3 hot takes on the 2024 California Michelin Guide
Plus, Pete Wells yells at clouds as Tim Walz gets everybody hot (dish) and bothered.
LA FOODSTACK is a curated list of the week’s most essential food news through a Los Angeles lens. Prepared by The LA Countdown and The LA Food Podcast.
1. 3 takeaways from LA’s night at the Michelin Guide Ceremony
…seems like an attention-grabbing way to kick this segment off.
By now, you’ve probably heard that Los Angeles had a (*Larry David impression trigger-warning*) pretty, pretty, pretty good night at the 2024 California Michelin Guide Ceremony held up in Half Moon Bay earlier this week.
Jordan Kahn’s Vespertine regained the 2 stars it had stripped following its temporary dissolution, while Gilberto Cetina’s Holbox earned its first star alongside the likes of Uka and Meteora. LA-area restaurants also dominated the Bib Gourmand category, making up the majority of new additions, especially if you count the counties of Ventura and Orange as auxiliary dining scenes (which I do).
But what does it all mean? You can listen to this week’s episode of The LA Food Podcast for our full musings, but here are 3 things that stand out to me about this year’s awards:
Jordan Kahn is LA’s Simone Biles of Michelin stars
Both Vespertine and Meteora have drawn mixed reactions from trusted sources who’ve relayed their experiences to me. The reactions come down to this - they just don’t hit, especially for the price you’re paying. However, the stars got me thinking…. maybe Kahn isn’t trying to hit. Maybe he’s intentionally playing to the judges of accolades like Michelin. Consider this: Simone Biles can afford not to stick every landing, because judges are also taking into account the difficulty of the maneuvers she attempts. As long as Biles continues to attempt the most difficult vaults and routines, perfection isn’t necessary for her to win. So, while the dishes at Vespertine may not “stick the landing” for everyday palates, Michelin’s probably concerned with other things. And Kahn knows it.Holbox’s star may be part of a broader trend
Maybe you heard that Michelin awarded a Mexico City taqueria with a star back in May. This caused quite a stir when it happened for a number of reasons. First, people get upset any time something sans white tablecloths earns a star. More interestingly, however, the decision to award Taqueria El Califa specifically struck some observers as somewhat arbitrary. Why this taqueria? What distinguishes it from myriad others in the city doing very similar things? Reading between the Michelin lines, I think it makes sense to look at the awarding of El Califa as a proverbial envelope push. It’s Michelin saying, “A place such as this too can aspire to receive a Michelin star.” While Holbox certainly isn’t your everyday taqueria, I think Michelin thinks it’s making a similar statement. The question now becomes… which non-traditional establishment is next? My money is on a spot like Mae Malai, which just earned Bib Gourmand recognition.Pop-ups pay off
Much was made of LA’s stranglehold on the Bib Gourmand category, but there’s another element to consider. Three of the new Bib Gourmand restaurants (Little Fish, Quarter Sheets and Mae Malai) started out as pop-ups. This is cool for a number of reasons, an obvious one being the rags-to-riches story of a couple of upstarts going from a back alley slinging fried fish sandos to hanging up a Michelin plaque in their shiny new brick-and-mortar. Even cooler is the confirmation of Los Angeles as a hotbed for innovation and experimentation. We’ve all felt creative culinary magic brewing since the pandemic, but seeing beloved concepts achieve this kind of global recognition feels like a true coming of age.
2. Pete Wells yells at clouds
Retiring New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells published his “last essay” summarizing the restaurant changes he’s observed over the course of his 12 years on the job:
Many of the little routines of dining that we used to handle by talking to a person now happen on a screen. When we go to Shake Shack, we order and pay for our burger and frozen custard on a screen. In some places, we enter our names on the waiting list for tables on a screen. We scan QR codes so we can read the menu on a screen. Restaurants are turning into vending machines with chairs…
Restaurants that pride themselves on professionalism are becoming more faceless, too. This reaches depressing depths at the modern tasting counter, which during my time as critic came to dominate the fancy-dining sector. A few of these places are wonderfully personal and idiosyncratic, but many of them feel utterly interchangeable — they follow the same template, down to the signed menu you’re given as you leave, as if you were going to run right home and paste it in your scrapbook.
If you can look past the “back in my day” of it all, there are some interesting points on the rise of ghost kitchens, whether alienation between diner and chef has contributed to the rise of deplorable diners, and the consequences of diners sourcing their restaurant recommendations from *shudder* influencers.
That said, I find it all a little yawn? These are well-established observations that don’t properly explore the tension between changes restaurants are making to increase their efficiency and the economic conditions forcing them to do so. Unfortunately, coddling Pete Wells isn’t a viable business model for most restaurants. Maybe I’m being unfair, maybe I’m just lashing out because I was expecting a little more from the “last essay” of someone who’s been such an influential voice for so long.
3. H-O-T-T-O-G-O for Tim Walz’s H-O-T-D-I-S-H
Every news outlet and their mother tried to wedge themselves into the news that Vice President Kamala Harris had settled on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. For my money, Eater’s Amy McCarty and Jaya Saxena did it best:
On August 6, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris chose Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Now in his second term, Walz has made food a central part of his gubernatorial platform, including the passage of a landmark 2023 bill that made free lunch at school available to all Minnesota students. He’s also just generally a hype man for Minnesota foodways — a big Jucy Lucy fan, he’s the kind of guy who raves about hotdish in an MSNBC interview.
What the heck is hot dish? I’m so glad you asked, dear reader. This North Star State delicacy can be alternatively described as a tater tot casserole, and Walz’s signature version also contains green beans, bacon, ground turkey, mushrooms, and peas. Forget military service and football coach accolades, Walz’s hot dish recipe won the Minnesota Congressional Delegation Hotdish Off two years in a row.
Expect to see a lot more “hot dish talk” flood your newsfeed in coming months. Maybe try making one at home. Andrew Zimmern’s got a recipe.
4. Our special this evening is good reporting
Earlier this week we were reminded that Los Angeles is #blessed with some top-notch food reporters when Eater’s Rebecca Roland published an article on a brand new izakaya / handroll joint coming to Koreatown. Personally, the drying properties of paint and 18th Century Polish agricultural practices comprise a very long list of things I care more about than a new handroll bar in Koreatown, but a passage in the article leaped out at me like an Olympic long-jumper:
Similar to other rapidly changing neighborhoods throughout the Southland, there is some tension among old and new businesses and inhabitants. Older generations are aging out of restaurant ownership and small businesses continue to feel the pandemic’s impacts, leading to a series of recent closures across the neighborhood. In January 2024, Korean Chinese restaurant, the Dragon, closed after a 43-year tenure; the lot is slated to be redeveloped into an apartment complex. In 2020, soondubu specialist Beverly Soon Tofu closed after 34 years in the neighborhood. Other decades-old businesses like Jun Won and Don Il Jang also shuttered during the first few months of the pandemic, though Jun Won was resurrected in 2022 as Jun Won Dak.
While some longtime Koreatown residents are being priced out of their apartments, large real estate groups like Jamison Services continue to expand high-end housing options by repurposing buildings or creating new developments. Affordable housing programs aim to bridge the gap, but a 2021 report from LAist found that the number of units available only totaled a fraction of what is needed to accommodate the families who need them. Now, the neighborhood is facing an inflection point on how to keep its roots while it becomes a desirable spot for new restaurants, bars, and developments.
What Rebecca is doing here is reminding us that shiny new handroll bars come at a cost. I point this out because it reminded me that, as WE, THE HUNGRY peruse our news sites for tips on where to satisfy our base needs, it’s important to stop and smell the context. And for the reporters who maybe feel like WE, THE HUNGRY skim over these parts of articles without properly letting the so what seep in… you’re probably right. But thank you for continuing to do the work.
5. Best thing I ate this week? Pineapple bun and other goodies from Liu’s Cafe.
As The Most Impressionable Man Who Ever Lived TM, I made my way to Koreatown’s Liu’s Cafe yesterday on the heels of their Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition. I was there for cold noodles, but I couldn’t turn down the gorgeously golden pineapple buns stuffed with buttercream filling F*** ME JUST SAYING THAT OUT LOUD GETS ME IN A TIZZY.
I’m way late to the pineapple bun game. I had my P-card swiped earlier this year at Tam’s Noodle House in the San Gabriel Valley, and I genuinely thought that experience would never be topped. You see, I’m a slut for a concha, and the pineapple bun scratched every concha itch and some. Of course, I could never predict what would happen should that pineapple bun be filled with buttercream filling F*** ME I’VE JUST TIZZIED MYSELF AGAIN. Just watch the video before somebody (i.e. me) gets hurt.
Other stories to chow down on…
Eater released an awesome series called “No Taste Like Home” exploring the roots of iconic American regional dishes. For Los Angeles, Matthew Kang looked at Nobu Matsuhisa’s influence on US perceptions of Japanese food.
For more Michelin hot goss, check out Eater’s “Overheard at Michelin” column, also by Matthew Kang.
How many people does it take to make a potato pizza? Kate Guadagnino gives folks a tangible example of the multiplier effect for The New York Times Style Magazine.
The Benjamin, Bridgetown Roti, Camelia, oh my! There’s a new Infatuation LA Hit List with your name on it.
LAist’s Gab Chabran and Yusra Farzan conducted a taste test of Anaheim’s Little Arabia, which has now been added to my to-do list.
This week on The LA Food Podcast…
Father Sal and I break down the 2024 California Michelin Guide additions and discuss other pressing topics like Tim Walz’s dietary habits, Pete Wells’ nihilism, and what regional dishes we would have contributed to Eater’s “No Taste Like Home” series.
We’ve also got Part 2 of our interview with Heather Sperling, co-owner of Botanica in Silver Lake. Heather’s a restaurant owner who has been a very vocal voice in recent conversations on the tough times restaurants have been having. You may have seen her piece in The LA Times breaking down where every cent of a dollar goes once you’ve spent it at a restaurant. In this interview, Heather elaborates on some of the challenges restaurants are facing and what can be done to help.
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