What chefs bring to a no-cook potluck party. Easy takeout ideas you can duplicate
More than 20 easy takeout ideas from chefs and food pros for your next potluck. Plus, Curtis Stone grows a lifestyle empire in Malibu wine country, the return of Miya Thai, making chicken in a rice cooker. I'm Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week's Tasting Notes.
The invitation via text message was brief: 'Having a 'potluck' at my house next Sunday. Bring your favorite takeout food.'
I looked at the sender's name: Nancy Silverton.
I've been to Nancy Silverton's house for parties many times. I co-wrote her bread book and first got to know her while writing a story for this paper on the making of Campanile, the restaurant she and her late ex-husband Mark Peel opened in the complex that is now Walter and Margarita Manzke's Republique. So the idea of Silverton throwing a party with only takeout food — nothing cooked by her or any of her chef or food-obsessed friends — was surprising.
It's not that Silverton favors complex dishes. One of her lesser-known cookbooks is 'A Twist of the Wrist,' with simple recipes made from jarred, tinned or boxed ingredients. And she sometimes augments her party menus with food from some of her favorite takeout spots like Burritos La Palma.
But Silverton is obsessed with details, even at a burger party where the patties are hand-shaped with a custom-blend of meat (20% to 28% fat, as writer Emily Green once described in a story on the chef's hamburger process), and she only entrusts grill duties to trusted cooks (frequently Elizabeth Hong, culinary director of Silverton's many Mozza restaurants, or Jar restaurant owner-chef Suzanne Tract). Even the burger toppings and condiments are precisely arranged. Her avocados, for instance, are almost always halved, loosened from the skin, which remains to protect the fruit, then sliced, drizzled with lemon or lime juice and seasoned with salt, pepper and often chopped chives.
I wondered how Silverton would react to the chaos that can ensue at potluck gatherings. What if everyone showed up with Burritos La Palma? (Well, maybe that wouldn't be so bad.)
Of course, Silverton and her partner, former Times reporter Michael Krikorian, eliminated some of the event's wildcard nature by making gentle inquiries over text to find out what people were bringing.
It was clear from the start that one of my favorite foods to bring to a party would not be an option: the football-shaped Armenian flatbread from Glendale's Zhengyalov Hatz — filled with more than a dozen different herbs, as writer Jessie Schiewe described in our recent guide to '15 L.A. restaurants where ordering the house specialty is a must.' Krikorian was already bringing some.
He was also getting brisket from Andrew and Michelle Muñoz's Moo's Craft Barbecue, which is one of critic Bill Addison's favorite L.A. barbecue spots; 'kuku sandeviches,' or house-leavened flatbread filled with herb-and-leek frittata, yogurt, cucumber, tomato and radish from Azizam, which Addison called 'L.A.'s best new Persian restaurant'; fried chicken and fish sandos from Mei Lin's Daybird, the shop that attracted columnist Jenn Harris' admiration soon after its 2021 opening and before Lin's most recent restaurant, 88 Club in Beverly Hills, previewed recently by Food's reporter Stephanie Breijo; and fantastic basturma brisket sandwiches from III Mas Bakery & Deli (pronounce it 'Yerord Mas') run out of a Glendale ghost kitchen by husband-and-wife team Arthur Grigoryan (who used to work at Mozza) and Takouhi Petrosyan.
Oh, and Silverton also arranged for Frutas Marquez (phone: 909-636-1650) to set up an umbrella-shaded cocos frios and cut fruit stand.
So before the first guest turned up, there was enough food for a hungry crowd. Then the chefs and other food pros started to arrive with food from all over city.
Chef Chris Feldmeier of the sorely missed Bar Moruno in Silver Lake and now back in the kitchen at Love & Salt in Manhattan Beach gave Silverton's guests a chance to try some of the Southland's greatest Indian cooking from Quality of Bombay in Lawndale. He brought goat biryani, butter chicken and palak paneer, with large pieces of curd cheese mixed into the gently seasoned spinach. People were raving over the butter chicken and I was so taken with the goat biryani that I stopped into the unassuming storefront this week and picked up some lamb biryani as well as two of the restaurant's naans, one flavored with green chile and one, Peshawari naan, baked with ground nuts and raisins. Feldmeier also brought crispy rice salad with Thai sausage from North Hollywood's Sri Siam, a place I recently rediscovered.
Feldmeier's former Bar Moruno partner (and contributor to our wine coverage), David Rosoff, brought a sampling from Armen Martirosyan's Mini Kabob spinoff MidEast Tacos in Silver Lake. Many guests had heard about the Armenian-Mexican tacos and were happy to have a chance to try them.
Another hit from the party came from Jar's Suzanne Tract, who brought spicy shrimp dumplings and kimchi dumplings from Pao Jao Dumpling House started by Eunice Lee and Seong Cho in the food court of the Koreatown Plaza on Western Ave. In the dumpling season of Jenn Harris' video series 'The Bucket List,' she finds out that Cho developed the recipe for the spicy shrimp dumpling and isn't sharing the secret to its deliciousness — which will make you all the more popular when you show up with a batch at your next potluck.
Photographer Anne Fishbein brought many delicious things from chef Sang Yoon's Helms Bakery, including doughnuts and gorgeous breads with different schmears and butters, including the sweet black garlic butter that Harris included in her story about the Helms' foods that got her attention when the marketplace opened in Culver City late last year.
Times contributor Margy Rochlin arrived with swaths of the pebbly Persian flatbread sangak, so fresh from the oven at West L.A.'s Naan Hut the sheets of sesame-seeded bread burned her arm when she picked up her order. (Read Rochlin's 2015 story for Food for more on how sangak is baked on hot stones.) She then went to Super Sun Market in Westwood for French feta cheese, fresh herbs and the shallot yogurt dip mast-o musir, arranging everything on a wood board.
Silverton's daughter, Vanessa Silverton-Peel set out an impressive array of flaky borekas from the always-busy Borekas Sephardic Pastries in Van Nuys with various fillings. These included cultured cheese and za'atar; potato and brown butter; mushroom, caramelized onion and truffle; spinach and cheese, plus carrots and hot honey, which is an occasional special. With them, came pickles, tomato sauce and jammy eggs. And because she is everywhere, Harris has written about her love for this place too.
Taylor Parsons, once declared L.A.'s best sommelier when he was at Republique by former L.A. Weekly restaurant critic Besha Rodell, and Briana Valdez, founder of the growing Home State mini-chain of Texas-style breakfast tacos and more, brought cheesy Frito pies and tacos from Valdez's restaurant. And Pasquale Chiarappa, a.k.a. the sometime actor Pat Asanti, a.k.a. Patsy to his pals, brought his own Della Corte Kitchen focaccia, which he supplies to Pasadena's Roma Deli among other places.
Pizza and cake from another Addison favorite, Aaron Lindell and Hannah Ziskin's Quarter Sheets in Echo Park went fast, though I'm not sure who brought them since at this point it was getting hard to keep track of all the incoming food. The same goes for the bucket of Tokyo Fried Chicken that was quickly gobbled up. Jazz musician and composer Anthony Wilson had the good taste to bring a whole duck from Roasted Duck by Pa Ord, which I wrote about in this newsletter recently because I think it might be the best duck in Thai Town.
Claudio Blotta, founder of All'Acqua in Atwater Village and Silver Lake's Barbrix, which is undergoing rennovations at the moment, tapped his Argentine roots by bringing empanadas. I missed the name of the place he bought them, but a good bet if you're looking for some to bring to a party is Mercado Buenos Aires in Van Nuys.
Erik Black, founder of the recently revived Ugly Drum pastrami, broke the rules a bit by actually cooking something — spiced caramel corn from recipe in 'Nancy Silverton's Sandwich Book.' And Mozza's Raul Ramirez Valdivia made tortilla chips, guacamole and wonderful salsa verde. Of course, Burritos La Palma showed up thanks to Mozza's Juliet Kapanjie.
I ended up bringing a tray of fresh Vietnamese spring rolls, a party offering that has never failed me, from Golden Deli in San Gabriel. There were three kinds: shrimp and pork, beef and tofu for vegetarians.
And just when it seemed that the party could not take one more food offering, in walked former L.A. Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila and photographer, wine aficionado and cook Fred Seidman with a box of burgers from In-N-Out. Because no matter how full you are, there's always room for In-N-Out.
Food reporter Stephanie Breijo got a look at the inner workings of Curtis Stone's Four Stones Farm in the Santa Monica Mountains, where the Australian chef of Hollywood's Gwen and the Pie Room in Beverly Hills has established a base for his burgeoning lifestyle empire. This includes TV-ready testing and production kitchens for taping live HSN cooking demos promoting his cookware, plus a winery that uses grapes grown on the property's vineyards and a set up for events, including the upcoming Great Australian Bite in collaboration with the L.A. Times and Tourism Australia. On May 31, Stone and visiting chef Clare Falzon of Staġuni in South Australia's Barossa Valley are teaming up to prepare a multicourse meal in the area becoming known as Malibu wine country. Tickets cost $289 and are on sale now.
Regular readers of this newsletter know that I have been keeping watch in my Altadena neighborhood for signs of recovery following the firestorm that destroyed so much of the area. I'm thrilled to report that Miya — David Tewasart and Clarissa Chin's Thai restaurant, which survived in the section of Lake Ave. that saw major destruction — has quietly reopened and is happily busy. We ran into friends from the neighborhood and sat with them at a table to catch up. It felt like home. And the fried chicken with hand-pounded papaya salad? It's as good as ever.
Have you seen that woman who cooks an entire chicken in a rice cooker?' style pro Joe Zee asked columnist Jenn Harris recently, as she wrote in our most recent Cooking newsletter. He was referring to the Instagram video made by London content creator Shu Lin, who showed her followers how to make Hakka-style salt-baked chicken with not much more than a seasoning packet sold in most Asian supermarkets and a rice cooker, plus ginger, green onions, shallots and oil. The technique isn't new, but Lin's recipe is very simple and inspired Harris to try it.
Gefen Skolnick tells Food contributor Jean Trinh that she wanted a 'fun and funky' Gen Z-friendly space when she opened Couplet Coffee in Echo Park this year. That means 'limited-edition product drops, community-building, storytelling and social media.' As Skolnick put it to Trinh, 'There needs to be great coffee made more approachable.'
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