The Case for Dining in The Valley With Mythical Kitchen's Josh Scherer
home of great spaghetti and "the Goldilocks of sushi bars"
Hello! I’ve spent this past week not feeling the best and when I don’t feel my best I tend to hyperfixate on two things: ginger ale and soup. As much as I am a fan of the better-for-you soda movement, I will say the Olipop Ginger Ale does not do the trick. I love a super spicy ginger ale (heavy on both the carbonation and the ginger) that feels like it is exfoliating your throat as it goes down, but this version is weak on flavor and has that funny aftertaste that often drinks with added fiber do. (Olipop does a much better job masking this with their other flavors.) My favorite ginger ale is still Vernors if I am in the Midwest and can easily get my hands on it, or Fever Tree’s premium ginger ale, which apparently has three types of ginger in it.
As for the soup, all I can think about lately is kalguksu, this brilliant Korean soup that is made from a super aromatic broth and tender knife-cut vegetables. You can get my favorite version at Hangari Kalguksu, which specializes in the soup, in Koreatown in Los Angeles. But I have watched about 10 different YouTube videos and I am pretty determined to make my own, with extra veggies and maybe even some cubes of tofu.
One housekeeping note: this is a reminder that my cookbook AMRIKAN is out June 4 and is available for pre-order now!
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Today’s restaurant guide is by Josh Scherer, one of the funniest people I know and currently the host of Mythical Kitchen on YouTube and the podcast A Hot Dog Is A Sandwich. He has a spork tattoo and can cook just about anything — the more bonkers, the better. (I often think about this whole general tso’s turkey recipe that he developed for me when I was an editor at Thrillist.) Scherer is the author of the new cookbook from the Mythical Kitchen universe, The Mythical Cookbook, which is out March 11.
Josh lives in the Valley, which many people in LA consider to be a restaurant wasteland of endless chain restaurants, but he is a passionate Valley diner and advocate for the Valley Life™. He swears it is home to some great sandwiches, very good sushi, and wet spaghetti?!
Josh Scherer’s Guide to Eating Well in The Valley
Anajak Thai
Their normal menu is amazing, but Thai Taco Tuesday is unbeatable. I don’t know if I’ve had a better dinner experience than sitting in a dimly lit alley, eating a razor clam tostada (the best bite of food I’ve had in years) on a communal plastic table, and sharing bottles of wine with the stranger next to me, who, as it turns out, directed the music video for Eve 6’s magnum opus, Inside Out. Rendezvous, then I’m never through with you, Anajak.
La Ramadita
I love wet sandwiches. You should love wet sandwiches, too. The wettest—and tastiest, and spiciest—sandwich in the valley is the torta ahogada at La Ramadita. They fly in their birote salado (a salty, crusty, sourdough roll) from Guadalajara, and it becomes a sponge for all the rendered carnitas fat, salsa jitomate, and nuclear chile de arbol. Get a cueritos (pickled pork skin) tostada for side noshing and an ice cold Mexican coke and soak up all that North Hollywood construction noise, baby.
Cilantro Mexican Grill
Cilantro answers the very basic question of: What if Chipotle, but Mexican? Also: What if gas station, but also top-tier burritos with a ridiculously expansive salsa bar? Chef Adolfo Perez started making basic breakfast sandwiches inside the Chevron snack station and parlayed that success into a full-fledged Mexican steam table burriteria that truly makes Chipotle look like amateur hour. Get the surf and turf burrito with carne asada, shrimp, and habanero salsa cremosa and all your favorite fixin’s. Fill up your tank and grab a 4Loko from the cold case to drink for dessert.
Adana
There’s no shortage of great Middle Eastern food in the valley, but something keeps me coming back to Adana more than anywhere else. And that something is their kashke bademnjan. The Persian dip is normally made with roasted and mashed eggplants, caramelized whey, and fried shallots, but, in the version at Adana, the eggplant is left in thick slices, each one topped with the flavor bomb counterparts. Olive oil oozes from the eggplant, and each bite becomes its own little canape. It is one of the best things I’ve eaten in my life. The chicken thigh kabob with shirin polo (rice studded with candied citrus peel and almonds) is also fantastic, and the shirazi salad has purple basil in it, and, god damn, Adana rules so hard. I’m getting adana for lunch today, dude.
The Great Greek
Sometimes—and by sometimes, I mean very often—I want to slam a bunch of cheap wine and eat cheese that’s on fire. Not only can you can do both of those things at The Great Greek, but it’s also a nice hefty walk from my apartment, which makes it a very convenient restaurant for me. Gotta get your steps in! There’s live music, and dancing, and every entree is enough to serve 2-3 people, and you may find yourself staring down a slab of moussaka so big that you think to yourself, “surely all that lamb and eggplant and besamel will not fit into my body,” and then you look down at your plate half an hour and 4 glasses of wine later and it has been scraped clean.
Dojo Sushi
It’s the Goldilocks of sushi bars. It exists right in that sweet spot where they obviously care about the quality and preparation of the fish, but they’ll still add deep-fried asparagus to the middle of a roll and top it with orange mayonnaise. I’ll get down with some expensive omakase, and of course I’ll still house some $2 a plate conveyor belt nigiri, but Dojo is this unique Valley archetype born from the sushi explosion in the ‘90s that scratches my sushi itches just right. They also have a miso soup with a bunch of clams on the half shell chucked in there, and that’s a thing that I had never had before, but a thing I have had many times since.
Sri Siam
I have many hobbies. Sweating into a bowl of soup is chief among them. I love all the Night + Market restaurants, but I’ve found that Sri Siam does a lot of those Northern Thai specialties as good or better. Get a bowl of khao soi. Get the crispy rice salad. Get the papaya salad. Get some duck larb. Then, pick two or three dishes (I hope you’re there with a group) that you’ve never heard of, and I guarantee you won’t be disappointed. I never knew I needed deep-fried minced pork toast, and now I can not live without it.
Little Toni’s
The wettest spaghetti in the valley. And it costs $12. That’s it. That’s the review.
Black Market Liquor Bar
When I first started filming Mythical Kitchen videos, I was such a ball of nervous energy after we wrapped, that I had to decompress by drinking a single cocktail, alone, while drowning in the noise of a crowded bar. I don’t know why that was my preferred method, but it was, and Black Market was my preferred bar to do it in. Cocktails are on the pricey side, and most of the Friday night crowd looks like they once auditioned for a valley installation of the Real Housewives franchise, but, god damn do they make the perfect penicillin.
The Oaks Tavern
Everyone needs a good dive bar. A place where no questions are asked, no judgments are passed, and there’s a wheel that you can spin for $4 so long as you agree to drink whatever concoction the wheel lands on. You are happy with where it lands 70% of the time, every time. They have nightly karaoke, and last time I graced the stage we had a full mosh pit going before I ripped my shirt in half while singing Chop Suey by System of a Down. I don’t know if The Oaks Tavern is a shitty heaven, or a serene hell, but I do know I’ll be there, jalapeńo Jager bomb in hand, singing an emotionally earnest rendition of Creep by Radiohead.
If you have any Valley favorites, please let me know in the comments below, along with what other cities you’d like guides to!