The Other Critics

Gold Crowns a New BBQ King; Patrick Kuh Picks 2010’s Best New Restaurants

Snow BBQ's brisket in Lexington, TX.
Snow BBQ’s brisket in Lexington, TX. Photo: Amanderson2 via Flickr

“No Texan has ever gotten pork ribs right,” writes Jonathan Gold in stunning prose abut the evolution of Texas barbecue both in and out of state. He’s eating at Smoke City Market in Van Nuys, which is owned by some vets of Bruce Marder’s Capo. He’s even less fond of the dry chicken and bland mac and cheese, but finds salvation right where it’s supposed to be, in “thick slices of brisket, salty and fatty, cooked long and slow with the heat from smoldering oak,” “crackly, peppery, coarse-ground sausages smoked in hanging loops, hot guts that look like hot guts,” and “beef ribs thick as Bibles and black as sin, a solid pound apiece.” We think sin is probably more likely to be colored gold, but the place still sounds pretty ‘effing off-the-chain. [L.A. Weekly]

Patric Kuh drops his ten favorite new restaurants from the last year. Lazy Ox takes the top spot, followed by the expanded Hatfield’s, while appearances from Waterloo and City, Cleo, Salt’s Cure, Scarpetta, and WP24 round out the list. [Los Angeles]

S. Irene Virbila looks into L.A.’s still-blossoming Sunday Supper tradition, of which Suzanne Goin was an early-advocate at Lucques. She talks Eva’s fried chicken and the options at Noir Food and Wine and Dominick’s, but we suspect this is all just a cover so she can write again about how much she digs Ammo. [L.A. Times]

Jonathan Gold heaps high praise on Pasadena’s Dog Haus, having cut out a place in this “golden age of hot dog” creativity. They do have a hot dog named for “The Fonz,”: “chunks of pastrami annealed to an Italian sausage with industrial quantities of melted mozzarella cheese.” Sounds like a few of those would weigh one down right into the shark tank, but nonetheless seem pretty cool. [L.A. Weekly]

Want to eat around L.A. without a car? First of all, good luck and our apologies that everybody driving seems to be looking at you like something’s gone horribly wrong in your life. J. Gold suggests Downtown’s Arts District is the place to be, with great restaurants from Rivera to Nickel Diner and easy train access to the good eats in Boyle Heights, KTown, and Hollywood. [L.A. Weekly]

Merrill Shindler and his daughter hit a revolving sushi spot at her request, Redondo Beach’s Siori Sushi Bune, where the rolls circumnavigate a small sea. He gets in a few new rolls and an uni shooter, but the big discovery might just be mango-topped Japanese pizza with deep-fried rice and spicy tuna. Strange, but suddenly, we want this. [Daily Breeze]

Gold Crowns a New BBQ King; Patrick Kuh Picks 2010’s Best New Restaurants