Use Your Thai Illusion

The mural at LAX-C

LA is the land of illusion, of course, where cavernous warehouses are transformed into a New York diner or the bottom of the ocean and actors are granted a reprieve from time itself by talented makeup artists. Alabama accents are smoothed over with hours of elocution worthy of My Fair Lady and a Brooklyn-born

Before she was Hayworth

daughter named Margarita Carmen Cansino can be reborn as a redheaded vixen with a bit of electrolysis and a bottle of dye.

And though some find this abhorrent, I find that in all this lies the magic of this southern land. It’s a place of the belief in renewal and rebirth and the certainty of childhood games that a pile of cardboard boxes really can be a arcade.

Even the real estate here ignites fantasies. Around these parts, one lawn corrals a safari of iron animal statuary while another boasts a topiary unicorn ready to charge off to Xanadu. Amusement parks filled in the desert long ago, with Disney leading the way with promises of an escape to a small world and pirate enclaves. Best of all, pockets of lands far-flung can be found in just about every neighborhood in LA.

This past weekend, we vacationed in Thailand just by turning east at the Chinatown gates and crossing onto the 1100 block of Main Street downtown. Sandwiched between factories and open lots, the LAX-C complex looks like just another hard-scrabbling market at first glance. But drive into the gates and you’ll discover a collection of small businesses, including an open-air kitchen, anchored by the relatively massive “Thai Costco.”

The entrance to LAX-C

It’s worth the visit just to see the mural of 20’ tall Aztecs, caught astride galloping horses and driving buffalo,running along the side of the LAX-C warehouse. Step under these painted hooves and arrows, and you’ll feel a blast of mist spray from the entrance’s eaves, while to the right tangerine and white koi flutter in a long narrow pond squeezed next to the parking spaces. This layering of culture, where Thai coffee advertisements float in the breeze next to Mexican mural work finds the heart of LA beating beneath the illusion.

LAX-C

This family-owned truly-super market covers all of the bases with Asian ingredients and supply, offering many in bulk along with specialty items. How many other stores, big or small, can boast a coconut aisle, with products ranging from bulk coconut milk and cream to oil to water to canned? Rice is available in bulk for Cal-Rose and other long and short grain or in smaller quantities for more uncommon types such as black or red. Fresh produce, such as mangos and coconuts, can be found as well as a tank of fresh lobster and fish and a mortar and pestle for $24. You can even pick up a gallon of pig’s blood; no need to settle for a pint, while filling your cart with sriracha, soy sauce, pickled fish, and cases of ramen. Towards the back of LAX-C, a supply of carved wood tables and stools are housed on steel shelving, including a whimsical mushroom table and chairs for $350.

Fish at LAX-C

I found lovely finds in the beauty aisle with salt scrubs spiked with cucumber, yogurt, or green tea, similar to The Body Shop, for a little over $3. Likewise, bars of frangipani-scented soap will turn a bath into a tropical spa for a couple of dollars. If trawling the rows of goods works up an appetite, a small counter of Thai food with booth seating is stationed just before the check stands. We sucked down a plate of spicy green curry, fried catfish, rice and great steaming hunks of fried taro for about $6.

LAX-C 1100 N. Main St. LA, CA 90012 (323) 343-9000

Mae Ting’s Coconut Cakes

Mae Ting’s Coconut Cakes being poured

Located in a tin-roofed shack tucked into a corner of the market parking lot, Mae Ting’s Coconut Cakesexudes a breezy, thrown-together charm. While we waited for our coconut cakes, a string of regulars stopped by to pick-up boxes of the creamy treats. Thick coconut batter filled hot iron pans punched with half-sphere indentations, then sizzled and threw off steam, resulting in bite-sized cakes with a delicately crisp crepe-like exterior giving way to a molten cream filling.  Order a stick or two of grilled pork and a freshly tossed papaya salad, spiced to your specifications, to round out the meal.

Mae Ting’s Coconut Cakes 1100 N. Main St. LA, CA 90012 (323) 632-2071

Thong Lo Station

Stop by here after the shopping trip at LAX-C for a sugar rush, a selection of Thai magazines and books, or a few carved masks or textiles. Thong Lo Station stocks prepackaged treats such as Pocky (thin semi-sweet cracker sticks often dipped in chocolate) and jelly candy as well as some great spicy cashew nuts and chips. It’s a one-stop shop for little pleasures to sweeten your day.

Thong Lo Station 1100 N. Main St. LA, CA 90012 (323) 276-5835

Rajprasong

A Buddha altar piece at Rajprasong

Next time you get a hankering to throw some money down at Cost Plus or Pier One for some carved wood accents or a ceremonial bell, check out Rajprasong’s wares instead. While the ambiance is bare bones, you can find these plus flatware and silvery bamboo handled serving pieces worthy of a Ralph Lauren Home set for $12.  A huge collection of Buddha figurines are available as well for practitioners as well as yogabees (those spiritual wannabees that thank the barista at Starbucks with a loud utterance of  “Namaste, brother,” instead of a tip.)

Rajprasong, LAX-C 1100 N. Main St, LA, CA 90012 (323) 343-9000 x232

Chimney

Having a baby makes one appreciate the most simple and elegant gifts in life. Like coffee. And pastry. After a night of two-hour wake-ups, the comfort of good coffee wraps itself around my core with each swallow – and I’m drinking decaf.

Chimney barista prepares a single-origin coffee pour-over style

Chimney carries an impressive range of single-origin coffees and brews them up pour-over style for a cup that’s smooth with that tingle of bitter darkness that pulls at the edges of your tongue. Since it’s located between the LAX-C complex’s seafood outpost and the candy store, we were expecting a coffee shop more akin to what we’d find on Irving Street in San Francisco, with tile floors, neon signage and pop music. While those hold a special place in my heart, Andy and I were happily surprised to find our new favorite coffee shop (well, second only to the Blue Danube on Clement Street in San Francisco).

Beautiful wood paneling, cozy seating, high ceilings and chill-out-with-your-tablet music create a welcoming backdrop to enjoy not just the coffee but house-baked pastries. The menu includes on-trend flavors such as salted chocolate brownie, but plays with Asian flavors as well with Thai tea puff pastry. Most exciting is the Nutella and bacon croissant that balanced two aggressive flavors expertly.  The delightful Ivy, who helped us counter-side explained that the café was opened by the son of the complex’s owner. Seems like this son is grinding out his own path.

Chimney 1100 N. Main Street, Suite C LA, CA 90012 (323) 343-0030

Chimney’s cozy interior

Queen Calafia’s Call of Summer

Queen Califia, from The Room of the Dons mural, Mark Hopkins Hotel, San Francisco

Cross the desert, past the siguaros, who raise crooked arms in salute, forever at attention, and the prickly pears, who wear their violet and amber blossoms tucked in like corsages. Or journey south from the grimacing cliffs of the Pacific Northwest, where redwoods stretch into waves of fog to tether the clouds to the earth. Even sail across the Pacific, where tropic trade winds sing the tortoises to sleep and coconut trees whisper good night. California beckons, echoing with the call of Queen Calafia to her legions of Amazonian women.

California, it would seem, was named after a hypnotic island popularized in a 16^th-century Spanish novel

A citrus farmer at the Beverly Hills Farmers’ Market

Las Sergas de Espandian. So beautiful and fertile was this stretch of land, that early explorers mistook it for a place of legend and myth. California still strikes me as such and happening upon a summer’s farmers’ market lays all of the evidence for such a belief out in a spread of plenty. A farmers’ market’s charm relies on a careful balance between actual produce vendors, ready-to-eat stations (to snack on while you shop), specialty booths (be it bison filets or baskets of fungus), and hippy dippy entertainment like a Brazilian timbale band or, ideally, a drag cover band of Creedence Clearwater Revival called Proud Mary.  The Beverly Hills Farmers Market crams all of these (except for the cover band) into a stretch of Civic Center Drive adjacent to the deliciously deco Civic Hallevery Sunday morning.

Stand-out finds this time of year include several stone fruit vendors, breads and pastries from two bakeries, sprouted legumes, and fresh goat cheese. Gorgeous plants, including plumaria and fuchsia, are offered up, as well as a couple of cut flower vendors with bunches for $5 or less. Pick up a jar of kimchee, spicy chutney, or bottle of small batch olive oil to round out your pantry and a dozen free-range eggs and you’ll have no need for Pavilions or Whole Foods save for a bag of rice and a sixer of beer. Each week we load up Ronin’s stroller – the basket below brimming with tomatoes, bags of peaches and nectarines and lemons hanging off either side of the handlebars, and a market bag of pretzel rolls tied to the center – until she resembles a tiny cowgirl driving her cargo-laden burro.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Kenter Canyon Farm Greens

• Kenter Canyon Farms sells the largest assortment of greens so newly-picked that a bag has lasted two weeks in the fridge without wilting. Greens and a wide range of herbs are all available to mix and match.  Their Spicy Mix tosses in arugula with the usual suspects for a bit more bite that can stand up to the creamiest of dressings or the sweetness of fruit. Grab a handful of edible carnations or posies to add a wonderland sparkle to your next salad or a bunch of lavender to scent your drawers (in a muslin bag) or add a sweet perfume to humdrum sugar.

• Pluck a toothpick from the box, study the options and spear the pale sunset orange flesh of a peach. Then take a bite and smile as the juice trails a sticky ride down your chin. You’ve just eaten summer. Honey Crisp fruit farmers proudly display a range of samples – yellow and white peaches and nectarines, pluots and plums – knowing that their stone fruits’ flavor yells louder than any market barker.  Beneath the expected sweetness of these pin-ups of the fruit world, expect to find vanilla underpinnings and grassy legs.

Frank and his avocados

• I picture Keiko and Frank of Westfield Farms rising with the first golden rays of sun to weave hand-in-hand between a grove of avocado trees. She whispers, Good Morning to each one, cradling the green and black-skinned fruit in her warm palms. He shines their skins on his shirtsleeve and nestles each one into a bentwood basket, tucking it in for the long and bumpy road to the market.  They sort out their brood by days to ripen and can answer any question about this finest of California crops. Together, they’ve introduced us to a world beyond the mighty Haas. Our favorite remains the huge, softball-sized Zutanos – nutty and thin-skinned with a firm fruit, although the Walter Holes add a pleasing bite to a salad with their slightly bitter, edible skins.  You’ll know their booth as it is one long stall of avocados, without other vegetable frippery frap to clutter up the place.

• Nothing stirs up a hunger like dodging strollers and hand carts while hunting for the perfect peach. Luckily, the chile-swimming scent of Mis Padres grabs you by the nostrils and pulls you through the crowd to the end of the market with a big-bellied pay-off of griddle-sizzling chilequiles. Mike starts by frying chips on his flat top and then heaping on salsa, cilantro, and jack cheese.  Top it off with a dose of the house-made hot sauce and the heat will get your toes tingling for the walk back home.

Ronin loving the Beverly Hills Farmers’ Market

3 Continents, 2 (and a half) Happy Bellies, 1 hour

Fields in Queltzaltenango, photo courtesy of carbon-based-bhg.blogspot

“Helter skelter in a summer swelter,” we sang as the pick-up jerked up the mountainside, our hips and elbows glancing off each other as we were jostled from our stances in the truck’s bed.  We gathered each morning as the early fog dissipated, hoisting ourselves up by the steel cage welded to the truck bed. The road cut through the sub-tropic brush in quick turns and sleek stretches like a black snake slithering. At its rough-cut edge, crumbling asphalt shone in the morning sun like slick scales. Around us the crops of Guatemala, coffee and cilantro, plantains and potatoes, stitched across steep inclines in proud rows, gathering plots of dark brown earth into a green quilt.

“So Bye, Bye Miss American Pie,” we yelled, breathing in the sweetness of ripening fruit until the bitter sting of the local trash burns scraped the back of our throats. Later we would try to help build a house. We would stand dumbly in work gloves and boots as barehanded kids stacked concrete blocks and their teen-age brothers figured perfectly square and level rebar foundations with a length of yellow string and knowledge of geometry beyond our college educations. The families working with Habitat for Humanity were gracious and patient with us, inviting us to a house-warming at our visit’s end.  We ate sticky rice and simmered pork wrapped in banana leaves like a present and played with the children, awed by the sweat equity that built the concrete block house as raindrops sputtered on the tin roof.

Perhaps it’s the recent July 4^th holiday that reminds me of this American Pie memory. Or Ronin practicing “Bye, bye” with a wave of her fat hand over and over again. Or maybe the heat wave. Summer always teases out a yearning for travel in me like a breeze toying with clothes on the line, pulling at a sleeve, flipping at a pant leg.

If you’re feeling a bit of wanderlust yourself, head-on down to Santa Monica where you can taste three continents within an hour. While your strolling around, poke your head in Gaga by Gordana to checkout the Project Runway alum’s beachy-cool designs (and tag one more country – Yugoslavia – to boot!) We happened in and found the designing lady to be lovely, friendly, and quite a baby-charmer.

Tacos Por Favor

Tacos at Tacos Por Favor

Standing in line to order at the counter of Tacos Por Favor, I felt at home for the first time since moving from San Francisco. The front door creaked and the grey concrete freckled through the painted floors, shiny from years of diligent mopping. Tables full of social-media lunchers and a couple of Mercedes-Benz workers sat hunched over tacos next to construction workers and a couple of hipster kids. We polished off a trio of soft tacos—fish, chorizo, and lingua, a plate of milanesa, a small cactus salad and horchata. The lingua tacos stood out with the tongue fried perfectly, its crisp exterior giving way to a tender meat. Best of all, a fresh salsa bar is tucked in the corner to spike each bite with a bit of heat.

Tacos Por Favor 1408 Olympic Blvd., Santa Monica, CA (310) 392-5768

Sunny Blue

Making onigiri!

This tiny joint rolls up fresh onigiri (or musubi, by way of Hawaii) while you wait. A dollop of warm roasted pork or spicy tuna or any other filling is encased and shaped into a triangular wedge of rice and wrapped in nori (seaweed) to create a perfect snack with which to stroll Main Street. You can make a meal of a few or grab just one for an appetizer or afternoon pick-me-up. Bubble tea and frozen yogurt are also available.

Sunny Blue 2728 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA 90405 (310) 399-9030

Groundwork Coffee

Groundwork in Santa Monica, photo courtesy of javawalking.blogspot.com

The Santa Monica outpost of this SoCal roaster chain feels like a scrappy independent with its narrow shotgun apartment layout and pleasantly worn wooden shelves. Happily, the coffee lives up to the quirky ambiance with organic and fair-trade blends as well as single-origins hailing from locales such as Ethiopia, Bolivia, and Papa New Guinea.  When we visited, Craig brewed excellent hand-drip cups of a light single-origin for Andy and a decaf for me while welcoming us to LA. He filled the small counter space with the magnanimous grace of a lion sunning himself, shaking our hands with large gentle paws and telling us of a great spot to watch the sunset directly behind the shop.

Groundwork Coffee 2908 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA (310) 452-8925

Get that grad a prize!

Poised for flight

I got lost yesterday for the first time in LA. I’ve felt a bit too reliant on my phone’s map app to guide me from start to finish. Too easy, too perfect, too fixed to the road most traveled. So I swung left on Westwood to avoid the rush hour march of brake lights on Santa Monica. I expected to hit Sunset. Instead I found myself in the midst of the UCLA campus during graduation.

From the campus road, the dispersing new graduates looked like a gathering of exotic sea birds, poised for flight. Their black robes ruffled in the breeze; a sharp angled hat skittered across the ground. And all around a rushed chattering as moms and dads, sons and daughters called out excitedly to one another. A whirling plume of black robe jumped in front of my car. She looked up surprised, then smiled, waved and leapt back onto the sidewalk, skittering on glossy black heels.

That new graduate reminded me that the first lessons you learn, such as looking both ways before crossing the street, still hold true. She also reminded me of the magic of graduation, a day when all of the late nights and early classes, stressing over exams and stressing over papers and stressing over schedules, and  are put to rest and the stirrings of a new path awakens.

In case you’re attending a graduation this weekend and have yet to find a present or if you’ve just put off sending one, I’ve listed a few last-minute options below.

When I graduated from college, my friend Laurent gave me a copy of Oh, The Places You’ll Go! Like all Dr. Seuss books, the story of roaming far speaks to adults just as well as kids. Pair it with a gift card to an airline or a Eurorail pass if you’re feeling extra generous.

How to give a classic present like a pen without making the recipient feel like the broken-hearted Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) in Say Anything? Couple it with something beautiful and personal such as monogrammed stationery. Even better, include crisp thank you notes to teach the new grad the importance of gratitude. Peartreegreetings.com creates lovely ones and Finestationery.com carries a huge selection from a range of vendors.On a side note, why is it that thank you notes seem to have waned in popularity? That’s a whole other post but I always experience the joy of reliving the gift when writing the note. Plus, it’s just the right thing to do.

Calling cards from ArtsyNikki on Etsy

I possess atrocious luck in all things raffle and chance related. So the first time I dropped my business card in a jar at Rubio’s to win lunch for my office I didn’t expect to win. I admit I briefly envisioned my coworkers regaling me with tosses of tortilla chip confetti and tortilla frisbee tosses. But of course I didn’t win. I did however take home with me a little flutter of pride in pulling that card out of my wallet and marveling that my name was printed in bold-face type on a piece of ecru cardstock. Official. Give that sense of solid work-a-day-joe-belonging to your new grad with a card case. Ferragamo crafts handsome ones but they can be picked up just about anywhere. Go one better and include calling cards from an Etsy craftsperson, including phone, email and twitter handles if your grad is yet to land that first big break.

Just about every week, my local NPR station includes a story about the daunting future for college grads as they try to navigate a sluggish job market. So your new grad might not be landing her dream position at a big behemoth corporation or at a little ol’ non-profit but be slinging coffee or treading the concrete retail floors. None of which usually offer retirement benefits. Of course retirement seems a million years away when you’re thinking more about deferring college loans, but helping to set-up an IRA account will ensure that the recipient will be able to gas up an RV and go cruising instead of counting his pennies when he’s 67.

Feather Earrings from SaraHiX on Etsy

“Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.” Enclose this amazing quote by local LA boy Ray Bradbury (and honor his recent passing as well) with a piece of handmade feather jewelry from SaraHiX on Etsy. She’s a gorgeous, feisty and quite stompy lady who creates pieces with natural stone and feathers that look cool and a little bit dark instead of hippy dippy. You’ll be giving your grad a start at her wings and supporting local artists along the way.

A chic silver necklace or cufflinks from Tiffany & Co. will always be appreciated. Or resold on eBay for post-graduate dinners at least. But to truly give a memorable gift, try a sterling silver harmonica from the classic silversmiths. Add in a copy of Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone on vinyl and you’ll be giving the gift of music with meaning to your wandering grad.