Los Angeles notes

Los Angeles no longer seems so superficial, perhaps because so many other parts of the country have been revealed to be the same or worse.  Their bookstores are no longer an embarrassment because now everyone’s are an embarrassment.  The city feels less glamorous and more normal, a better place to live but a more difficult place to talk about.  It remains an oddly forgotten city, overlooked in America’s love affair with Brooklyn and Silicon Valley and yes the Southeast, yet better to live in than perhaps anywhere else on this continent.  (Provided you do not have school-age children.)  The city has lost relative ground in one major way however: California no longer has such a monopoly on good Asian and Latin food.  Nor do movies exercise much of a hold on the American imagination nowadays.  It is no longer easy to identify what is essential about Los Angeles, yet no one here seems to care.

Eat at La Flor de Yucatan, get the cochinita pibil, the tamales dzotobichay, and the strange green egg dish, huevos papadzules, plus consider the daily specials.  Others recommend the hojaldra, note the establishment has only one table and they don’t shut the door on relatively cold winter days.

Also go to Jitlada Restaurant and get the mango raw blue crab, Coco lotus (fish soup in coconut milk), and Miang khum shrimp 7 heaven for a knockout southern Thai meal.