Dessert That's Worth It

How come we – as humans, particularly as Americans – situate dessert at the end of our meals? Why do we subconsciously treat it as though it has a separate type of mass than the rest of our food, making statements like ‘there’s always room for ice cream!’ in utter seriousness?

Where, indeed, does the concept of ‘dessert’ even come from – the idea that we eat sweet things after savory things, and not before? It’s certainly not a reality, just a cultural rule, and one we unthinkingly break all the time with our nutella crepes, syrup-soaked French toast, tooth-achingly sweet toaster pastries, chocolate-filled ‘energy bars’, sweetened smoothies, and Froot Loops.

So, really, it’s not a rule at all. It’s an illusion.

Excessive deconstruction notwithstanding, I’m still going to treat dessert like it is a real thing, not a construct – a word we can mold vocabulary and examples around – just so I can say this: at restaurants, I’m rarely tempted by it.

When I see a piece of pie on a fancy restaurant menu that costs $6+, I scoff – even as I unthinkingly polish off my $15 bowl of udon or $28 plate of lamb chops. Should the pie be made with gold flakes, saffron, and blocks of pure, unadulterated Mexican chocolate, I will still scoff. “$6 for dessert?” I’ll mutter to myself. “You could get 3 bánh mì for that! In fact, I think I’ll go do that after this.”

I may simply not possess the sweet tooth that motivates many to lock their bowls of M&M’s in file cabinets for added self-control, or to sleepwalk to the fridge in the middle of the night to stick their face in cake. Or it may be that for two years I worked a job where all day, every day, my coworkers would come in and drop donuts, cupcakes, croissants, and slices of pie on my desk. I weighed a full 30 pounds more then, and I didn’t even like the sweets. It was just that, you know, they were there, so I ate them. Maybe I still conceive of dessert as something that should just fall in my lap, and paying for it seems ridiculous.

Who knows?

This is a very long preamble to say that the restaurants and stands I’m about to mention all serve dessert that makes me rescind every bad thing I’ve just said about dessert.

I: Los Angeles

Down the hill from me lives an overpriced, hipstery grocery store. It’s called Cookbook and it sells things like $11 bags of chips and $5 microscopic tins of hummus and all-natural popsicles that probably cost at least $3 but I’m scared to look. It also sells a $2 cookie called the Not Nutter Butter that will satisfy your nutritional requirements for an entire day and leave you with a big messy peanut buttery smile on your face for just as long. This cookie is better than energy bars. It’s better than most actual cookies. And it should go without saying that it’s as much better than the ‘real’ Nutter Butter as Trader Joe’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups are than Reese’s.

Mochi is another thing that’ll glue your mouth shut if you’re not careful, and I rarely find a specimen that makes this risk worth it. However, the 101-year-old Fugetsu-Do, a tiny shop right in the heart of Little Tokyo and thrown into shadow by the Miyako Hotel, makes such specimens. Their rice cakes appear crafted by visual artists, and the subtle shift in each layer, from the bean-based filling to the cake itself to the slightly more jello-ey accoutrements, keeps your teeth interested. They aren’t as heavy handed with the sugar as most mochi purveyors, and there’s something about the flavoring that makes me nostalgic for those gummy orange slicesthat used to be everywhere in the 80’s. This is a good thing.

Nearby, in a district quickly morphing from warehouses to dark artsy hangouts, there’s a place called the Pie Hole. It serves a slice called the Earl Grey, and the custard is precisely like drinking a perhaps over-sweetened cup. While it would be overly sweet for tea, though, it’s just right for pie. The crust is so tough it could be used to break glass, but I like the contrast; it’s like having pudding in a bowl, and then getting to eat the bowl.

Moving to the west a bit…

I’ve raved about Watdongmoonlek, in Los Feliz, enough here already, but let me just touch on it again to rave about their mango sticky rice. Mango sticky rice is a staple at every Thai restaurant in town, but it’s usually gooey and glazed, the rice shiny with a sugary coconut drizzle, and the mangoes on the verge of green. Here, they use black rice, lending the entire plate a nutty taste, and a use petal-cut slices – a full circle of them! – of champagne mango.

Black Hogg in Silver Lake isn’t exactly my cup of tea overall, but their panna cotta surprised me. While panna cotta can sometimes taste like nothing more than a bowlful of weak cream, or the underwhelming innards of creme brulee, their raspberries are boldly infused with a strong vinaigrette and sprinkled with wads – yes, wads, and I know it’s not an appetizing word – of dried honey. Honey so fresh and misshapen it’s as though they just pulled it from a beehive in the back. The honey gives it texture; the vinaigrette gives it tang.

I’m surprising no one, breaking no barriers, with this next one, but Scoops in East Hollywood deserves its accolades. The whiteboard in the corner upon which customers write their ice cream ideas appears to actually be utilized here, but smartly: flavors like red velvet oreo and vanilla tarragon brandy eventually make their way to the cold case, while flavors like ‘BBQ pulled pork” and “peanut lime bacon” live only a day until they get erased. While Scoops’ vernacular leaves something to be desired (that something is ‘sense’) – ‘single scoop’ means two scoops, and so on – it’s worth the confusion to try the off-the-wall combinations. Personally, I like it when they go tart and I like it when they go a little too crazy. Say, the mango lychee or blackberry jamaica on one end and the lavender goat cheese or avocado honey on the other.

Time to move away from well-known Hollywood shops and onto bakeries that specialize in something else. On the east side, La Mascota Bakery’s tamales rule the neighborhood (not an easy neighborhood for tamale-dominance, either). But their guava-cheese empanadas are just as good as their tamales. What is everyone in line at Porto’s for? Here, the filling bursts forth with the pride of a good New York bagel with all the toppings. I almost don’t want to mention it for fear their tiny parking lot will be overwhelmed.

II: Orange County

I will start this extremely belated second half of my Ode to Worth-It Desserts with a eulogy.

It is with a heavy heart that I report what was to be my #1 on my outer L.A. list, the chunky mango ice cream sandwiched between two gooey-crisp hot chocolate chip cookies at Honey Badger Cafe in Alhambra, is no longer with us. I stopped by today, and the dessert page had been diminished to include durian and taro ice cream only. (Bo-ring!… just kidding.) Rest in peace, mango ice cream sandwich. I grouched at the waiter in your honor (then apologized).

Our moment of silence will be brief, though, and we may as well spend it only one block to the west, at Perfectly Sweet, a bakery/confectioner whose modest display window is stuffed with cakes, truffles, puffs, macarons, cookies, and tarts. Its prices seem average upon first glance, but upon biting into something and realizing it may take you a couple hours for your stomach be able to process the level of richness in, for example, one single chocolate truffle, you suddenly realize just how good of a deal you’re getting. Everything here is excellent – no exceptions discovered yet – but the truffles are sublime, with bitterness just on the edge of fine wine. Plus, the cream puffs are filled with real custard – none of this whipped cream or frosting nonsense. The clouds, however, are filled with something rather more ethereal. When bitten, they festively explode their wispy filling all over the place like a second grade science project volcano. I clearly remember running my finger over the table to get all the foam, then licking it off my finger, with no regard at all for hygiene. That’s how good the clouds are.

Phoenix Dessert is in Alhambra, too, exactly where you’d expect it to be: Valley Blvd, a street practically paved with delicious Chinese food. I hear tell that Phoenix Dessert is attached to a not-so-great restaurant, but I have quite literally never noticed, as I head straight for the dessert display. One of its offerings is a sampler with four flavors of jiggly jello-esque pudding, separated by the kind of dividers you find in sock drawers. The flavors consist of things like hibiscus petals: reddish specks suspended in a clear gelatinous solution. Or black sesame and coconut – slightly gritty, volcanic-sand-sweet mouthfuls. Or simply mango – a delightfully bright sunny square, a dim sum dessert plate writ large.

Once your mouth is accustomed to the jiggle, you’re ready to try this one particular dessert at one of the many Thạch Chè Hiển Khánhs in Westminster and Garden Grove. My friends and I have dubbed it ‘Banana Snot’. Wait, don’t skip this one! Just because the bananas are oddly slimy and the coconut milk sauce is somehow viscous and watery at the same time, or just because the clear tapioca balls are invisible and thus surprise your tongue every time by being all squishy between your teeth all of a sudden (and sometimes they’re shaped like caterpillars) doesn’t mean it’s not delicious. It is. It’s worth the texture mishmash. I don’t know the Vietnamese name for this dish; I know how to say ‘banana’ and ‘coconut milk’, but putting these two words together never works as well as just pointing. Look for the tray of white goo with yellow banana chunks floating around like water-wings-wearing kids in a swimming pool. Make sure they put sesame seeds on top.

As long as you’re in Little Saigon, you might want to head over to Dong Phuong Tofu, which supplies all the nearby grocery stories with their hot tofu and hot soymilk trays. It’s better from the source, though. Soybeans make great appetizers at sushi bars; their milk makes a delicious drink; puffy and fried, they go better in drunken noodles than most meat; and apparently they also shape up well as pandan-green tofu custard with coconut milk and ginger syrup! One of their large (16oz) cups will last you a week of desserts in the fridge and costs under $5. Out of the tub, it looks like Nickelodeon Gak. In your mouth, it tastes like the achingly sweet tropics.

Also in Little Saigon (and in the San Gabriel Valley) is a dried-fruit-and-beef-jerky chain called Vua Khô Bò. Shopping there is an exercise in active restraint. Do you like being followed around at the elbow by two extremely friendly yet extremely pushy dried-foods-saleswomen? Do you like delicious free samples (tea, dried fruit, jerky, everything!) followed by a pointed snapping open of a purchase bag? I hope you do, because that’s what’s going to happen. However, if you’re going for dessert, do what I do: take the proffered sample of grass jelly (you won’t get away without it) and make a beeline for the ginger. Request a quarter pound of every variety of ginger. Watch them when they weigh it. They will try to make you buy a pound of each. Firmly insist that they dump it out and give you a quarter pound. They’ll laugh. Laugh with them! You both know the game you’re playing – no need to get frustrated or defensive. If you insist, you will get your quarter pound.

Now take it all home and binge on ginger. (I have been dubbed ‘The Ginger Binger’ for this very reason.)

Finally, a perhaps oddball suggestion (as though banana snot and green tofu weren’t): eat goat cheese for dessert. Soledad Goats has stands at farmers markets all over the Southland, and I have often stood in front of my fridge at night and spooned their pear-honey-walnut goat cheese straight into my mouth from the container.

Traveling through Thai Town

Thai Town and Little Armenia are squished right up close to one another in the grid of East Hollywood, sometimes overlapping, their mingling tendrils making for some very strange-looking blocks indeed.  There have been times when I've been devouring a soujouk sandwich or dissecting a new box of almond cookies on the curb in front of some Armenian grocery when the scent of basil, turmeric and chilies comes wafting out of the restaurant next door, making me hungry all over again in a wholly new way.

I haven't yet explored the Armenian corners as much as I would like, but I've thoroughly ravaged Thai Town.  This is not to say, of course, that it's been ravaged enough.  Nothing ever has.

I've never been to Thailand.  I've glimpsed it in the Thai corners of Ruili and Phnom Penh, eaten countless plates of pad kee mow in the basement of a food court in Boulder, and that's about it.  I welcome its influence in Burmese, Khmer, and Vietnamese cuisine, and bow down to its ability to make me cry from spiciness.  But, like other Southeast Asian cuisines, it always soothes the fire it wrought with coconut juice immediately afterwards.  So I forgive it.

Although it's not in Thai Town proper, I find myself most often at Watdongmoonlek Noodle.  This used to be a microscopic place with 12 seats, no bathroom, and these uncomfortable wobbly stool-like chairs that left my long legs dangling like a child's.  They'd always fall asleep by the end of the meal, since I'd linger so long sipping their bizarre smoothie concoctions.

Its food has always been magical, and recently they renovated, expanding into the space next door.  Now they have a bakery AND a bathroom.  That's awesome in and of itself, but why else does Watdongmoonlek get my vote?

1. It's right smack between Silver Lake and Los Feliz and is affordable and doesn't suck, which is a miracle in and of itself.  (Aw, come on, 'Eastsiders' [and that nomenclature is another can of worms, I know], I'm sorry, but I wish one of you would successfully prove me wrong about this generalization.)

2. It does 'street Thai' and 'fancy restaurant Thai' equally well.  Want a plateful of sweetly charred pad see ew, and also perhaps an artfully arranged rambutan salad with swirls of coconut milk and precisely placed clusters of peanuts?  You don't have to go to two different restaurants anymore!

3. When it renovated, it left its low prices alone.

4. It's the first restaurant that picky me and my equally, but polar oppositely, picky uncle have ever agreed is delicious (with the possible exception of Western Doma Noodle).

5. It has lychee mint slushies.  It has pickled plum slushies.  It has pineapple basil slushies.  It has watermelon ginger slushies.  Mountains of icy slush topped with chilly fresh fruit.

Here's a slushy story: my ex-boyfriend was (and is) a vegetarian.  I tried in vain for years to get him to fall in love with food, but his perpetually stuffy nose, refusal to compromise his morals regarding animal flesh, and inordinate love for food like cereal, mashed potatoes, and steamed broccoli made this difficult, if not impossible.

However, he gamely tried his best, and we were a competitive pair, so whenever we'd go to places like Watdongmoonlek, or, say, Mil Jugos in Santa Ana - anywhere with an extensive and crazy drink menu - he'd quickly claim the craziest drink for himself, looking at me slyly as if to say 'who's the adventurous one now?'  At Mil Jugos, he ended up with something called a lulo, which tasted like someone took a lime and a jicama and spliced it with a cherry tomato.  At Watdongmoonlek, he ended up with the pineapple basil slushy.  (I had to take second place with my pickled plum slushy.)

And I've ordered just that slushy almost every time I've been back.  Even if I order basil-heavy dishes like the jungle fried rice.  You can't have too much basil!

Watdongmoonlek is delicious and reliable, and occasionally surprising, but when I want something that will force into existence whole new colonies of tastebuds on my tongue, I go to Jitlada.  I've written extensively on Jitlada before, so I won't reinvent the wheel by finding new ways to gush about it, but their dishes are so carefully and precisely balanced, with handfuls of perfectly complementary mystery herbs and spices, that each bite feels like a stop on a journey through a wildly exotic land.  Whenever I think I'm plateauing, that most of the tastes available to human beings have already touched my tongue, Jitlada disabuses me of that notion.

While fascinating and adventurous, Jitlada is also pricey, maddeningly crowded, glacially slow, and totally lacking in parking.  More often than not, I just want a quick bite, packed with flavor, for under $10, no pretensions.

For noodles - soup noodles and dry noodles, respectively - I have two go-to places.  For soup noodles, my pick is Rodded Restaurant for their excellent duck noodle soup.  It's dark-brothed, with duck textured as though it came right off a grill or out of a broiler.  It's tender, the fat is practically liquid, and very silky, and it still has its color.

For dry noodles, I go to Hoy-Ka Thai Noodles, which packs its namesake bowl with ground pork, pork liver, BBQ pork, pork meatballs, fish cake, and herbs and allows me to shoplift it from them for the ridiculously low price of $3.99.  Even though 90% of the bowl consists of different types of pork, each slice, ball, and chunk tastes unique.

For rice, Ruen Pair does a mean Cha-Po combination - its duck, pork belly, and BBQ pork are all cooked to their respective levels of perfection - and Pa Ord's crispy pork with holy basil is tooth-crackingly, greasily wonderful, with a spice chart so elevated that all but the most hardened diners should stop at 'medium'.  The deadly little pepper circles that look so innocuous blending into your basil are not innocuous at all, so treat them with respect.

In a category all its own is Spicy BBQ Restaurant, south of the meat of Thai Town, a place smaller than even the old Watdongmoonlek, with a sweet, friendly owner and a menu that starts out pedestrian but slowly morphs into mouthwatering at the Northern Thai end.  Its Northern special pork patties inspired me to go home and try to make a Thai fusion hamburger (this did not work, but the pork patties come close enough), and the spicy jackfruit has a back-of-the-throat kick that that distracts you from the oddly meat-like texture of the fruit.  The pork and the jackfruit are so indistinguishable that were I a terrible person, I could have easily fooled my vegetarian ex into eating this dish.

However, Spicy BBQ's Northern Thai Noodles did tempt a dining companion into taking her very first bite of blood cubes!  Usually, when someone points to the burgundy square and says 'what's that?' and I oh-so-casually say 'oh, you know, it's just blood cubes', they wince or reel back.  This dish looked so inviting that she merely shrugged and popped one in.