by Richard Risemberg
There may be more kinds of food available in Los Angeles than in New York these days. Certainly it would be hard to surpass the mere variety of cuisines one encounters in even casual eating in this town. With the culinary habits of millions of immigrants taking root in a soil prepared by decades of staid traditionalism, a rich and orderly profusion of European, American, and Third World cooking styles is not only burgeoning but crossbreeding as well--to the point that a new cuisine, known generally as "Cal-French," is starting to dominate the high-end restaurant scene everywhere in the country, with Cal-Asian fusions not far behind.
One friend of mine, Los-Angeles-born Lynn Randell, trained in French cooking and is now executive chef at a Japanese restaurant in Orange County; Phillip Chang has opened Lucky Duck in the Miracle Mile to serve Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese haute cuisine; and even L'Orangerie, said to be the most traditional French restaurant in the city, has an extensive vegetarian menu and is said to be showing an Asian influence in some dishes.
Little of this would have been thinkable thirty years ago, and little of it would have come about had not the flood of immigrants (much decried among some parts of the population) brought with it the kitchen practices of a thousand villages from all over the planet, resulting in a town where it is difficult to find a block on a commercial street that hosts fewer than three distinctive eateries (not counting the usual interchangeable fastfood joints).
Within five blocks of my apartment in the Miracle Mile one finds the following: Ngoma, an African restaurant; Black Dog Coffee, a java-and-sandwich shop of surpassing quality; Campanile, one of the top ten restaurants in the country; the aforementioned Lucky Duck; Brown's Wilshire Bakery; Pentimento (an offshoot of Joachim Splichal's Pinot restaurants at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art); Bergin's, an Irish bar with tables in the back; and Mani's Bakery, which also serves meals. 
That's counting only the places I've eaten at personally; there are many others I've missed. Increase the radius another five blocks and you have the clutter of food stalls at the Farmer's Market on Fairfax and Third; the strip of Ethiopian restaurants a little farther south; the coffeehouses, Jewish bakeries, bagel joints, and Thai restaurants on Fairfax; Canter's 24-hour deli and Eat-a-Pita; half a dozen Chinese diners of various sorts; and the wonderful boutique restaurants on Third Street. Add five more blocks to the radius, and you will weigh 400 pounds by year's end.
That's just my neighborhood. And that counts, as I've said, only places I've eaten at myself.
Move five miles northeast and you're at the intersection of Sunset and Normandie, where Los Angeles's Thai and Armenian neighborhoods bump against each other. Go to Sasoun Bakery a few blocks south for spinach beorek, savory and hot; go to Father and Son Bakery a couple of blocks west for piroshkis and other fattening treats; cross the street to the ever-more-famous Zankou Chicken; hike northwest for twenty minutes and choose from an entire row of tiny Thai storefront restaurants or a progressive Mexican coffeehouse and bookstore. Then head back to where you started for a traditional South Indian meal at Paru's. All this within a circle barely a mile in diameter. And again, that's counting only restaurants I've tried in person.
Little Tokyo downtown? I don't get there as often as I'd like, so I've tried only five or six restaurants from its three-square-block area. Chinatown? Who can count the restaurants and bakeries there? I've been to only three or four so far. Mid-Wilshire? I see dozens of Japanese restaurants form the window of the bus as I come home, several Korean places, a Filipino joint on the second floor of a strip mall, and a sort of bistro café by the subway stop. The East Side? Hundreds of Mexican restaurants, stands, and stalls, and Western Bagels rather incongruously in the midst of it all. South L.A.? Soul food and more. And that's only where each sort of restaurant is concentrated; you find plenty of each kind in all our neighborhoods, all mixed together, all providing satisfaction for the locals and inspiration for today's as well as tomorrow's fine-and-famous.
This is why we jog so much, and hang out in gyms. You would, too, if you had so much food, and so little time.
Keep your suburbs, with their endless iterations of Denny's, McDonald's, and TGIF. Keep your farm towns, with their greasy spoon diners catching the dusty poisons of a thousand oft-sprayed furrows through their windows. Give me a busy sidewalk, a credit card, and ten thousand doors that lead to kitchens great and small; give me dinner in the city, and I'll be a bigger man for it.
Meet me at eight, and bring your appetite.
Text and photos by Richard Risemberg
