The last fish fry, plus what we ate in 2023 and what's ahead for 2024. I'm Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week's Tasting Notes, our last for 2023.
Gone fishing
Fish tacos at the Wes Avila restaurant Angry Egret Dinette in Los Angeles' Chinatown. The restaurant closes Dec. 31. (Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)
On the Saturday before Christmas, following the advice of Times reporter Stephanie Breijo in the food section's recent guide to 22 of the best tamales in L.A. and O.C., I went to the Angry Egret Dinette to pick up my holiday tamale order — a dozen with dusky chicken mole and a dozen with silky sweet potato and cheese.
It was also one of my last chances to eat at the spot chef Wes Avila opened in October 2020, months before the pandemic eased enough to allow restaurants to serve customers indoors. After brunch service on New Year's Eve, the Egret will shut its doors.
During its three years in operation at the edge of Chinatown, across from the old Fu Ling space that briefly was home to Andy Ricker's L.A. outpost of Pok Pok and next to the wonderful tea and small-bites place Steep (go for the marinated egg and boon-boon noodles), Avila's dinette went through many menu permutations. As restaurant critic Bill Addison wrote when the dinette was just a few months old, Angry Egret had a "kinetic menu that might include a po' boy filled with fried shrimp, a crunchy duck breast banh mi and a breakfast burrito heaving with frilly braised pork, scrambled eggs, potatoes, pintos and queso Oaxaca." Sometimes there was whole fish closer to the resort-style dishes Avila serves at Ka'Teen in Hollywood or lobster that referenced the Puerto Nuevo creatures some of us Angelenos grew up eating when our parents took us to Baja for a treat.
On this day, with just about a week to go before Avila and his team shut the doors on the Egret, I ordered a plate of fish tacos and sat down in the colorful dining room that opened later in the restaurant's run.
Out came the most spectacular tacos, with the curls of wild-caught rock fish so expertly fried they were seemingly suspended in motion the moment they hit the oil. The suppleness of the tortilla against the crunch of the batter yielding to the tender fish inside, with a hit of crisp cabbage and drizzles of mustard habanero aioli, chipotle aioli, heirloom tomato molcajete salsa and pico de gallo, made for one of those rare perfect bites that makes you happy to live in Los Angeles.
But this taco is disappearing as of Sunday, along with the wild experiment that was Angry Egret.
"I find myself mentally stretched too thin," Avila told Breijo in her report last week on more than 65 restaurants that have closed in 2023 or are soon to close, including Carlos Salgado's great Taco María and downtown L.A.'s beloved Nickel Diner. "This year is gonna be even busier than this past year and I can't be everywhere at once."
My only hope is that Avila will bring back the fish tacos when he opens the new project he's working on sometime next year, with details yet to come.
If not, I'll have to comfort myself with these words of wisdom spoken by coffee master Jack Benchakul of Endorffeine — "the high church of caffeine geekery," as Addison describes it — when my friend John complained that a specially roasted coffee bean he loved was no longer available: "But you had it. You were able to taste it and enjoy it."
What we ate in L.A. and beyond in 2023
Clam emulsion topped with blue-tinged squid, part of the Black Rocks course at Virgilio Martinez's restaurant Central in Lima, Peru. (Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)
In the food staff's compilation of 19 dishes from all over the world that blew our minds in 2023, I wrote this about the most memorable thing I ate: "If forced to choose a single course out of a meal that reorients everything about where we should be seeking the creative center of the food world, it would have to be the Black Rocks course at Virgilio Martinez's aptly named Central in Lima, Peru. Partly, this is cheating because it's the first course in a mind-blowing procession of wild ingredients, textures, colors and flavors that is unlike anything most of us are used to in North America or Europe."
But my dinner at Central is far from the only meal I will remember from my travels in 2023. Not only was there the tart of many tubers that Martinez's wife, Pía León, served at her restaurant Kjolle adjoining Central, and the beets and caviar from three-star chef Mauro Colagreco at Mirazur in Menton, France, which are included in our 2023 guide, but so many other meals that I hope to tell you about in the coming year. In August, I wrote about the twist on tortellini that Italy's Massimo Bottura served at Osteria Francescana in Modena but there was also the salsiccia, scamorza and caramelized onion sandwich from Il Pizzicagnolo in Umbria's Citta della Pieve, where the bread is baked to order in a kitchen the size of a closet. And, oh, the wonderful food in Marseille and Paris and a countryside restaurant in the Dordogne.
Of course, as our food writers Stephanie Breijo, Cindy Carcamo, Danielle Dorsey, Betty Hallock, Jenn Harris, Daniel Hernandez, Sarah Mosqueda and Lucas Kwan Peterson wrote in our compilation of the best SoCal dishes we ate in 2023, it's hard to beat the food right here in our backyard.
And there's a lot more to look forward to in 2024. Breijo has a preview in her most recent column on new openings.
With the year ahead looking as if it's going to be a turbulent one, I hope that we can bring you some moments of respite and joy with our coverage — and that you will enjoy many good times around the table in the months to come.
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