Finding great Mexican food in unexpected places. Losing the city of L.A.\u2019s oldest restaurant. A guide to the vegan ice cream boom. The Italian potatoes that changed Jenn Harris\u2019 mind about fat fries. And \u201csome guy on Tripadvisor.\u201d I\u2019m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week\u2019s Tasting Notes.<\/p>\n
Salbute salute <\/p>\n
Salbute with Yucatan-inspired racado negro chicken at Sanchez in Copenhagen.<\/p>\n
(Laurie Ochoa \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
As Angelenos, we don\u2019t think twice about eating Mexican food one day, Thai food the next and Korean food the day after that. Weekend breakfast with friends is as likely to be Chinese rice porridge as it is a plate of buckwheat pancakes or chilaquiles. In fact, we rarely bother to break down our dining choices by cuisine. It\u2019s more, let\u2019s go get some ramen or birria or boat noodles. <\/p>\n
But when we travel, we tend to eat more conservatively. With limited time in a new place, we usually stick to what we perceive as the food of the country we\u2019re visiting. Trying to find decent Mexican food in Italy, for instance, while not impossible, isn\u2019t easy in a country that prizes the joys of hyper-regionality. You take a risk ordering pasta alla carbonara (a seemingly simple dish that\u2019s hard to perfect if you don\u2019t take your time with the guanciale)<\/a> outside of Rome or tortellini en brodo in any Italian region other than Emilia-Romagna<\/a>. <\/p>\n And yet, when I landed in Copenhagen late last month, with all the glories of sm\u00f8rrebr\u00f8d and cutting-edge Nordic cuisine to explore \u2014 including two places in the city (Noma<\/b><\/a> and Geranium<\/b>) named at different points the No. 1 restaurant in the world on the World\u2019s 50 Best<\/b> list \u2014 the first place I headed was a Mexican restaurant.<\/p>\n Of course, the restaurant, Sanchez<\/b>, is no ordinary Mexican spot. The owner, Rosio Sanchez<\/b>, was the head pastry chef for Rene Redzepi<\/b> at Noma for five years before opening her first Copenhagen taqueria, Hija de Sanchez<\/b>, in 2015. She briefly returned to collaborate with Redzepi on Noma\u2019s 2017 Mexico pop-up in Tulum<\/a>. If a real-life version of \u201cThe Bear\u201d<\/b> character Marcus (Lionel Boyce<\/b>) had been sent to Copenhagen for pastry chef training at the world\u2019s best restaurant in 2014, Sanchez likely would have been his mentor, not Will Poulter<\/b>\u2018s character Luca. Indeed, Sanchez appears in the series\u2019 chef-packed Season 3 finale<\/a> talking about why she loves to cook. And one of Sanchez\u2019s former chefs, Laura Cabrera<\/b>, has risen to lead her own kitchen<\/a> at the zero-waste restaurant Bald\u00edo <\/b>in Mexico City.<\/p>\n Chef Rosio Sanchez at the K\u00f8dbyen location of her Copenhagen taqueria Hija de Sanchez in 2016.<\/p>\n (Laurie Ochoa \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n When I first ate Sanchez\u2019s Mexican cooking in 2016 at Hija de Sanchez, I was immediately struck by the skill of her tortilla making, not easy in a place where masa is not readily available, and the way she was able make food that felt completely Mexican while incorporating Danish ingredients \u2014 a fjord shrimp taco, for instance, or gooseberry salsa. Never mind that as she told Margy Rochlin<\/b> in this paper during a 2017 guest chef appearance<\/a> at the L.A. Times Food Bowl <\/b>with Sqirl<\/b>\u2018s Jessica Koslow,<\/b> some of her first customers in Copenhagen called tortillas \u201cpancakes.\u201d Or that when she saw Danes eating tacos with a fork and knife she had an illustrated and nonjudgmental \u201chow to eat your taco\u201d poster made. Since those early days, Copenhagen eaters have taken to her tacos. There are now five Hija de Sanchez taquerias across the city.<\/p>\n Al pastor, barbacoa and vegetarian tacos plus a glass of jamaica at the Torvehallerne food market location of Rosio Sanchez\u2019s Copenhagen taqueria Hija de Sanchez.<\/p>\n (Laurie Ochoa \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n But Sanchez was not solely interested in exploring tacos. At the end of 2017 she opened Sanchez, a restaurant that elevates Mexican cuisine while still keeping it approachable. In its current form, the restaurant offers a five-course tasting menu for the rough equivalent of $82 with the option of an even more affordable three-course meal for about $59. If you want still more, you can add extra courses \u2014 such as an oyster with a sauce of habanero and sea buckthorn, or a slender bean, sheep cheese and cured egg burrito.<\/p>\n The oyster was a good, bracing start. And lime-cured langoustine ceviche, served aguachile style, with a verde sauce and fermented tomato water, kept the freshness going. But it was the salbute, with a jolt of intense corn from the puffed fried tortilla and layers of deep, complex flavors from chicken cooked in recado negro sauce, made with charred chiles, plus grilled bladderwrack seaweed in place of lettuce, a quail egg and a drizzle of habanero-\u00e1rbol chile oil that showed how Sanchez is combining tradition, local ingredients and her own new way of approaching Mexican food. <\/p>\n Monkfish cheek, marinated al pastor style, beautifully charred and served with herbs on a lightly charred lettuce leaf came next. It all led to carnitas tacos that we assembled ourselves with freshly made tortillas, herbs, salsa, pickled jalape\u00f1o and onion, plus, because this is Copenhagen, green sea buckthorn. <\/p>\n The night\u2019s most memorable dish, however, was dessert. The menu\u2019s description was understated: chocolate mousse. But what is usually a satisfying but unexciting dish came out with a ring of salsa macha, crunchy with pumpkin seeds and preserved ancho chiles, a layer of whipped cream and, for good measure, roasted kelp and drips of olive oil. The mousse itself was made chocolate from Chiapas and hid a nugget of more chiles underneath. <\/p>\n Chocolate mouse with salsa macha, whipped cream and roasted kelp at Sanchez in Copenhagen.<\/p>\n (Laurie Ochoa \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n The spicy and sweet flavors felt both old and new. It\u2019s the kind of dish that shows that Mexican cuisine even thousands of miles away from Mexico itself is still evolving. Now if only we could get Sanchez to open a branch of her restaurant here in L.A.<\/p>\n Loss and uneasy hope Cole\u2019s French Dip on 6th Street in downtown Los Angeles will close its doors on Aug. 2.<\/p>\n (Con Keyes \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n It\u2019s been a tough week for L.A. restaurants. Karla Marie Sanford<\/b> reports that Cole\u2019s French Dip<\/b>, which opened in 1908, making it the city\u2019s oldest restaurant, will close its doors on Aug. 2<\/a>. \u201cBy the time the Olympics get here, all these mom and pops will be gone,\u201d said Brian Lenzo<\/b>, senior vice president of operations for Cedd Moses<\/b>\u2019 Pouring With Heart<\/b>, which took over the downtown L.A. restaurant in 2008. \u201cHopefully it\u2019s a wakeup call for the right people to step up and figure out a plan.\u201d<\/p>\n Another downtown loss: David Schlosser<\/b> announced that his rigorous Japanese-focused restaurant<\/a> Shibumi<\/b> \u2014 last year he recreated a 1789 Japanese banquet<\/a> \u2014 will permanently close on July 19<\/a>.<\/p>\n Senior food editor Danielle Dorsey<\/b> reports that Alisa Reynolds<\/b>\u2019 soul food bistro My 2 Cents<\/b>, on The Times\u2019 101 Best Restaurants in L.A. list, will close on July 31 after 12 years<\/a> on Pico Boulevard. Reynolds plans to focus on catering, pop-ups and collaborations.<\/p>\n And Lauren Ng<\/b> reports that Melody<\/b>, the Virgil Village natural wine bar that hosted many pop-ups during its nearly 10 years in business, will close this weekend<\/a>, though owner Eric Tucker<\/b> will open a temporary \u201cBar Band-Aid\u201d pizza spot on July 16 until the Craftsman bungalow space can be sold.<\/p>\n Members of the Morfin family eat tacos and drink agua frescas at El Gato Night Market.<\/p>\n (Luke Johnson \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n But there are some signs of resilience even in this tough climate. Ng spent time at the recently reopened<\/a> El Gato Night Market<\/b>, which shut down for two weeks after ICE raids heated up in Los Angeles. Though more than half of the market\u2019s 70 to 80 vendors had not returned in the first days of the reopening and business was slow at first, the crowds started to return after a few days. \u201cVendors, many of whom worry for their safety and the future of their businesses, show up for work out of necessity,\u201d Ng writes, \u201cbut also to provide comfort and familiarity for customers, most of whom are Latino and often bring their young children.\u201d<\/p>\n Maria Sanchez, known as \u201cMaria la de los Burritos\u201d sells $5 burritos in Watts out of the trunk of her car.<\/p>\n (Yasara Gunawardena \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n Meanwhile, when Maria Sanchez<\/b>, known on social media as \u201cMaria la de los Burritos,\u201d<\/b> was asked to leave her usual burrito-selling spot outside a Home Depot after ICE raids started happening, she was undeterred. She packed her gold-foil-wrapped burritos in the trunk of her car and found eager customers at construction sites. Her carne asada burritos typically sell out in 30 minutes. Contributor Madeleine Connors<\/b> profiles the maker of these internet-viral burritos<\/a> that are also doing some good for L.A. workers.<\/p>\n Also … Awan offers more than a dozen flavors of the fully vegan ice cream made with coconut cream and Balinese vanilla.<\/p>\n (Stephanie Breijo \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n And finally … a word from \u2018some guy on Tripadvisor\u2019 The sign outside Sliders in Copenhagen: \u201cTry the worst sliders some guy on Tripadvisor has ever had in his entire life alongside enjoying our \u2018terrible service.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n (Laurie Ochoa \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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