Guacamole controversies and the 10-year anniversary of ‘peagate’
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Remembering “peagate” and other guacamole controversies. Also, Bill Addison’s new favorite soup dumplings, Super Bowl chili and wings, cheese for lovers, and the supermarket treats that lured a 525-pound bear from an Altadena home’s crawlspace. I’m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week’s Tasting Notes.
Seeing green
With avocados safe — this week at least — from Trump administration tariffs, party hosts all over the country will be making (or buying) Super Bowl guacamole. For those who will be mashing their own avocados, food editor Daniel Hernandez has a message: It’s time to drop tomato and onion from your guacamole, America.
Why? “Tomato and onion are almost all water, about 90% to 95%,” he writes. “When in contact with the avocado, tomato and onion start turning a bit sad and soggy in a matter of minutes.”
In crafting his argument, Hernandez makes a passing reference to “the great peas-in-guacamole controversy of 2015 that drew in President Obama ... part of a chain of rage-fueled social media incidents sparked when an unusual ingredient goes viral and is declared sacrilegious.”
That reference got me looking back at old stories about what some at the time dubbed “peagate.” As Slate’s L.V. Anderson described it, a “Twitterstorm ... erupted after the New York Times tweeted” a two-year-old link to a Melissa Clark adaptation of a recipe from the chefs Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Ian Coogan, “along with the note, ‘Add green peas to your guacamole. Trust us.’” ... “Asked about the recipe in a Twitter chat, President Obama wrote, in fluent Twitterese, ‘respect the nyt, but not buying peas in guac. onions, garlic, hot peppers. classic.’” (Note that he adds onions, but not tomato.)
Russ Parsons, who was Food section editor of this paper at the time, responded to peagate in 2015 by going back to an even earlier peas-in-guacamole recipe from the 1980s restaurant boom in Los Angeles — this one skipped the avocado altogether and was all sweet peas and seasonings. The recipe came from the late chef Michael Roberts, who was known for his playful juxtaposition of ingredients — quesadillas with Brie and grapes, for instance — served at his West Hollywood restaurant Trumps. As Parsons wrote, “He never let the punch line trump the flavor. Dishes that sounded funny at first made sense when you tasted them.”
Still, in his 1987 review of Trumps, Charles Perry called the sweet pea guacamole “absurd,” though he thought the Brie-and-grape quesadilla was “weirdly effective.” I ate at Trumps before it closed in 1992 and remember that to my then-young palate Roberts’ food was thrilling. Sweet pea guacamole at the time made sense to me. But does it really count as guacamole?
To find out, this week I made the recipe that Parsons ran with his story. I was searing lamb chops and thought that if the peas didn’t work as a dip I could always serve them as a side dish. The recipe, which calls for frozen peas, is simple to make: 2 tablespoons olive oil, 2 tablespoons fresh lemon or lime juice, 1/4 bunch of fresh cilantro, 1 seeded jalapeño pepper, 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin and 1 teaspoon salt is blended with 1 pound of defrosted frozen peas in a food processor until smooth. An optional addition of 1/4 red onion, finely chopped, is stirred in at the end, but in deference to Hernandez, I didn’t add the onion.
The result? It was delicious, but it wasn’t truly guacamole. Also, after tasting the peas, I added another chile pepper to the mix — Roberts encourages cooks to adjust the seasonings to taste. The peas were wonderful with the lamb and we’ve been eating them with an olive-oil-fried egg and toast, as a sandwich spread and, yes, because I couldn’t resist, with freshly fried tortilla chips. Maybe it works as guacamole after all.
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A more recent guacamole controversy emerged in 2019 when L.A. Taco‘s Javier Cabral reported that the avocado-colored sauce served at many taco trucks and stands is not actually guacamole but a salsa made with tomatillos, cilantro, garlic, jalapeño and, in place of pricier avocado, Mexican squash. “The scariest part,” wrote Cabral after he made a batch for himself, “is that it tastes almost exactly like your standard taqueria guacamole: bright, spicy, rich, and very satisfying.”
What about minced pear in guacamole? Or vinegar? We asked readers to share their guacamole recipes and insights. Some agreed with Hernandez and his call to leave out the tomato and onion; some argued against the omission. Others shared their own add-ins, which include black olives, lemon pepper, “knife-shredded” romaine lettuce and a “couple shots of Tapatio” as well as onion powder and finely minced pear, an ingredient one reader learned to add from a cook in Mexico City.
Finally, Jenn Harris might have the most baroque guacamole recipe of all in her recent column “8 Dips to make for Super Bowl Sunday.” The dips are as diverse as Kismet’s Pickley Cheesy Greens, which chefs Sarah Hymanson and Sara Kramer made for our “Chef That!” video series and former cooking columnist Ben Mims’ Pimento Queso Dip. But Harris leads the column with Spicy California Roll Guacamole from Alyse Whitney, described as “the undisputed dip queen and author of the book ‘Big Dip Energy: 88 Parties in a Bowl for Snacking, Dinner, Dessert and Beyond!’” In the middle of a bowl of guacamole (made with shallot and scallions instead of onion and no tomato), Whitney places a mixture of imitation crab, Kewpie mayonnaise and Sriracha sauce topped by “Xxxtra crispy” shallots. It’s a long way from purist guacamole but Harris calls it her “personal favorite from Whitney’s dip book.”
Seeing red three ways
Cookbook author Carolynn Carreño came to the Times test kitchen recently and cooked a batch of chili inspired by bowls of red once served at the long-gone celebrity hangout Chasen’s. One thing, though: Carreño arrived in Los Angeles after Chasen’s closed and never ate the chili served at the restaurant where Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Groucho Marx and Cary Grant were regulars.
Instead, she based her excellent chili off another Chasen’s-inspired recipe she got from A.O.C. and Caldo Verde chef Suzanne Goin when Carreño was co-writing Nancy Silverton‘s cookbook “Twist of the Wrist,” a collection of recipes with chef contributions that feature at least one packaged ingredient. For this recipe, Carreño added her own twists, with guajillo and chipotle chiles rounding out the warm flavors to make one the best chili dishes I’ve tasted.
Since Goin is such an excellent chef, I believe that what Carreño tasted was likely better than the actual Chasen’s chili. Owner Dave Chasen famously never shared the recipe for the restaurant’s chili, though looking through our archives I see that in 1977 Culinary S.O.S. columnist Rose Dosti printed a recipe she called “Chasing Chili,” based on a recipe that had been circulating since the 1950s. Goin’s contribution to “Twist of the Wrist” is not the same recipe as “Chasing Chili” — for one thing it includes an arbol chile in addition to chile powder, chicken broth instead of water and thyme and rosemary in addition to parsley. Like Carreño, Goin also never ate Chasen’s actual chili.
One person who did eat Chasen’s chili in its final era, after the 1973 death of Dave Chasen but before the closure of the restaurant’s original location in 1995 (with a five-year coda in a different location after the Chasen’s family sold the restaurant’s name) is this paper’s late restaurant critic Jonathan Gold. In a 1986 review of Chasen’s for California magazine, Gold wrote that some of the food was “barely edible.” And of the chili? “Nobody but a quibbler (or a liberal) would point out that the chili is distinguishable from a bowl of Dennison’s only by a couple of chunks of sirloin, a 1,600 percent price differential and three guys who look like they stepped out of a 1933 gangster B-movie.”
But in 1999, Gold came to regret his review and his comparison of Chasen’s famous dish to canned chili. “Looking back on myself from a distance of 15 years and perhaps 5,000 serious restaurant meals, I can barely suppress a cringe,” he wrote. “Secretly, I’d had a really good time at Chasen’s. I never bothered to acknowledge the essential kindness of the maitre d’ and captains, who treated me more decently than I deserved and fed me well, seating me where I could see the grand entrances and exits of Betsy Bloomingdale and Jimmy Stewart. ... Chasen’s was the closest thing in Hollywood to an immortal institution, and I was sure I would be able to thumb my nose at the place, even as I inhaled its Gibsons and its cheese toast, for pretty much the rest of my life. Institutions aren’t supposed to collapse.”
Also: If you missed it last week and are looking for tips on where to get wings for your Super Bowl party, Danielle Dorsey, Stephanie Breijo and Jenn Harris put together a guide to 18 of the best spots in L.A. for wings, a.k.a., “the ultimate party food.”
Post & Beam’s farewell
Last week, the Food section’s writers and editors gathered for dinner at John and Roni Cleveland‘s Post & Beam, a regular on The Times’ 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles guide since 2013 when Jonathan Gold started the list, through our most recent 101 guide curated by critic Bill Addison and columnist Jenn Harris. This week, as assistant food editor Danielle Dorsey reported, the Clevelands announced that Post & Beam will serve its last dinner on Feb. 27 to make way for construction on the long-gestating redevelopment of the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza.
The hope is that Post & Beam, the 2019 winner of the L.A. Times Gold Award, will return once the shopping center is rebuilt, but that could take years. For those of us who have loved the restaurant since restaurateur Brad Johnson and original chef Govind Armstrong opened Post & Beam in 2011, the loss is a blow.
“We’ve had so many memories there,” John Cleveland told Dorsey. “I’ve been raising my family in that restaurant. It’s just such a unique space in the city.”
“The restaurant,” Dorsey wrote, “will continue its catering operations, including pop-ups and other events. [The couple] is working closely with Post & Beam co-founders Johnson and Armstrong on the restaurant’s next iteration.”
“This isn’t the end of Post & Beam,” Roni Cleveland said, “but we’re mourning the building.”
Many others are mourning the lovely meals there shared with friends. To get a sense of what eating at Post & Beam was like, Dorsey wrote this about our most recent meal:
“With his signature high-cheeked grin, chef John sent out a curated family-style spread with highlights from the menu. Skillets of buttery cornbread, catfish nuggets with house remoulade, smoked jerk chicken wings, bowls of gumbo bobbing with crab legs, triangles of short rib sandwiches and platters stacked with powdered mincemeat cookies arrived on the table one after one. Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway crooned through wall speakers. John occasionally circled by, watching proudly as we emptied our plates.”
If you have a chance to get to Post & Beam before it closes at the end of the month, you won’t be disappointed.
The end of proudly ‘weird’ Bar Chelou
Another wonderful restaurant you should try before it closes for good on Feb. 16 is Pasadena’s Bar Chelou, where, as Stephanie Breijo wrote this week, chef-owner Douglas Rankin “let loose, serving intriguing takes on the familiar: rainbow trout in an almost tie-dye-like swirl of garlic chive pil pil, fresh crunchy bread beneath a heap of clams and leeks, a large pork chop hidden under an artful display of cabbage and fennel pollen furikake.”
After a drop of business following the Eaton fire, Rankin and his family decided to move to Colorado and possibly open a restaurant there.
“When an entire neighborhood burns down that accounts for a certain percentage of your business,” he told Breijo, “it’s like, what do you do? What are you supposed to do? We just don’t know how fast things will come back.”
Call for help
Also: Breijo was at L.A.’s City Hall this week when MXO and Ka’teen chef Wes Avila, his business partner Giancarlo Pagani (who is also a partner in the Mother Wolf group) and Trent Lockett, an executive of events company Nya Studios, met with District 4 City Councilmember Nithya Raman to discuss Pagani’s petition with more than 2,100 signatures, including many prominent restaurateurs. The petition addressed to Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass asks for “support for small businesses affected by the L.A. wildfires.” Breijo’s story details the dramatic drop in business in restaurants all across Los Angeles after the fires and, in the words of the petition, the need for “a strong campaign urging residents to dine out, shop locally, attend events and engage with cultural institutions would provide much-needed momentum to help these businesses recover.”
Hope for the future
With all the news of restaurant closings, it’s important to remember that many more places continue to open with high ambitions and excellent food. Just this week in her Quick Bites column, Stephanie Breijo writes about Eagle Rock’s new Yellow Paper Burger, a former pop-up turned restaurant from husband-and-wife team Colin Fahrner and Katie Reid Fahrner “inspired by classic L.A. burger stands and bars,” and José Andrés’ Culver City branch of Zaytinya “showcasing the celebrity chef’s spins on iconic Lebanese, Greek and Turkish cuisine” paired at the Shay hotel with Butterfly, “a new rooftop cocktail bar and taqueria from Andrés.” Breijo also writes about Kiez Küche & Beer Garden in Highland Park, “a new project from the teams behind local beer gardens Wirsthaus and Rasselbock”; a new Beverly Hills location of Or Amsalam and Arthur Sherman’s popular Lodge Bread; a Silver Lake expansion of Roxana Jullapat and Daniel Mattern’s terrific Friends & Family; an Arcadia outpost of “xiao long bao specialist” Mama Lu’s Dumpling House; and Tori-soba Sumiya, “a chicken-focused ramen-ya with locations in Tokyo and Ibaraki” in the space that was once Toshimitsu Sakamaki‘s Yakitoriya on West L.A.’s Sawtelle corridor — with the bonus news that chef Sakamaki “can still be found behind the grill.”
Dumpling heaven
Restaurant critic Bill Addison’s latest review of the recently opened soup dumpling specialist Good Alley in Rosemead is another sign of hope for L.A. dining. David Shao and Peter Pang opened Good Alley in September and word of mouth quickly spread about the restaurant’s four versions of guan tang bao — “a style of soup dumplings popularized in Kaifeng, a city in north-central China’s Henan province,” Addison writes. The restaurant serves several other styles of dumplings in addition to the guan tang bao, as well as noodles, beef wraps, teas and more. But, as Addison advises, “if soup dumplings figure among your L.A. culinary obsessions, these guan tang bao merit your attention.”
Cheese is for lovers
Cheese love isn’t limited to Valentine’s Day but the Food team decided to mark the holiday with a guide to 16 of the best cheese shops in SoCal for saying “I love you.” Stephanie Breijo, Betty Hallock, Jenn Harris, Cindy Carcamo and Danielle Dorsey all contributed to the guide that shows just how cheese-rich we are. And if you missed it, at the end of last year Hallock got DTLA Cheese Superette‘s big cheese Lydia Clarke to share her pro tips on making an expert-level cheese board.
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And finally ... bear treats
After a 525-pound bear was safely removed from the crawlspace of an Altadena home that had been evacuated during the Eaton fire, many people wanted to know: How do you get such a large creature to come out in the open? Supermarket treats seems to the the answer. The home’s owner told KCAL9 and CBS2 News reporter Nicole Comstock that the California Department of Fish and Wildlife “set up a trap too tempting for [the bear] to ignore.”
“They went to Stater Brothers and bought some rotisserie chicken and sardines and tomato sauce, apples, peanut butter — all kinds of stuff,” homeowner Samy Arbid said. “They made a feast for him.”
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