Los Angeles Alternative

Our kamikaze food reviewers dive deep into the trenches of L.A.’s gastronomic ghettos to find out once and for all if “C” really stands for “caution.”
by Staff
photos by Aaron Farley

While the finest restaurants this city has to offer have stars stuck on them like so many fat-assed generals, the rest of our city’s eateries abide by a different system of rank altogether. The county’s public health rating is a code by which many of us live and dine: A, B, and the oft-feared C. But like dive bars, there is something special, clandestine and rebellious about a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, and if that means it actually has holes in the walls, filled with giant cockroaches no less, so be it. After deep “C” diving, our food soldiers have returned with a few treasures, some injuries and a new take on “C” food.

DAISY’S BAKERY
2215 S. Central Ave., Los Angeles, 90011
Current Rating: Below C (59/100)
Violations include: Rodents, No Hot Water, Shelled Eggs

By Ryan McCracken
Koreatown Editor at Losanjealous.com
awarded the highest Medal of Bravery

The sun is shining as I drive down Central Avenue past the Coca-Cola bottling facility and under the 10 freeway toward Daisy’s Bakery, recently awarded the absolute dog-lowest score out of all 38,000-odd restaurants in L.A. County and winner of RestaurantWatch.com’s venerable Golden Cockroach Award. This is F territory, unless you’re grading on a curve.

Back in April, Daisy got slapped with the dreaded 009 and 013 violations: active rodents and no hot water, respectively, resulting in closure. According to the Department of Health, the 009 denotes “fresh droppings, gnaw marks, nesting, grease marks, live rodents, dead rodents.”

Big deal. What are a few gnaw marks? What are a few grease marks? For that matter, what the dickens is a grease mark? We’re talking about pastries here. If the food were contaminated by rodents they’d have been slapped with the 003 or the 006. So they don’t physically have the means to heat their water to a level befitting sanitization. So they don’t correctly refrigerate their eggs. We’ve all been there. We’ve all been a Daisy at one time or another in our lives, haven’t we-skipping our weekly shower? Who am I to judge? I am to eat.

I glide through the sliced plastic tarpaulin that passes for the front door. Almost immediately, I have to shuck to the right to avoid a coffee station housing three steaming, mostly-empty pots of black tar, late afternoon coffee. The smell makes my eyes water. I adjust. To the right, a long counter offers all manner of drugstore sundries. Daisy’s may, in fact, be one of the few places in town where you can score both a donut and 10 ounces of knock-off Drakkar Noir.

To the left, a few depressing coolers house milk, eggs, Coke and Arizona Iced Tea. In the center of the room a table overflows with clear bags stuffed with various breads and rolls. These must be discount bags, as they don’t look particularly fresh. Behind this table, the main display houses cookies, cakes and donuts. I spy no discernable evidence of baking or cooking beyond said display, finding instead a filthy room approximating the darkened corners of flea markets never quite ready for public perusal.

“What’s the best pastry here?” I ask a man stacking bread at the counter.

“Ehhh?”

“The best one. I want the best one in the house.”

“Ehhh…”

Shifting gears.

“What’s the worst one? Which is the worst? I want the best and the worst here.”

“Ehhh, this one…not bad. You want fresh? You want…fresh?”

“Yes. I want fresh.”

“Ehhhh.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. You want…fresh?”

This is going nowhere fast. I shift to pidgin Spanish.

“¿Cual es el mejor? Y tambien…quien es mas malo?”

I’m butchering his language. He laughs, and the outcome is the same. I give up and choose a few items: a cookie, a flaky thing, an empanada. The total price comes to $1.25.

I try the empanada. It’s apple. Crummy apple, at that. Standard canned pie filling. Two bites are more than enough. The crust is oily and flavorless with a cardboard consistency. The thing has probably been sitting there for days.

I turn to the cookie. It’s covered in sugar. I have high hopes which are quickly dashed. It too is flavorless, sugared cardboard.

The flaky thing proves to be the most puzzling of the lot. I don’t even know what it is. There’s a dried orange shell of sorts. Is that cheese? Frosting? Flaky Thing has definitely been sitting in the open air for a good number of days. Flaky Thing is not fresh. I try to break it. Flaky Thing does not flake apart so much as it makes a tearing sound. It resists. A considerable amount of time has passed since Flaky Thing was actually flaky. Disappointment. Where is my fresh? I’m too ashamed to start photographing the shit out of everything in sight, so I buy some more fresh to go. This batch is going home.

SAM WOO BBQ RESTAURANT
803 N. Broadway, Los Angeles 90012
Current Rating: C (72/100)
Violations include: Adulterated Food, Storage, Backflow/Back Siphonage.

By Shane Redsar
foodie intern at losanjealous.com
awarded the Gold Star

Chinese food, as a general rule, is bound to be dirty. Ask any Asian grandmother and they will agree that lower grades add more flavor. So many Chinatown gems have lost their regular customers after abiding by the American rules on pesky little things like meat handling and temperature that it’s become a no-brainer. “C” is for China. So, to those of you who are OCD germaphobes, stick to P.F. Chang’s. Those of you who want the real deal, follow me.

When entering Sam Woo’s, the prospective diner is greeted with the joint’s specialty, BBQ Duck, which hangs whole and roasted on skewers for all the world to see (almost like a dare to food inspectors). These big brown beauties have been slow roasted and cured to perfection and are part of the draw of the restaurant. Apart from the veiny duck carcass lanterns, the rest of the restaurant is minimal in décor; the main dining area is flanked with a wall of aquariums filled with fresh seafood options on one side and the specials of the day written in Chinese on a day-glo markerboard on the other.

My dining companion and I are promptly seated and given an extensive menu offering over 100 items. The tables and chairs come lightly coated with a sticky glaze that gives proof to the hundreds, nay thousands, of dishes served at this Chinatown mainstay. We pour over the menu and decide on some fried wontons, cashew pork, BBQ Duck Lo Mein and steamed rice.

The wontons arrive first and are by far the most interesting fried wontons I have ever encountered. Gone are the cracker-like wonton skins, but in their stead are thin wisps of fried air that encase the meat. We aren’t really sure what exactly the substance is, but it disintegrates on contact with your tongue and proves to be quite the delicate appetizer.

The main courses arrive soon after with little fanfare and with the efficiency of a Japanese auto assembly line. The cashew pork is served with snow peas, onions and a brown-ish gravy. The flavor of the dish is light and not overpowering-which is typical of Cantonese cuisine-however, there is an overabundance of nuts in the cashew/pork ratio. Still, it’s a decent dish.

The BBQ Duck Lo Mein comes next with a bowl of broth on the side, garnished with Chinese broccoli and green onions. The main event for this dish is obviously the duck, as the noodles and broth seemed to be an afterthought; we should have just ordered the duck as it was strong enough to be a standalone dish.

The whole meal, including the fortune cookies, is priced at a measly 20 bucks, which makes our jaws drop right into our sweet and sour sauce. We wipe our chins, pay the bill and say adieu to Sam Woo.

Some may balk at the “C” rating and complain about the cleanliness of the restaurant, while others will claim that any Chinese restaurant worth its salt won’t have a rating higher than a “B.” In the case of Sam Woo, the hoards of loyal patrons seem to agree that what doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger, and they keep filing in day after day for over 25 years.

SEAFOOD RANCHE DELI AND MARKET
3756 Avenue 40, Los Angeles, 90065
Current Rating: C (77/100)
Violations include: Holding of Potentially Hazardous Foods, Improperly Cleaned.

By Evan George
writer at laalternative.com/hotknives
awarded the Purple Heart

Bumping into another white man while browsing the squid bucket of Eagle Rock’s Seafood Ranch Deli and Market felt a little bit like being in the thick of some dense jungle-backing slowly into one another, both of us dressed in camo. His crew cut, square jaw and rimmed glasses seemed proof enough that he’d been in the shit somewhere and picked up a taste for deep sea creatures stuffed with yams and fried whole. He gripped a plastic deli bag full of strangely shaped blood sausages that made me feel like a tourist meeting a Navy Admiral.

The Seafood Ranch Filipino market, which sits at the far corner of a strip mall on Eagle Rock Boulevard, spits up sweet, garlicky smoke you can see from the 2 Freeway, and smell as you exit. Once inside, raw fish fumes dominate. Rows and rows of specialty candy and peculiar sweets make the middle of the market a maze.

A seafood deli that looks and sounds more like the deck of a rogue ship, it churns out sea critters in various stages of being sliced and sawed. The long window display of giant rock cod, salmon and carp on ice-eyes firmly in their sockets-is prefaced by a lower level, open-air trough of everything from sardines to ugly octopi packed on ice.

On the other end of the store, woks burn at full blast while a line of customers wait at the deli window. And there, firmly taped to the grease-smudged glass, is the indigo letter “C.” The surfaces are grungy and there’s really not any ventilation system to speak of, but the employees have hairnets and use tongs, and smile knowingly at me.

Using the universal symbol for, “Whatever That Is,” I point and guess while one of the ladies fills a couple plastic to-go platters. I order a charbroiled salmon steak and a whole baked eggplant with caramelized chile and fish sauce on a generous serving of white rice. Her tongs hover over the hot tin of eggplants, pick at a few of the purple-tinged oblongs and manage to grab a nearly all-gray specimen. For one of my co-worker carnivores I grab a couple skewers of sweet barbecued pork.

When I ask politely what the bowl of nuclear-orange shapes is, she slops some in a paper cup. “Try some,” she says. Warm, candied banana slices sprinkled with baby grapes; they are totally edible but possibly the sweetest thing I’ve ever eaten. I grab a cup of pickled green papaya with raisins, and garlic-roasted peanuts. Impulse buy.

Now, if you’re not familiar with Filipino food, know that what I’ve ordered is by far the tamest plate of authentic fare this side of Manila. One specialty on the islands is a fertilized egg-baby chick included-that you chomp on whole. One of the bigger sellers at Seafood Ranch seemed to be a fermented treat that involved three ingredients: fish, salt, rice (in that order).

My first bite of salmon elicits both confusion and intrigue. Not only is it the most overcooked piece of fatty fish I’ve ever eaten-the lower end of the chop being pure, blackened gristle and the pink flesh immediately gumming up my teeth-but it had soaked up the flavor of the far-weirder creatures it had neighbored in the display case. I can taste a rainbow of tripe and dried shrimp, neither of which are that bad. The eggplant is a whole other story. The texture is fabulous-an oily disintegrating pulp of seeds and skin-but the sauce nearly makes me gag. I can only say this: caramelized fish sauce and red chile purée may be a favorite cooking staple for others, and I can imagine it being quite delicious to some, but I simply don’t have their taste buds.

I clean my palate with the unusual pickled green papaya. Its apple vinegar base is super sparkly and the red pepper, ginger and raisins give it a complex but appealing sweet and sour kick. Bites of gnarled garlic and roasted peanuts help flush the taste of the eggplant out of my mouth, but I’m shaken, Sarge. After nibbling on some more salmon and rice, I hand out the sickly sweet skewers of barbecued pork, which are a surprising hit.

I gaze blankly at the Styrofoam combo box, feeling like my flavor compass has been thrown off the starboard side. The salmon sits half-finished, the eggplant taunts me from atop its cultured glaze, and the rest of the containers emit their strange perfumes.

While its sea chest may not be tainted (”C” or not) and its treasures are one-of-a-kind, the Seafood Ranch delves into cuisine I’m simply not built for. The sickly sweet side to most the dishes hit taste buds I hadn’t known existed. Frankly, they scared me. And while I have to give massive props to a culture so unwilling to let its cuisine be colonized (despite its history with white, sea-faring rulers) I must also recommend that the pedestrian be wary of these islands.

NAYEB RESTAURANT
326 E. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles 90015
Current Rating: B, previously C (67/100)
Violations include: Harborage and Infestation of Vermin

By Will Campbell
contributor at blogging.la
awarded the Silver Star

Like many online relationships, a cyberspace courtship with Nayeb Restaurant downtown could end before it has a chance to begin.

First came the introduction via RestaurantWatch.com, which lists the Fashion District eatery as a runner-up for its most recent Golden Cockroach Award, having achieved an unhealthy score of 67 from L.A. County health inspectors.

Then came the news from the county’s Department of Health Services website that Nayeb was closed March 16 for harborage and infestation of vermin-specifically cockroaches (it reopened two days later). So with little in the way of anything but nebulous info to be found on the Internet about the place, I shift to manual and go old-school, opting to bike down there through the designer knock-off hustle and bustle of Santee Alley and check the place out in person for lunch.

Upon arrival, I’m encouraged to find Nayeb exists and is, in fact, open for business. Sandwiched between a shoe store and a juice place, Nayeb’s front is entirely dated chrome and plate glass festooned with taped pictures of dishes apparently served inside and topped by a big white sign with blue Farsi lettering, below which is the name of the place in English. Thank god, because my Farsi sucks.

One thing that needs no translation is the big, bold and blue “B” I’m relieved to see posted on the chrome trimmed plate glass door. Apparently they’ve been re-inspected and have much improved since their March disaster. Either that, or the placard’s a fake.

I step inside and damn if the place isn’t a clean, well-lighted one with brightly painted walls, polished granite tile floors and an ample amount of two- and four-tops draped in peppy green tablecloths. Even better, the place is customer-laden-always a good sign. There are two women chatting and eating in the far corner, one wearing a T-shirt that reads “I have an attitude, so what?” Another trio of ladies are finishing up front and a guy and a gal occupy a table somewhere in the middle. I hover near a table closer to them and make eye contact with the guy in an apron in the back by the cash register.

“Do I order up there or should I grab a seat?” I ask over the Persian music, and he motions me to “park it” as he comes around the counter to hand me a laminated menu that’s all in Farsi. But before I can object he grabs it back and flips it over to the English side.

“The most delicious kabobs in Los Angeles,” is the first thing that catches my eye and I’m thinking, that’s a pretty bold statement in light of my recent and most righteous kabob experience at the venerable Zankou in Hollywood. The previous rock-bottom inspection score doesn’t help convince me either.

I’m seriously eyeing the decidedly pricey $15 Barg Kabob (select cuts of seasoned and broiled filet mignon served with rice, tomato, lemon and parsley-mmmmm, parsley), but I keep that to myself as he explains the lunch special for today is the $6.45 mini chicken kabob served on rice with a pita and a side salad.

“OK, but what’s the best thing you’ve got here?” I inquire, hoping he’ll get the hint and steer me to something unique. He doesn’t. Instead, after mulling my question for exactly 2.6 seconds he shrugs and tells me the mini chicken kabob lunch special is my best bet.

Bummed at settling for run-of-the-mill, I have the sense not to argue. After all, this guy could be trying to save my gastro-intestinal tract, if not my weekend or my life. I order a Diet Coke and it arrives with my side salad-a cute little dish of chopped iceberg lettuce and tomatoes with what looks like a watered-down thousand island-esque dressing. It comes with half a lime so I pepper and juice it up and polish it off. It’s nothing, literally. Lettuce and tomato and pepper and lime. To say it’s flavorless is not an insult, just a fact.

The kabobs show up soon after, four tasty and fully cooked-looking mouthfuls of chicken nestled in a centerline on a bed of white rice with a grilled pepper and tomato and a fairly fresh pita on the side. I slice up the first piece, pop it in the hatch and it’s entirely edible if somewhat bland. I dash some available Rooster sauce around, which provides a bit of a kick, but there’s just no way these are the most delicious kabobs in Los Angeles, probably not even all of downtown. The Fashion District, maybe. The 300 block of East Pico Boulevard? Definitely.

DAMIANO’S MR. PIZZA
412 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles 90036
Current Rating: B (Previously C, 77)
Violations include: Who knows, it’s so fucking dark.

By V. Gonzales
editor at losanjealous.com
awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge

Ah, Damiano’s Mr. Pizza. So nice they named it twice to avoid copyright infringement. (Who knew “Mr. Pizza” is trademarked by a German corporation? Tagline: “Es gibt viele Kopien aber nur ein Original!“) And original it is; Damiano’s is the classic dumpy dive.

Making your way past the takeout counter and beer fridges to their infamously dark dining area of eight booths and one deluxe round booth, your eyes will take a while to adjust. It really is as disconcertingly dark as promised-not the romantic vibe they are gunning for-and one wonders just what the hell they are up to besides shaving some cents off the light bill. No doubt this room has seen its share of illicit dealings in its shadows. The tiny tabletop candles don’t do a damn thing except extinguish themselves in pools of old wax when you lean on a wobbly table or shift on your wobbly bench set. And when the door to the john cracks open you can see an old poster of a comeback fight for Gerry Cooney along with mismatched carnival prize beer mirror plaques on the wood paneled walls. The room has the vibe of a neglected basement bar that dear old Dad once envisioned as an after-work getaway, but since let go to hell. This is precisely the sort of joint that can only be redeemed by the quality of its food. They better deliver the goods.

We get off to an auspicious start-water with the tang of unfiltered tap that comes in little motel bathroom glasses shows up with the menus, the reading of which is an adventure in itself. We use cell phone illumination to scan its pages. The menu is surprisingly dense, a battered binder with pages and pages (complete with scribbled-in price increases) listing a wide variety of Italian staples with some oddities like vegan cheese and whole-wheat spaghetti mixed in for good measure.

Giving Mr. Pizza the benefit of the doubt, maybe his funky water is the high mineral water they use for the crust dough. But no one comes here to drink water; they come here for the beer. And those fridges up-front carry a heavy selection of beers, and more than a few continents are represented in there. Each brand is assigned a unique shelf number in some kind of bizarre Dewey decimal system of alcohol.

Passing over their various clam offerings (Possilipo, Oreganata, and personal fave, Casino style) and their high potential for gastronomic mishap, we opt for the calamari fritti to open the bidding. Seems a safe enough bet to see how this joint fares with an easy standard. The chewy, thick-cut squid rings may as well have been rubber bracelets; they redeem themselves only as a way to deliver some deep fried crunch. Bafflingly for an Italian joint, here the dish is not served with marinara sauce. Instead, you wind up with an oversized bowl filled a quarter of the way with your ordinary bottled cocktail sauce.

We make the mistake of ordering a side of fries, our happy hostess selling us on the fact that they use “fresh cut potatoes.” We get a plate of what are essentially fry butts (no one fry over an inch and a half) and so dark they look like they were fried in the tar pits a few blocks over. I write it off as karma for ordering french fries in an Italian joint. Somewhere in Berlin, Mr. Pizza is laughing.

Our picked-over appetizers are mercifully euthenized by our waitress, and now we’re waiting for main courses. A farfalle with a pornographic sounding “pink meat sauce” shows up. I can only judge its appearance, but it is a fairly dismal looking congealed slop practically brimming over on an undersized salad plate. For some reason I ordered the proscuitto hero, which arrives on the traditional Italian sesame steak roll. This may well be the most unremarkable sandwich ever put on a plate and sold for money. There is a single slip of proscuitto ham in there somewhere. A side salad is a couple of tears of iceberg topped with what is apparently some slimy artichoke heart. Not the kind of textures you want to be dealing with in the dark.

The cannoli is a final disappointment, with its stale shell and gritty filling, though I will give them some points for the doily on which it arrives.

The truth is, as a dine-in joint, Damiano’s inspires nothing but absolute indifference. Neither raves, nor hatred. Even though my meal was lousy, I hear the pizza isn’t bad. It is possible, nay likely, that we ordered all the worst things on their menu. Maybe you should only get pizza here. As far as the County DHS is concerned, it’s seen worse days; it’s seen better days. It’s currently rated a “B,” so technically this is not a total dive. Accordingly, it is entirely absent of the indefinable dive charm. It is just, well, there, and it will continue to go on without you. Go in. Or don’t. They don’t care, and neither should you. LAA

This entry was posted on Friday, June 9th, 2006 at 9:03 am and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.