy, having broadened our culinary horizons. The trip was a success, and Camille’s company, Wave Generation, plans to offer more like it on a monthly basis. At $250 per person (including the limo, food, and beverages), it’s actually not that expensive – and you will surely have a story to tell your friends afterward.
For info, contact Wave Generation at (310) 490-6862 or Camille@wavegeneration.com.
2008-01-31
Published: 01/30/2008
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