Global Los Angeles

[AlexTheMartian]

there is something about valleys that make them uncool, maybe we should build some fake hills :P

[saiholmes]

Freida Pinto shopping in Little India
On a recent visit to Southern California, "Slumdog Millionaire" actress Freida Pinto toured Artesia's Little India for the first time.





by The Los Angeles Times

[milquetoast]

Ahhhh, what a nice post! Artesia huh?

[LAsam]

We have a Little India?

[VZN]

Yup, it's right off the 605 near Norwalk.

I've been there twice; it was definitely a brand new experience the first time I went. The best time to go is on a hot summer day, because that's the best time to pick up some Falooda and observe the locals as well as the neighborhood.

[future_trance011]

Originally Posted by VZN

Yup, it's right off the 605 near Norwalk.

I've been there twice; it was definitely a brand new experience the first time I went. The best time to go is on a hot summer day, because that's the best time to pick up some Falooda and observe the locals as well as the neighborhood.

Artesia, is definitely a interesting place and always a great experience. Great place to pick up spices and fabrics. You walk two blocks its all Indian businesses, than you walk another two blocks down Pioneer Blvd. and its Indian mixed-in with Taiwanese, Portuguese, Korean, Iranian, Filipino,Chinese, Mexican, Guatemalan, Polynesian, and Vietnamese businesses.

[saiholmes]

Downtown’s Costco, With a Thai Twist
Asian-Themed Mega-Market Caters to Restaurants and Residents
by Ryan Vaillancourt
The Los Angeles Downtown News
Published: Friday, May 1, 2009 4:01 PM PDT

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - Downtown has a grocery store so big it could store airplanes, or at least it feels that way. And it’s not Ralphs.

East of Chinatown, at 1100 N. Main St., LAX-C is a mega-store stocked with tons (literally) of produce, fresh fish, frozen meats and other foodstuffs. Described by many as a sort-of Thai Costco because of its vast selection of Thai and other Asian products, it primarily caters to small restaurants looking to save by buying in bulk.

But amidst the 50-pound bags of yellow onions, 45-pound boxes of butchered lamb and 25-pound bags of rice, there is an array of foods and household items that make LAX-C a viable, one-stop grocery option for Downtown residents.

“The average new person walking in a place like that, they’ll be overwhelmed, but I do know that especially in the Chinese community you have many brothers and sisters, families, who are still close and they’ll buy in bulk and share,” said George Yu, executive director of the Chinatown Business Improvement District.

LAX-C started as a small market in Chinatown and, according to its website, has expanded into the largest Thai-owned company in the United States. Company owners did not return multiple calls requesting an interview.

The LAX-C kitchen and grocery emporium is about a block east of the Metro Gold Line Chinatown station and a half-mile north of Philippe The Original. Also included on the sprawling property are a Thai language bookstore and the headquarters of a Thai newspaper.

On the weekends, a food stand in the parking lot sells sweet coconut cakes and succulent pork or beef satay.

But the focus is definitely LAX-C, a common stop for many Los Angeles restaurateurs and a smaller, knowing clientele of individuals looking for bargains on groceries.

“It’s just like when we go to Costco, we figure out how to buy in bulk and save, but just not with as fancy packaging,” Yu said.

Grocery List

LAX-C is a gold mine for anyone who knows how to prepare Asian or southeast Asian cuisine. Aisles with ceiling-high racks stock dozens, if not hundreds, of different kinds of noodles.

One section sells dozens of specialty Asian flours (there’s all-purpose white and wheat flour too), and bags of tempura batter. Soy sauce, fish sauce and plum sauce are among a litany of bottles of flavoring. Most of the produce, including lemon grass, Japanese eggplants, zucchinis, snow peas and green onions, comes stuffed in plastic bags.

The meat section may disappoint a shopper looking to pick up a couple of steaks, but customers planning a barbecue are in the right place.

A 44-pound box of boneless pork “butts” (it’s actually the shoulder), which is most commonly used to slow roast and turn into pulled pork, costs $50.60, or $1.15 per pound (at Ralphs, it goes for $2.49 per pound). A 40-pound box of frozen Australian lamb costs $63.75, or $1.59 per pound. A 15-pound box of oxtails goes for $2.25 per pound; mainstream supermarkets commonly charge more than $4 per pound.

About 70% of the store’s customer base is Los Angeles-area restaurants, said Arturo Chia, a store manager. The inventory, which Chia estimated is 85% Asian food, is mostly imported from China, Thailand and Taiwan.

One of the most practical sections in LAX-C for household shoppers is the seafood area, where Maine lobsters go for $11.99 per pound ($14.99 per pound at Raphs) and dozens of whole, fresh fish including rock cod, tilapia and catfish are on ice. It’s also next to a mini-restaurant that sells plates of noodles, meat and papaya salad.

The store’s toiletries section has all the regulars: toothpaste, shaving necessities and nail polish. It also has an aisle devoted to Thai healing remedies that require some fluency of Thai, or a bold curiosity to try foreign, over-the-counter pharmaceuticals.

Then there is the decor section that probably satisfies the designers of the city’s Asian eateries. A warehouse-sized showroom is full of imported furniture, southeast Asian musical instruments and sculptures.

A four-foot elephant statue carved out of wood is $2,495, and there is also a wide selection of five-foot-tall gongs, man-sized Buddhas and a half-dozen mannequins modeling exquisite, silk Thai dresses.

“I think people would be very interested to find out about these places,” Yu said.

LAX-C is at 1100 N. Main St., (323) 343-0030 or lax-c.com.

[Westsidelife]

The Knight Frank World Cities Survey assesses 40 of the world’s leading major cities based on four criteria – economic activity, political power, knowledge and influence and quality of life – to determine their overall position within the hierarchy of global cities.

The Knight Frank World Cities Survey 2009
Top 10

Rank | City | Economic activity | Political power | Knowledge and influence | Quality of life | Score

1 | London | 2 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 10
2 | New York | 1 | 2 | 2 | 8 | 13
3 | Paris | 4 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 16
4 | Tokyo | 3 | 6 | 4 | 7 | 20
5 | Los Angeles | 11 | 16 | 6 | 9 | 42
6 | Brussels | 16 | 3 | 15 | 14 | 42
7 | Singapore | 6 | 15 | 7 | 22 | 50
8 | Toronto | 22 | 22 | 9 | 1 | 54
9 | Washington | 30 | 1 | 10 | 13 | 54
10 | Chicago | 12 | 19 | 8 | 15 | 54

http://www.knightfrank.com/wealthrep...Report2009.pdf

[Westsidelife]

From SSP:

Originally Posted by J. Will

I had this pdf on my computer about immigration, so I thought I'd make use of it. The only problem is most of the numbers are a little out of date (2000-2002), but I doubt most of them have changed that much since then. The report includes both immigration makeup of a bunch of cities, and signs a "z-score" based on:







Immigration makeup of various cities:

[klamedia]

Looks like I need to take a trip to Amsterdam!

Toronto's pie is the prettiest!

Pretty much what I expected from LA. Latin American and Asian immigrants dominate.

Really impressed by Toronto's pie not at all by Jerusalem's.....yuck! Go Toronto!

[VZN]

I'm truly impressed by Toronto's pie. An equal number of immigrants coming from everywhere.

I'll have to take a trip up there soon. Preferably during next year's Caribana.

And I'm honestly surprised by Tokyo's pie. I thought it would be largely homogeneous.

Miami is exactly what I expected and it lives up to it's rep as the de facto capital of Latin America.

What does "all others" constitute? And I wonder what the pie would look like for Long Beach due to the large numbers of Cambodians and Pacific Islanders.

[pesto]

City Rankings:

The question is what exactly do these rankings purport to show? Total influence? How "important" they are? Which is the best to live in? Judged by the numbers attached, I assume an Englishman prepared the list.

Assuming some kind of "role in the world" standard is appropriate, NY is off in a league by itself; London, Paris and LA culturally, and Washington politically after that. Tokyo is much too insular. Brussells is laughable. The others are one dimensional.

Toronto, Paris, Tokyo the top 3 in quality of life? I assume SF, Honolulu and SD weren't in the competition. Why is Paris ahead of Amsterdam or Berlin (or 20 others)? Great for tourists; tough for living in.

Still, number 5 is not bad. If it had said NY, London, Paris, LA I could have accepted it.

[Westsidelife]

^ SF is #16 on the survey. It came in 12th for quality of life.

[koolkid]

Did they just get lazy with NY, halfway in? It'd be interesting to see what exactly makes up the other 50% foreign born (other)in this city. BTW, I knew Mexicans were plentiful in LA but, DAMN, they're nearly half the foriegn born population there; a very mestizo city...
Miami, is another one. Although I always thought it was a stereotype, Miami does in fact seem to be a latin american city in the USA. A friend of mine tells me how he was descriminated against for not speaking spanish, when down there. lol

[milquetoast]

This is kinda like Citi-Data.

[klamedia]

I think the "other" in respect to NYC are the ethnic white/Europeans with the exception of Italians. So NYC is half white? Who would have thought? A very "white" city.

[milquetoast]

Just back from Citi Data. Now I'm pissed again

[pesto]

koolkid: Mestizo isn't even close; my old elementary school on Dakota St (now renamed after a former teacher) had something like 297 kids last time I looked; primary languages spoken were Spanish (296) and Chinese (1).

[saiholmes]

L.A.'s global sandwich offerings
Southern California's sandwiches offer the world on toasty bread. Napkin, please.
By Linda Burum
From the Los Angeles Times
July 22, 2009

As soon as you place your order at Pita Pockets in Northridge, a cook slaps a soft round of dough onto the wall of a blazing tandoor-like oven. After a few moments, a bubbly disk of laffa, catacombed with air pockets and rich with yeasty char, is ready to be filled. Next a counterman slathers the chewy flatbread with lemony hummus, then loads it with grilled vegetables or juicy marinated kebabs.

The hefty hand-held feast -- just one culture's take on the sandwich -- doesn't quite fit the dictionary's narrow definition: "food between slices of bread," but in L.A.'s sandwich universe this stuffed laffa has lots of delicious company.

Take pav bhaji, the Mumbai street vendor's answer to burgers. The rich vegetable curry, mounded onto slider-style buns, draws droves of homesick expats to Little India's snack shops. Mexico's mighty pambazo, a chile-sauce-drenched roll heaped with chorizo and potato filling, then drizzled with crema, is finding its way onto more and more menus. And gua bao, a steamed round of flatbread folded over great slabs of juicy roasted pork -- the Chinese equivalent of a towering pastrami on rye -- was rarely found outside Taiwanese dives and Chinese bakeries until its recent appearance at Take a Bao in Century City, where the fillings run to spicy Thai peanut chicken and pomegranate glazed steak.

Age-old tradition

L.A. sandwiches span the millenniums from wraps made with saj, a primitive Lebanese flatbread baked on a dome-shaped cast iron grill like the one at Cafe' du Liban in Tarzana, to hip-ified cross-cultural experiments by the latest Kogi-inspired mobile vendors.

It's not only about trying something new. Sandwiches from the hands of dedicated purveyors are treated like revered works of art.

The Croatian pljeskavica, at Pavich's Brick Oven Pizzeria in San Pedro, is one such example. Owner Zdenko Pavic slides hand-size rounds of dough into the oven to bake somun, unmistakably a descendant of pita. The spongy bread drinks up savory juices from the cevapcici filling, a sausage-like beef and onion patty that's baked inside.

Being in California, Pavic endows his pljeskavica with burger-like qualities by adding roasted bell pepper, lettuce, tomato, pickled onion and dollops of a homemade garlic sauce that's potent enough to keep a crowd of vampires at bay.

To most Americans a pita sandwich means shawarma, falafel or maybe doner kebab. But two very differently constructed sandwiches -- both filled with raw ingredients and heated panini style -- still fly under the mainstream radar.

Arayes, the Middle Eastern cousin of pljeskavica and standard fare in many family-run Armenian and Lebanese restaurants, reaches perfection at Koko's restaurant near Van Nuys. Listed as Arayes-Maria on the menu, its fresh herb-laden chopped lamb and beef filling is sprinkled with toasted pine nuts before the arayes is grilled over an open flame. The pita crisps as the juicy meat and bread meld. Slivers of raw white onion, minced parsley and a lemon wedge served alongside brighten the richness.

At Bibi's Warmstone Cafe' the oven burns all day, turning out the shop's baked goods and its Israeli specialty, tostees. These are based on pita-like Jerusalem bagels or on their slightly sweeter cousins, sesame-encrusted pitas, both typically sold from pushcarts beside Jerusalem's ancient city walls. Bibi's counterman slashes open the bread, stuffs in feta, olives and the house sauce or puts in mozzarella sluiced with marinara, then slips it into the oven until the molten filling nearly oozes through the pita's pores.

Asian food rarely brings to mind sandwiches, but roujiamo, a sloppy Joe-style pork sandwich from Xi'an, is a delicious reminder that large-scale wheat milling made its way along the Silk Road from the Near East, a technique that put all sorts of breads on northern China's menu. The typical street food version of the sandwich is a feather-light bun filled with juicy, fatty rotisserie pork and drizzled with a kicky chile sauce.

A more refined roujiamo surfaced at Three Family Village in Rowland Heights, listed on the menu with 40 other northern-style "pastries." Its crisp-topped baked bun is dense and layered. Rich carnitas-like roasted pork cubes piled inside are topped with tangy pickled leafy greens.

Neatly lined up in the take-out departments of Japanese markets are the inevitable Japanese paeans to the sandwich: the spaghetti sando, the croquet sando and occasionally chow mein in a French-style bun. The Japanese have clearly done their own thing with bread since the days it was used only for school children's lunches after the Second World War.

For those with a love of Japanese flavors there's the miso-marinated Jidori chicken baguette at the maid-themed Royal/T Cafe' in Culver City. Salty, yeasty miso never dominates the delicate meat, and a subtle tingle of heat from the red radish sprout garnish brings the sandwich flavors into perfect focus. Sushi lovers may be drawn in by the spicy tuna tartare, rimmed with avocado and wasabi on a raft of sourdough.

Cultural fusion

The world's sandwich menu changed radically when colonialism united disparate ingredients from old and new countries. The milieu that inspired the now-familiar Cubano and the French-Vietnamese banh mi also spawned pav bhaji, the curry-laden buns beloved in Indian communities around the world. Fashioned after breads introduced by Portuguese merchants, the buns became the base for a quick lunch for textile millworkers. As with American burgers and hot dogs, pav bhaji's garnishes are an essential element. People spike up the flavor with chopped onion, tomato, fresh jalapeno slices and lemon juice according to taste.

Many Indian vegetarian restaurants and snack shops (Annapurna in Culver City and Tirupathi Bhimas in Artesia) sell pav bhaji, but Standard Sweets & Snacks in Artesia's Little India also adds the spicier pav vada to its small sandwich lineup. This tongue-scalding potato-bean patty, laced with fresh herbs on pav rolls and smeared with spicy chutney, puts chile lovers into a reverie.

One of Central America's greatest colonial mergings, the native wild turkey seasoned with local chiles and served on a European-style torpedo roll, is pan con pavo, El Salvador's national sandwich. Each day at the cheery Jaragua' near L.A.'s Koreatown, the kitchen braises two whole birds in tenderizing broth. Great swaths of the meat pulled off the bone are piled nearly as high as a Mayan pyramid onto buns doused with pan juices. The addition of a creamy cabbage slaw and a final fillip of spicy homemade curtido -- pickled cabbage -- creates the ideal balance of richness and zing.

At Got Kosher? Provisions in West L.A., the snappy smoked andouille sandwich travels deep into uncharted flavor territory. Layered over two lean links, seasoned with no less than three pepper varieties, is a tart-sweet caponata of minced eggplant and sweet peppers sparked with capers, vinegar and plump golden raisins. Tunisian-born proprietor Alain Cohen says his sausage sandwiches recall the French-Tunisian tastes he grew up with in Belleville, the North African/Jewish quarter of Paris. The shop's many choices include a splendid Tunisian merguez sandwich. Perfumed with cinnamon and redolent of fennel, it comes anointed with a peppery harissa sauce. The substantial sandwich buns -- house-baked rolls with a shiny pretzel glaze -- are Cohen's offbeat update of French petit pain. Go figure.

In Mexico, French bread endures as an indelible symbol of European influence on the country's food. The French-style-rolls known as bolillos elsewhere go by pan frances in the Yucata'n. As if to reinforce that connection, visionary Yucatecan chef Gilberto Cetina, at the Mercado La Paloma branch of his Chichen Itza restaurant, sends out his grilled pork poc chuc (and other sandwiches) on true French baguettes, preferring their firmer texture to sop up the sour-orange-and-garlic-instilled meat juice. The blend of char and tang (and a splash of fiery habanero salsa if you like) puts this sandwich over the top.

Tortas reach an evolved form at the misnamed Ya Ya's Burgers No. 2, a comfortable converted stand in Huntington Park. Ya Ya's sells 70 variations of the D.F.-style torta, an idea that might seem as gimmicky as the all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue. But each torta at this place is as precisely constructed as anything from a four-star kitchen. Choosing the best is impossible, but the Dagwoodesque Tepic-K, also known as the chile relleno torta, sheds light on the kitchen's baroque style. Atop a grilled roll loaded with avocado slices, a translucent smear of beans and crema, sits a beautifully roasted chile stuffed with melty Oaxaca cheese on a hefty slice of roast pork leg.

At Cook's Tortas in Monterey Park, the house-baked ciabatta-style sandwich rolls have a downright fancy pedigree. The owner's brother-in-law developed the restaurant's sourdough starter after a stint as head baker at Bouchon in Napa Valley's Yountville.

Cook's daily specials travel beyond the expected lengua and carne asada to include green mole, Spanish salt cod with sweet peppers and roast pork with Cuban garlic sauce. There's not a dud in the bunch, but the must-try masterpiece is the Veracruz-influenced pambaso. The roll, dipped in an intense chile sauce, holds a small mountain of potato cubes fried with dry-cured chorizo, revved up with chipotles and jalapenos and saturated with Mexican crema.

It would not be hyperbole to label Cook's sandwiches, or for that matter any of the Mexican sandwiches here, gourmet.

A more recent gustatory marriage, the carne asadabanh mi, at Zon Baguettes French-Vietnamese sandwich shop and bakery in Tustin, is owner Kim Ta's creation. Sizzling shards of tender marinated beef are stacked into a French-style torpedo roll so fresh from the shop's ovens it may still be warm. The meat's juices merge with the house-made mayonnaise and the soft crumb of the bread's interior to create a rich, saucy base for the beef and tart-hot pico de gallo garnish.

It may be a watershed for California sandwiches as it unites in the most delicious way imaginable the light Vietnamese-style crispy French bread with the northern Mexican ranchero meats introduced by Europeans. Look how far the sandwich has come.

[koolkid]

Originally Posted by klamedia

I think the "other" in respect to NYC are the ethnic white/Europeans with the exception of Italians. So NYC is half white? Who would have thought? A very "white" city.

I'm guessing Puerto Ricans would compose a good portion of the "other", in respect to NY, unless they're not considered foreign. The rest most likely hail from south asia (bangladesh, india, pakistan), Africa (Senegal, Ghana, etc.), south east asia, and Europe. Hardly "half white" but it may be close.

As for my previous comment, theres a good chunk of foreigners from Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador that reside in LA according to the graph. Together they make up more than half of the foreign population, which all together represents 34% of LA. Add in their children and the numbers may very well double, hence, my earlier comment..