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hollywood

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Posts posted by hollywood

  1. Mayflower Chinese Seafood Restaurant 685 N Spring St (Ord St.) LA

    a meditation on why Zagat can suck so terribly and on the good fortunes of the author and his chums

    This story starts out with an entry in the members's area of the on-line Zagat guide for Mon Kee's, 679 N. Spring St. (Ord St.) in LA. Zagat members who have clicked on this link know that the restaurant received a 23 for food, one of the three restaurants receiving the highest food rating in Zagat's LA Chinese category. Based on that number, I made reservations for four to eat at 9:00 pm, and while my chum parked the car, I eagerly bounded down the street...

    ...to be confronted by another number, 63, which was baldly displayed in the front window of Mon Kee's. Now, though 63 is numerically higher than 23, it communicates a rating that is in fact much lower than 23. LA denizens know that every restaurant in the city receives a rating from the LA County Health Inspector, which then must be displayed in the front window. Most eateries display As, Bs, or Cs -- and then the small fraction who didn't make letter grade cuts get a number.

    Yes, the Zagat guide saves its top LA Chinese rating for the food at a restaurant deemed to plate literally unhealthy food.

    I peered inside the windows just above the scarlet "63", and, not surprisingly, the place was empty. No, check that: the place was filled with about a dozen sullen waitstaff, cooks, and managers with, clearly, nothing to do. Since I had been delegated the responsible party for this evening's meal and had no desire to be served with a law suit by my friends for gross endangerment, I popped into Mon Kee's to tell them that we wouldn't be dining there, and ran out to find another nearby place. Turns out it was next door and filled with large, happy families sharing massive plates of seafood and vegetables and noodles. Surely, it couldn't be as bad as Mon Kee's looked. (Hell couldn't be as bad as Mon Kee's looked.)

    The "place next door" turned out to be the fantastic Mayflower Chinese Seafood Restaurant 685 N Spring St (Ord St.) LA. Everything we got was heavenly: Singapore noodles, beef with a spicy orange sauce, and pea pod leaves with garlic were all sharply flavored, not at all greasy, and just great. The crab fried rice was an ethereal combination of white crab meat, egg, scallion, and rice that was a subtle, wonderful mound half the size and shape of a volleyball.

    Most notably, one of the dishes by which I measure Chinese restaurants, salt and pepper shrimp, was outstanding. The other three diners hadn't ever eaten this dish before, and were put off initially by the heads and shells still on the fried shrimp. But it arrived steaming hot, fresh from the kitchen, and I convinced each person to eat a head and then judge. One salty, head-fat-filled, crunchy bite of the sea and they were hooked: within three minutes the plate was bare.

    So, Zagat's be damned! We ambled into a place none of us had heard of (and that isn't in the Zagat's guide) and had one of the best mid-range Chinese meals in my life. It was also astonishingly cheap: the four of us ate for fifty bucks plus tip, and we ordered eight different and massive dishes. It's BYOB, and the waitstaff look as if they want to hit you upside the head most of the time, but it's a palace to great food.

    As for Mon Kee's, one can only wonder the basis for which Zagat reviewers established their recent ratings. I've always suspected that reviewers don't actually go back to places but instead review based on their last trip -- which could be five or ten years earlier. Of course, if anyone has a tale to tell about Mon Kee's, please do!

    And or those headed to Mayflower, I give permission to plagiarize my story of good fortune to your own ends.

    A couple of points. First, Zagat is pretty generic in its ratings and totally misses out on Monterey Park when it comes to Chinese. Second, those Health Dept. ratings are to be viewed with extreme skepticism. Lots of the points taken off don't directly relate to the healthiness of the food, tho I would agree that at 63 you might have some problems. Third, the County of LA like the City is strapped for cash. I went into a pretty good take out/deli/wine store recently and got some excellent food. As I was leaving, I noticed that the place had a B rating (downgraded from the usual A). I asked the proprietor. He said there had been a problem with some leakage and its effect on some acoustical tiles (in a heavy rain, virtually every roof/ceiling in Southern California leaks). As a result, their A rating had been lowered to B. They immediately fixed the tiles and called the Health Dept. They were informed they could wait 3 or more months for another review of their place and maintain their B rating or they could pay $300 for an early re-visit which would presumably result in a new rating. They said, Screw it we ain't paying you the extortion. This was not an Asian establishment. I can't imagine but that many places with fairly low prices don't adopt the same attitude.

  2. Lambretta,

    if your boss is looking for good, high end places, I'd suggest Spago (Beverly Hills), Josie (Santa Monica) and A O C (West Hollywood). As for Thai, I think the best Thai in Thai Town is found at a very simple, BYOB place called Ruen Pair (for example, you can get fried morning glories there) on Hollywood Blvd. For a more upscale atmosphere, and alcohol, another choice would be Jitlada on Sunset.

  3. Le Santuaire seems to be a sanctuary from the real world. I am very unimpressed with a kitchen store where no one seems to know anything about cooking. Their cookbook selection is effete, their equipment is for the very same people who own $100,000 kitchens and never cook. the place is phony for phonies.

    Just finished reading Catcher in the Rye ?

  4. The problem is the petroluem-burning automobiles and trucks, not the BBQ pits. Let's not lose sight of that. Several years back before I left California, I remember Los Angeles County talking about banning charcoal grills for the same reason.

    edit typos

    Funny you should mention this. Los Angeles has not implemented any thing like this yet. Just the other day I had a tritip sandwich at BBQ King which is just outside of downtown Los Angeles. They had half a dozen of those oil drum grill/smokers going full tilt. Smelled good/bad depending on your viewpoint. Nary a filter in sight. And their sweet/spicy sauce is really good.

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