Whether it’s from all the new restaurant openings, pop-ups, or neighborhood standbys, we could team up with famous unnamed rock artist from New Jersey to start a podcast about all the great dishes we’ve eaten lately. This past month, standouts included juicy kebabs, a box of fish and different seafood we can’t stop thinking about, and more. Here are the best 5 dishes we ate in February.
The Dishes
The Dish: Inasal
In the midst of … ~ gestures towards everything ~ , LASA, the family-run Filipino spot in Chinatown, has pivoted to a new takeout rotisserie concept called Lasita. The streamlined menu focuses primarily on brined meat like pork belly lechon, but after a recent visit, the star of the show was without question the inasal. Lasita’s version of this rotisserie chicken dish is stuffed with lemongrass and garlic, giving it sweet and citrusy notes, with an acidic bite at the end. We would say you don’t even need the garlic vinegar and spicy birds eye salsita that comes on the side, but you actually do - they take the already fragrant flavors of the chicken and crank it up a notch.
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The Dish: Chicken Koobideh
Adana is a quiet, family-run Armenian restaurant on Glendale’s northside, and when it comes to kababs, the chicken koobideh should be your priority. We don’t usually get too riled up about chicken kababs in general, but Adana’s version with minced meat mixed with spices is one of our favorites in the neighborhood. It’s savory, salty, and requires minimal chewing exertion. Combine it with some of the buttery rice underneath and the rest of your day suddenly has a much brighter tint to it.
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The Dish: Classic African Lunch
A beautiful, bright-red tomato stew paired with white rice. The stew is nice and thick - think like tomato paste, but filled with beef, broiled chicken, shrimp, chicken, or fried fish. The ideal meal for when you’ve been staring at a screen for way too long and need something to nurse your weak, caffeine-addled, Twitter-addicted body back to health.
The Dish: Premium Nama Chirashi
If you’re looking for a luxury experience worthy of royalty, head to Sushi Kaneyoshi. Located on the basement floor of a Little Tokyo office building, this hidden sushi bar serves two versions of their nama chirashi: the original (which costs $85), plus an upgraded version packed with hard-to-find cuts of sea trout, horsehair crab, blackthroat seaperch, and shiro ebi, or white baby shrimp. It’s a dazzling, extravagant box of fish that has more seafood than your half-filled museum aquarium in Animal Crossing. From delicate slices of yellowtail to the highest-grade uni you’ll find in the game, each piece in this labor-intensive jewelry box is prepared Edo-style, a painstaking technique that involves aging and curing the fish for days, in order to highlight it’s individual flavor. What results is not only the most beautiful chirashi we’ve ever seen — but a unique collector’s item, a box that needs to be on every self-respecting chirashi fan’s shortlist. And preferably, near the top.
LA Guide