Restaurant Review #3-Versailles

It's with great pleasure that a recent trip into the environs of Encino resulted in my being able to savor the samplings of the tasty Cuban restaurant, Versailles. Now, I have always been a huge Versailles fan, having had a few birthday fiestas at their Venice location, and this has always been mainly because it is such a singular experience of an interesting, varied cuisine rarely sampled in the United States outside of Little Havana in Miami, a shame because Cuban food generally tends to be both just hearty enough for a full meal and just exotic enough, especially with its hints of citrus, to be interesting, thus making it an ideal impress-your-date food.

Although there are four locations in Los Angeles, I vouch for the Encino location providing the most superb overall dining experience, especially after a recent interior design. Parking's still rough, though, and you might find yourself parking over at the crowded strip-mall next store to find a parking space, especially during lunch hour and weekend evenings, times when you should also expect to wait twenty minutes for a seat.
All meals at Versailles begin with a serving of buttered garlic bread, enough to whet the appetite, yet leave one waiting for the main course. Those expecting tortilla chips and salsa will be bitterly disappointed...

As far as entrees are concerned, probably the most popular dish is the famed Garlic Chicken, covered in a thick layer of onions and lathered with a refreshing garlic-citrus marinade. On the side, fried plantains and moros y cristianos(black beans and rice) round out the meal, a relative bargain at under ten dollars. Round out the meal with an appetizer of fried yucca, and you may have the best Cuban dish in the city.

Also to be considered are the ropa vieja, a sort of beef stew that's incredibly spicy, and the paella, a Cuban spin on the Spanish dish well-worth the forty minute-plus prepration time. There are also a few vegetarian options, so vegetarians do not need to feel entirely left out of the feasting fun.
If dinner is not enough, dessert options are varied as well; Versailles is not the type of restaurant to be abandoned after the main course in favor of Ben & Jerry's. I personally prefer the homemade flan with a coffee apperetif.
It's rare in Los Angeles to find an interesting, yet neighborly, restaurant where dinner for two comes in at under twenty-five dollars, but Versailles definitely fits the bill. Furthermore, be sure not to be intimidated by the long lines: they move rather quickly, especially considering the extreme friendliness of the staff, many of whom have worked there for what seems like forever and who take extra care to make sure your experience is ideal.
So whether it's an inexpensive date or a get-together with college buddies, definitely consider Versailles as an option. After a first visit, you will not need much convincing in order to return.

Little Tokyo Beats Us to the Digitized Punch!

little tokyo
Flickr photo from miafaye.

OK, so we've broken ground(as of tomorrow) on city-wide Wifi in Little Tokyo of all places, and, ironically, this on the day while Antonio is giving his State of the City Address downtown. Thus, we have three blocks of L.A. now covered by a wireless "cloud", while the rest of us pay cable companies, T-Mobile, and Starbucks for our digital fix.

So we here at the Koreatown Chronicle have to ask our quite photogenic, yet not-always-very-available, mayor, "Why, Mr. Villaraigosa, does Little Tokyo now have a municipal WiFi umbrella, while the rest of Los Angeles is left to its own devices? Wasn't it one of your much-hyped projects to produce a completely wireless Los Angeles, or did that idea get lost at the last City Council Meeting?"

Goin' South for Some Rollickin' Fun

Having skipped the Joshua Ferris reading at Skylight last night, I had originally planned on calling it an early night, perfect for enjoying a glass of Suav Blanc on the Kung Futon. It was not to be...

The New Beverly Cinema has a special triple-feature of Southern regional movies going this weekend(as part of the Grindhouse Film Festival), and the temptation of heading over there for a little Southern-fried film was far too intense.

The first flick, Hot Summer in Barefoot County(1974) or Kuuma kesä Barefoot Countyssa in Finnish(thank you Internet Movie Database) features bootleggin' fun in a small town, and all the usual cliches are out in full force. Don Jones plays the world-wise "city" boy cop sent to break up the locals' fun, and Jeff MacKay plays Culley Joe Roberts, the good ol' boy who, seemingly out of sheer boredom, lives solely to frustrate his efforts. Along the way, there are more blatant scene-chewing car chases than you could shake a stick at(I lost count at #7 or something), most of which involve the usual incompetent bigoted Southern sheriff and his overly-fastidious, bumbling deputy sidekick, who, in one of the film's centerpiece scenes, gets assaulted by halter top bombshells Valerie Putney and Sherry Robinson. Great film, even if this particular transfer(Quentin Tarantino's own) was missing a few choice reels here and there.

Redneck Miller(1977) and In Hot Pursuit(1977) feature more of the same, although by this point, I'd gourged myself silly on three ridiculously-large popcorns by this time, and I was gleefully dozing in and out so both films sort of blur together in a haze of sticky butter-fueled, country music fun. In Hot Pursuit(1977), also known as Polk County Pot Plane, has an interesting backstory, something about a Georgia state politician wanting a film made about his congressional district, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Since you'd only see these movies here, I'd strongly recommend going and seeing them tonight if you can. Also, do not miss Koreatown's very own 1st Annual Subtitle Film Festival, playing this weekend at MPARK4 Theatre(Wilshire/New Hampshire).

Restaurant Review #2-Chi Dynasty

While everybody knows you can always find a Chinese restaurant open on Christmas, the same also seems to apply to that other major Christian holiday, Easter. Not being too sure what would be open today meant that our small circle of friends needed a sure bet, and the old Los Feliz stand-by Chi Dynasty, about a five-minute drive from Koreatown, seemed like an ideal spot, especially because Chinese food is usually enjoyable with a small crowd, perfect for sampling a little of everything.

The interior of the restaurant is a visual treat, with your typical flourishes of lacquered screens, jade buddhas, and towering pagodas. The interior designers did a great job in designing an Asian cultural experience without condescending into kitsch, a situation particularly common in Chinese restaurants built during the sixties and seventies. Be forewarned, however, the restrooms could be cleaned more regularly.



The meal began with a well-portioned Chinese Chicken Salad and several pots of black tea. The salad was especially noteworthy, with tasty chunks of chicken spread throughout without overwhelming the crisp lettuce.



As for the main course, everybody in our group enjoyed the lemon chicken, served with the lemon sauce on the side in order to preserve the full flavor of the meat. The green beans, bathed in a pungent garlic sauce, also proved to be a hit with everybody; however, the sesame chicken, another of Chi Dynasty's signature dishes, proved less popular, being served completely bathed in a too-tangy sesame sauce.



Overall, Chi Dynasty makes for an enjoyable dining experience. For a group of six(plus a two-month old), the entire tab came to around sixty dollars, which is pretty reasonable for this neighborhood. Unfortunately, the lunch menu doesn't include tofu options, so vegetarians are rather restricted in terms of dining choices, and this left more than one member of our party sorely disappointed. Since we were informed that Chi Dynasty will soon be moving to a new spot in Los Feliz Plaza due to lease complications, maybe this change of venue will also entail a broadening of choices on the menu. For now, however, if you're in Los Feliz craving Chinese, Chi Dynasty saves a drive to Chinatown without breaking the bank in the process.

Twelve Angry Men. One Satisfied Viewer.

Roundabout Theatre Company's Twelve Angry Men, a hit on Broadway now showing at the Ahmanson Theatre until May 6th, is a play for our time. Maybe too much for our time for the play's own good. It's become such a standard repertory piece that we pretty much need to be awed in order to be truly won over, which is suprising since this 1957 play initially shocked audiences with its raw portrayal of racial hypocrisy in the Land of the Free.

Pay close attention, however, and you'll still be able to find moments of intense insight into how subtlely racism can undermine even the most objective analysis, depicted especially when our Ivy League-educated Juror Eight must continually reiterate and justify his own qualms about the validity of the state's case. At several moments in the action, this performance allows us to share a bit of the general air of inevitability and resignation surrounding the case, a mood accentuated by the depressingly-nondescript design of Jury Room 2A, complete with the monotony of wall-to-wall forest green-and-black floor tiling which looks as though it were imported directly from the nearest DMV bureau. Kafka-meets-midcentury Manhattan, indeed.

George Wendt is perfectly-cast as the foreman; however, not to sound too much the theatre purist, but do we always need to applaud the appearance of a T.V. celeb in a stage production? Every actor in this show gave a stellar performance, yet when the jurors were introduced, only the two that had been on television received an introductory applause. Didn't Shakespeare tell us the play's the thing? Or am I just fighting the inevitable fact that theatre has become more or less an adjunct of television and film?

What's more, I was able to get a ticket two hours before the show for twenty dollars. At that price, I might just go back for an encore performance.

Why?

Around a month ago, I led a fairly-stable suburban life in the rural abode-meets-Walmart America town of Oxnard, California, amid fading beach houses of past generations of the Hollywood elite(gathered notably in neat little rows around the aptly-named Hollywood Beach). However, coupled life in suburbia turned out to be, well, coupled life in suburbia, and, eager for change, my restless wings(and a UHAUL truck devoid of headlights) landed me and my trusty chihuahua, Pancho, in the urban enclave known as Los Angeles Koreatown, the hanguk center of the United States and the headquarters of Radio Korea, but, as we shall see, this florid land of boba hipsterdom, karoake palaces, and impossible parking is, indeed, the ideal place for this post-college, pre-whatever twentysomething to create an urban nest. Yes, that's right, Los Angeles Koreatown, sandwiched between the Byzantine-Latino Quarter(try making sense of it without smiling-pretty tough), MacArthur Park, and a bunch of other neighborhoods meaningless to those outside our great urban sprawling city, and, quite frankly, to many of those without our great metropolis.

A blog carried the air of inevitablity about it. Where else is this aspiring "man-about-town" going to find release for his creative impulses? An underground 'zine? It's been done. LA Weekly? Maybe someday. LA Times? Perhaps when I can fill the parking space vacated yesterday by Andres Martinez. Le Monde? Come on...I may be an aspiring urban sophisticate, but I'm not quite French yet. NY Times? Although the parameters of urban living have been more or less set in this country by Manhattan and Brooklyn, I want this to be a creation of the West. No more going to New York City to write about California...