Latest news with #HowtoCooktheFinestThingsintheSea
Eater
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Eater
New York's Acclaimed Superiority Burger Is Coming to LA for One Day Only
One of New York's buzziest restaurants, Superiority Burger, is headed to Los Angeles for a one-day-only pop-up at Chi Spacca in Hancock Park on Sunday, June 8. Founded by Brooks Headley in 2023, Superiority Burger grew a cult following for its inventive lacto-ovo-vegetarian menu and a burger that Cate Blanchett once referred to as 'the thinking man's burger.' The walk-in-only pop-up will run from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., but expect a line well before doors open. Although a full menu hasn't been announced yet, the Instagram flyer says that lunch-goers should expect Superiority Burger classics and farmers market specials. Pizza and aperitivo in Echo Park Echo Park's former wine bar Tilda is flipping into Bar Bacetti. The sister bar to Italian restaurant Bacetti will serve aperitivi and pizza just in time for summer. An opening date for the bar hasn't been announced yet, but the team is targeting sometime in June. Is the best steak in America in Los Angeles? Jeff Gordinier pens a piece for Esquire about Dunsmoor's 32-ounce steak, which comes in at $149. The story dives into the steak's sourcing from Black Angus cattle in Iowa, and traces how it rose from $89 (which lost the restaurant money), to its current price point. Currently, the steak, crusted in hand-ground spices, is the largest revenue stream at the restaurant. Sunday dinner at La Dolce Vita Beverly Hills restaurant La Dolce Vita is launching a new Sunday-only dinner menu on June 8. Expect dishes like fennel risotto arancini and linguine ai frutti di mare with mussels, lasagna, and cheesecake. Book a table on Resy. Ari Kolender at Bar Le Cote Ari Kolender, the chef behind Found Oyster and Queen Street, is headed to Bar Le Cote in Los Olivos for a stop on his book tour and a collaborative dinner. On June 25, Kolender and Bar Le Cote chef Brad Matthews will cook a seafood-focused dinner together. Signed copies of Kolender's new cookbook, How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea , will also be available to buy. Kuya Lord turns three Kuya Lord is throwing a party for its third birthday on June 8. Head to Ggiata's Melrose Hills back patio starting at 1 p.m. for some of the city's best Filipino barbecue, as well as karaoke, cocktails, and more. Sign up for our newsletter.
Los Angeles Times
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The cookbooks bringing us joy and changing our lives in the kitchen this spring
Spring's parade of cookbooks are bringing a lot of joy into our kitchens. We read, cooked and baked our way through dozens of them, finding respite in some newfound culinary wisdom. Ace L.A. baker Nicole Rucker of Fat + Flour gave us recipes from her new book for London Fog brownies and her signature vegan lemon lavender cookies, using simplified methods that turned her baking world around. Ari Kolender, the chef whose East Hollywood raw bar Found Oyster won us over with pristine seafood and clam shack charm, wrote 'How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea' and helped us feel comfortable cooking all kinds of fish and shellfish. And along with chefs and other food lovers, we explored our own lived-in libraries, highlighting the cookbooks that have meant the most to us, the ones we most cherish, each for our own reasons. Here's what we're dog-earing right now. THE RECIPES THE RECIPES
Los Angeles Times
16-04-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
The chef who wooed L.A. with a million oysters perfects laid-back seafood
Ari Kolender, chef and co-owner of two of L.A.'s most popular seafood restaurants, didn't grow up in a household that cooked a lot of fish or shellfish because his grandfather kept kosher. But in high school he crabbed from friends' dinghies and worked at a storied restaurant called Hyman's on Market Street in Charleston, S.C., just blocks from the estuary-harbor where the city's three rivers converge — and where his love of seafood began. He watched the deliveries arrive at 7 in the morning and the owner of the restaurant hop on the back of the truck and sort through fish to decide which to buy. 'Seeing the whole process from being on the water and people catching fish to the finished product, I just loved the level of care being taken, the idea of that,' he says. By the time he opened Found Oyster in L.A. in 2019, he'd shucked countless bivalves; worked at seafood temple Providence in Hollywood; and helped open Leon's Oyster Shop and run the raw bar at the Ordinary in Charleston, a brasserie celebrating the bounty of the coastal Carolinas. In tiny Found Oyster, with a closet-size kitchen, Kolender created the consummate L.A. clam shack: Chill cross-coastal vibes meet platters of pitch-perfect seafood, all rigorously sourced. He estimates that in the five years since Found debuted, the restaurant has sold nearly 1 million oysters, several thousand a week. ('We've gotta throw a party,' he notes.) When it comes to cooking seafood, Kolender's motto is: 'Messing with it messes with it.' Do less — less handling, less fussing, less worrying about how delicate or weird or finicky seafood might or might not be. That's the thrust of his just-published cookbook, 'How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea,' co-written with Noah Galuten. 'The thing I hope people will take away from this,' Kolender says, 'is to leave their assumptions [about] cooking seafood behind and trust that you can do it; you have the ability, you have everything in front of you that you need.' 'Seafood tastes best when it is handled very little,' he writes in the book's introduction. 'I don't mean that in terms of adding flavor, but literally putting your hands on the product. ... The less you touch it, the more beautiful it's going to be and the more put-together it's going to look.' You can make broiled scallops with espelette butter in less time than it takes to answer an email. A tangy tartare folded with crème fraîche and herbs is one of the most delicious (and easiest) ways to use mackerel (or yellowtail or Arctic char or ocean trout, if you like). Kolender's expertise is pristine seafood served in an unpretentious way with references to the Lowcountry — specifically the marshy, riverine Ashepoo-Combahee-Edisto (or ACE) Basin rich with oysters and mussels — along with flavors creatively his own. People line up in front of Found (which now takes reservations), waiting for oysters and chicken-fried yellowtail collars, crab and trout dips, grilled head-on prawns and raw-scallop-yuzu tostadas. The horseshoe-shaped bar at his second restaurant, Queen St. Raw Bar & Grill in Eagle Rock, is one of L.A.'s best spots for languid oyster-eating (and vermouth-sipping) too. Kolender's standing behind the Queen St. bar on a recent Tuesday, mixing cubed Spanish mackerel, line-caught off the coast of North Carolina, with diced cucumbers, cornichons, capers and herbs — a small sloping mound of tartare. He says the sweetness and 'funkiness' (and by funky he means umami) and fattiness of the fish stand up to the fresh and pickled vegetables and the lactic acid of crème fraîche (his is spiked with wasabi oil) and citric acid of lemon juice. 'They interact on the palate in a way which is just creating flavors,' he says. And then he showers the tartare with more herbs — a handful of dill, parsley and chives. 'It's something I'm really big on, it's the use of herbs in general. I usually tell people, especially people we've just hired who aren't really used to how we cook, 'It doesn't matter if you're out here making crudo or in the kitchen making pasta, you can't use too much.'' At Queen St., named after a historic utopia-planned road that runs through the French Quarter in Charleston, the mackerel tartare is a mainstay on the menu, which is a study in the diversity of fish: oysters, anchovies, yellowfin tuna, shrimp, Jonah crab, brook trout from a farmer in Maine who catches them with his bare hands. Kolender opens the door to the walk-in refrigerator, where shelves are stacked with tubs of the day's Mere Point oysters. A 25-pound halibut procured from fisherwoman and uni diver Stephanie Mutz in Santa Barbara will become a fish-and-chips special; fish baked in paper with fennel, leeks and olives; and crudo with ginger and blood orange. In the kitchen, Kolender arranges smooth, chubby scallops, each smaller than a golf ball ('schmedium' he calls them), on an eighth-sheet pan lined with special fish-drying paper. 'I like the amount of time it takes to cook these in the pan,' he says. 'It's the right ratio of exterior sear to the middle being medium rare. 'The easy principle to remember is starting with something dry, not having a wet surface. The other trick is not seasoning them until you're just about to put them in the pan. The second you add salt to the scallop it's going to start releasing its water.' The scallops sizzle in a hot carbon-steel skillet on the stove, and Kolender transfers the pan to the high-heat broiler. After a minute he adds Espelette butter and returns it to the broiler. Thirty seconds later, as soon as the butter is frothy, it's done. The whole process takes less than four minutes. 'The recipe is the pan,' he says. 'You could dump this onto a platter or you could eat it directly out of the pan.' Tear hunks from a crusty loaf of bread and dunk them into the chile-tinged butter. Summer will bring bay scallops still in their shells, along with soft-shell crabs. 'It's a very special thing. Back home soft-shell crabs are literally on the roadside at shacks that sell seafood. I just really love it. 'Things that I love is where I start, and hopefully people like it too.' Ari Kolender will be signing copies of 'How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea' at the L.A. Times Food x Now Serving booth at the Festival of Books on Saturday, April 26, 11 a.m. to noon.
Los Angeles Times
16-04-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
A simple route to seafood sustainability? Eat way more of these four things
Sustainability is an incredibly complicated topic. Yet seafood sustainability is the surprisingly rare exception in which a really complex problem has a uniquely simple option — and it's in the hands of the consumer. To put it plainly, there are three things you can do to help change our ocean's food systems: Diversify the seafood that you eat and cook. Eat more scallops, oysters, mussels and seaweed. Buy seafood that was farmed or caught in the United States. In researching this topic for 'How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea,' the cookbook I co-authored with chef Ari Kolender (of Found Oyster and Queen Street Raw Bar & Grill), I read peer-reviewed studies and talked to seaweed farming experts, a shellfish growing association, government agencies, award-winning authors, conservationists, journalists and chefs. Intelligent people disagreed on a great many topics, but the one thing they all agreed on was that we, as a country, are way too focused on eating the same few fish, over and over again. 'Americans have a very kind of brutalist approach to the foods they allow on their plates,' said Paul Greenberg, author of 'Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food.' 'The idea came to me after repeatedly looking at menus and seeing this leitmotif of these same four fish. You're always going to have something that's pink and succulent — that's your salmon. You're always going to have some steak-y, or maybe sushi, that's gonna be your tuna. You'll have something white and flaky that's usually called cod but could be swapped in with a tilapia. Then there's always gonna be some kind of whole fish, for the adventuresome, and that's often called bass. 'You have [restaurants like] the Providences of the world that present interesting fish, but in the main world, and especially in fast-casual, it's almost always just salmon.' The top three seafoods that we eat in this country are almost invariably, in some order: salmon, shrimp and canned tuna. When the vast majority of seafood consumption in our country is driven toward the same three sea creatures, businesses will find a way to meet demand, come hell or high water. Enough people diversifying the seafood they eat, and being open to 'plenty more fish in the sea,' would change our foodways. While seafood experts often disagree about finned fish farming, many agree that vertical ocean farming is a great way to grow sustainable food that is not only nutritious but also cleans our ocean water at the same time. James Beard Award-winning author of 'Eat Like a Fish' and Greenwave co-founder Bren Smith has written and spoken extensively on this subject, championing the symbiotic relationship of scallops, oysters, mussels and seaweed, grown together to maximize efficiency. 'The ocean is unique as an agricultural space,' Smith said. 'If we choose the right crops — kelp, scallops, mussels, oysters — we can farm without feed, fertilizers or fresh water, making it the most sustainable food on the plate. All we need is sunlight and ocean nutrients.' If we can increase demand for these products, it does more than just grow a more sustainable seafood option. 'This is our chance to build an aquaculture sector that is regenerative out of the gate,' he continued, 'can help feed the nation, reduce pressures on wild fish stocks and create good, blue jobs.' If the demand for these products goes up, then so too does the demand for the sustainable ocean farmers to grow it. Also? They are all delicious. It can be really difficult to stay up to date on what seafood is sustainable at any given moment. I have been caught standing at a seafood counter trying to navigate the Monterey Bay Aquarium app, failing to figure out what kind of Atlantic halibut I'm looking at. Luckily, there is a much easier way. The United States is the best country in the world at regulating its seafood supply and managing its fisheries, according to a 2016 peer-reviewed study, published by the National Academy of Sciences. We are, however, not nearly as diligent about the seafood that we import … and we import about 80% of the seafood we eat in this country. If you read the work of people like author and investigative reporter Ian Urbina in the New Yorker, you find out that a lot of the seafood that we import comes cheaper thanks to horrifying working conditions and human rights violations, not to mention massive over-fishing and negative environmental impact. That's why, if you look at your options at the grocery store, you will frequently find that U.S.-caught and -farmed seafood is more expensive than the alternatives. But if you just buy American, you are most of the way there when it comes to being sustainable. So if you go to the grocery store and see shrimp from Thailand, Mexico and the U.S. — just buy the American one. Meanwhile, take a look at those cans of tuna you wanted to buy and try to find ones caught in the United States. Not processed in the United States but caught. It is a lot more difficult to find, and more expensive, than you are probably expecting. That's because for a can of tuna to cost 84 cents, some horrible things have to be happening to a lot of people before that can shows up at the grocery store. Get over it. It's a huge ocean with lots of seafood. If we want to make real change in our oceanic food system, we have to change the way we eat and shop. But also, if you are only shopping American, it means looking at perhaps fewer but frequently also different options when purchasing fish filets in particular. This leads to one of the many great lessons from working with Kolender on 'How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea.' Rather than give recipes that require a certain type of fish, we focused on breaking them down into three categories: steak-y; mild and flaky; and skin-on. Once you realize that you can put pretty much any type of fish filet into at least one of those three categories, you can cook any filet that you find. Skin-on filets like Arctic char, halibut, ocean trout, rockfish, salmon and vermillion are all wonderful to cook in a pan for a crispy skin. Meanwhile steak-y filets like albacore, swordfish, tuna and wahoo are all great hard-seared in a pan or cooked on a grill. Mild and flaky filets like flounder, halibut, perch, any snappers and turbot are great in stews, soups, rice dishes, or even battered or breaded and fried. Once you start thinking of things in these categories, it makes your shopping so much easier. It is often much better, as Kolender told me, to think about how you want to cook before you decide on what you want to cook. Los Angeles has great seafood markets, such as Santa Monica Seafood and Fish King in Glendale, all of which would be more than happy to direct you to the best type of U.S.-caught fish for the type of cooking you're looking to do. But like any seafood market (and even many seafood stalls at farmers markets), they will sell whatever sells. That means it's up to you to vote with your dollars. My favorite way to buy seafood in L.A. is to visit Wild Local Seafood Co., which shows up at farmers markets in Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, Hollywood, Mar Vista and Long Beach. Owner Ben Hyman cares a lot about sustainable fishing practices, and catches most of its seafood off the coast of Santa Barbara. The market usually has a relatively small list of options, but you can rest easy knowing that the quality and sustainability practices will be of the highest order. You will probably even learn about a delicious fish you didn't know about. I know how easy it is to get caught in a cooking rut, focusing on the familiar. But whether we like it or not, I firmly believe that aquaculture will become a massive part of our foodway system in the coming years and decades. Companies are raising hundreds of millions of dollars to invest in the future of ocean farming, and if we want to have a say in that future, we have to become a part of that discussion now, before the decisions are made for us. The surest way to have a say in that is to put your money where your mouth is.
