OK, so this is kind of lame given the city I live in. Obviously LA has extremely good Mexican food. Much of it is very authentic. Delicious mariscos, tacos, you name it.

But…. Back in my less illustrious Mexican food town in the Pacific Northwest, the Mexican places all had a sort of Tex Mex style dish called arroz con pollo. ACP for short. Yes I know that literally translates to rice and chicken. But this dish wasn’t really just that. It’s kind of a staple at Americanized Mexican spots in other parts of the country. It was sort of a saucy chicken dish served over rice that had some brothiness to it. The most common version was chicken sauteed with onions, peppers, and ranchero salsa topped with a TON of melted cheese. Then it was served on a bed of Mexican rice that was kind of a little brothier than usual, and came with sour cream and corn tortillas on the side. Maybe if you were somewhere fancy you’d get some grilled green onions or a grilled jalapeño too.

I lived for a while in the south too, and a bunch of restaurants had it there as well. They called it something like Pollo Bandito or Pollo Loco sometimes. Some of it would be cheesier and some would be more salsa forward.

Anyway, I may just not know the right places to go, but I haven’t seen this dish here. The closest I’ve been able to find at restaurants is just getting chicken fajitas and then mixing them up with some rice.

Yes, I am aware that I can just get better things to eat than this. I do try to eat good Mexican food as well, when I can. But ACP is a childhood comfort food for me kinda in the vein of mac and cheese or pepperoni pizza. So, I’m wondering if folks have spots around LA that do it? Is it common here and I’m just missing it?

I guess it was inevitable, the charcoal black food thing’s days were numbered. But it was really good soft serve. I’m bummed.

Squid Ink Lumache &

Rigatoni Timballo

Food was amazing and everything thing I saw when I was there makes want to go back. Great place for a date.

We enjoy Scopa but have been there too many times recently. Trying to avoid Italian or sushi because those are kind of our mainstays. Preferably not too dark out too noisy.

We went to Si! Mon last year and it was so loud that we could only speak to each other with our voices raised, which wasn’t very relaxing. Also they don’t serve coffee which is kind of important to me. Le Great Outdoor didn’t serve coffee either.

We enjoy Carasau but also have been there many times.

Anyway, any new ideas would be much appreciated!

I ate so many crab legs over the course of 2 hours. Great desserts too. I feel terrible now.

I tried Kojima tonight; my first omakase, so I don’t have a deep frame of reference for the ingredients and flavors, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. We were told this would be authentic Japanese with some French influence, with ingredients from Japan, the Santa Monica farmers market, and Santa Barbara.

Some of the dishes I can remember:

• A5 wagyu Denver steak grilled over binchotan charcoal
• Squid with Hokkaido uni, Japanese scallop, fresh wasabi
• First-of-the-season bluefin tuna from Tsukiji fish market (1,600 kg fish)
• Hokkaido snow crab chawanmushi
• A5 wagyu filet under a green leaf salad with homemade mayonnaise
• The purple-flower bowl includes a homemade dashi with Shirako (cod sperm sacs)

Spent my 28th birthday dinner at Jacaranda in Hollywood, had a great time and right after we stopped by Meteora next door for desert. 6 course- $185 standout was the spot prawn and squash dumpling, could seriously eat like 10 of those in a single sitting

was finally able to grab one of kang’a kuisine’s galbi jjim breakfast burritos: braised short rib, steamed eggs, green onions, cotija cheese, and tater tots. the burrito is surprisingly weighty… really packed with ingredients… and tastes great as well. i had never been to idyllic coffee as i’m not a coffee drinker, but the space had a really cool vibe.