The Tricky Subject of American Pizza

A case can be made that the best pizza in Los Angeles is the unlikely creation of a Jewish woman dedicated to Italian cuisine. Her restaurant is located on a stretch of Melrose Avenue best known for its retail shops specializing in teeny-bopper fashion, drug paraphernalia, and second-hand apparel. I'm talking, of course, about Evan Kleiman's 25 year-old Angeli Caffe. Kleiman is a pioneer in what was once known as "Cal-Ital" cuisine, which is essentially the marriage of Italian food and California produce. In Angeli's case, the "Ital" is both traditional Italian and Red Sauce cuisine, and the "Cal" includes a penchant both for great, locally sourced produce and a sliver – just a tiny, tiny sliver – of the California loopiness ridiculed in Annie Hall.

Angeli Caffe reminds me of Donald Fagen's uber-Eighties Nightfly album: at first, the menu and the room feel dated, but upon reflection, it is evident that Angeli is a gem. For example, the menu includes dishes such as fried calamari, spaghetti aglio e olio, spaghetti burro e parmigiana – all classics, but currently (and unjustly) unfashionable in Los Angeles. Then there's the dilemma of the ridiculous, Benes-esque "Insalata Californiana" in which Woody would get his sprouts (though not any mashed yeast). Nevertheless, Angeli exudes hominess in part due to its genuine, hospitable staff, but also because it possesses a muted stylishness that recalls the Italian trattorias of New York, if not Italy itself. Thus, Angeli has aged gracefully. I was only mildly surprised to learn that Thom Mayne's inimitable architecture firm Morphosis designed the place.

Angeli's particular genius is its bread. The small spherical loaf has a soft interior and crusty exterior that is at once rich-tasting and austere. When sliced horizontally, the loaf is put to good use with the panino grosso; with its Italian meats, cheeses, marinated onions and roasted peppers, this artery-clogging boat of deliciousness is an excellent riff on the Italian sub. But the dough, with all of its taste and texture, is put to much more productive use in Angeli's pizza. Lately I've been alternating between the workaday margherita, the basic mozzarella cheese pizza, and the spicier and more interesting puttanesca, which is tomato sauce-driven, gently accentuated by shards of black olives, red pepper, anchovy, garlic, and capers, though no cheese. On a few recent occasions, we've also ordered their utterly delicious pizza with pepperoni and caramelized onion. With its basic tomato sauce, Angeli has the chops to be a great Red Sauce joint. This sauce has a pleasant sweetness and textural plumpness that makes it a joy to eat with ravioli or even vegetarian lasagna. (If I had to be vegetarian, but wasn't allowed to kill myself, I could survive well on a diet of Angeli's vegetarian offerings. I'll go so far as to say their meatless Lasagna Angeli is superior to their Bolognese version.) At this moment in time, I'm compelled to order dinner from there at least once a week, so it's a good thing that prices are quite reasonable. The wife wants me to point out that they also make a decidedly solid Caesar salad, thereby disproving my theory that such a salad should not be ordered in an L.A. Italian restaurant. This week, I was especially delighted to learn that Angeli also makes a mean chocolate chip cookie. (To our devoted Tribeca readership, I apologize. I started going to Angeli a few weeks after your visit. A certain small red-headed Red Sox fan and his parents may have enjoyed Angeli more than a La Brea Avenue competitor.)

Invigorated by my discovery of great local pizza, I decided to take my show on the road and revisit some old favorites in the Cleve. (If nothing else, our recent Passover visit to the Cleve provided me with an excellent opportunity to throw my people's daffy dietary dogma about dough to the wind.) So for a pre-Seder nosh (oh, suck it, my fellow Jews), I ordered a large pepperoni pizza from Geraci's, the beloved University Heights institution, which opened in 1955. (For you investment bankers out there, Geraci's is in its 54th year of operations.)

Geraci's is an old-school red sauce joint, famous for the thickly sliced, charred pepperoni that adorn its pizza. This type of food, basic and sentimental, never truly found a home in L.A., which is all more the reason that it was my first stop in Cleveland. What I found was tasty, but hardly a revelation. Those pepperoni were as good as ever, but the surfeit of melted cheese and oily, spongy dough overwhelmed the sauce, diminishing the pie's overall quality. (Still, I ate half of it before Seder and snuck into the kitchen for another few slices during Seder.)

H-Bomb and J-Wy of the West Village, who graciously flew to the Cleve to meet the Fress's most recent collaboration, accompanied us to Justin's and my longtime favorite, Presti's Bakery, in caricatural Little Italy – "on the Hill," as they say. Presti's is famous for its pizza. They also used to be famous for late-night doughnuts, but they went out of business shortly after I left Cleveland. (Connect the dots as you will.)

As the legend goes, Rose and Charles Presti Sr. opened Presti's Bakery in 1903 using recipes that were codified on the family's journey by boat from Sicily to America. The bakery moved around and, by 1943, settled into a tiny storefront on Mayfield Road on the east side of Cleveland. In 1999, Presti's moved out of the old storefront and into a modern, antiseptic café on the same block. All of a sudden, Presti's had this expansive space with a massive kitchen and plentiful seating. With a lot more money at stake, the dictatrix who ran the joint was relegated to the back, and customer service became the province of middle-aged moms and even a nose-ringed CIA student or two. Presti's offerings naturally expanded, though without the benefit of those mythical Sicilian recipes. For example, on this particular visit, I observed a croissant, sliced horizontally, with a slice of desiccating melted American cheese inserted in the middle. Somehow I don't think this creation is central to the Sicilian tradition.

During my formative years, Presti's sold loaves of bread, slices of pizza, and little else of note out of this storefront. The presiding figure was a short, slender elderly woman with Mussolini's temperament. She brooked no dissent and wasn't exactly giving the customers a hearty welcome. I once saw her threaten a rowdy toddler with a rolling pin. This utter charmlessness was her charm, and she neither noticed nor cared that we found her antics entertaining. We'd order a few slices, perhaps a stromboli, and when weather permitted, sit on the rough-hewn wooden bench out front. Then we'd enjoy our pizza while watching the neighborhood drama. The stage was set by the large storefront across the street whose unavoidable sign read "Brotherhood Loan Company." Such a blatant disregard for contemporary mores and laws against loansharking was just priceless. J-Wy and I would watch the locals do their best to act like Scorsesean wiseguys. My favorite was the gentleman wearing the black satin baseball jacket emblazoned with Giorno Di Paga on the back. I also particularly enjoyed a debate between two goombas about whether Phoenix was in Colorado or Arizona. (In my mind, the argument has yet to be resolved.)

During our Passover visit, J-Wy and I returned with our ladies for our beloved pizza. Presti's sells a handful of varieties, but I'd be unable to name a single one other than the cheese. (Though I will admit to a dalliance with the artichoke pizza around 15 years ago, and would place a small wager that that artichoke pizza is still served daily.) For the record, the pizza is kept at room temperature in large rectangular sheets and is cut into rectangular slices. The pizza is better when it is still hot from the oven, but I never mastered the timing necessary to get it. Suffice it to say, it's well before lunch time. Presti's sadly dispensed with its fascistic tendencies when it moved, and now it even asks customers if they want their pizza warmed in a microwave. Not only is this practice pathetic, but the staff never warns that a microwave would only vitiate the dough's texture. They might as well ask people if they want mayonnaise on their pizza (or anything else for that matter.)

Presti's cheese pizza is of historical interest because it provides a link, however legendary, to 19th century Sicily. But its enduring greatness owes to its kaleidoscopic unpredictability. The thin-crusted dough is delicious, but it varies in taste depending on what section of the sheet it is coming from. On the rectangle's periphery, the dough is crusty and has a more pronounced crunch, while the interior slices are much softer. The tomato sauce varies along the spectrum of sweetness and spiciness, but it is always delicious. It could be cigarette ashes that provide the occasional bite. The quantity and configuration of the mozzarella cheese also varies; it can cover most a given slice, or sometimes just a small portion of it. The most flavorful slices are always the middle slices, which have no crust whatsoever. Somehow they have a little more sauce and absorb a little more olive oil. They're definitely heavier than the peripheral slices and infinitely more delicious.

Presti's pizza represents a Spartan style, suitable only as cheese pizza for a tiny bakery. No restaurant could serve it and hope to pay the rent for more than a few months, which is why today's Presti's offers such a gallimaufry of comestibles. That said, it's easy to see how Geraci's with its pizza pies became popular when I was growing up. Geraci's pizza is much more accessible and can adapt to any number of toppings, which is what most people want. It's like Domino's, except that it's good. Still, as I contemplate the evolution of American pizza, it seems as though something was lost in pizza's journey from a traditional Italian staple to an American ubiquity. Thankfully, Evan Kleiman reinvigorated the genre back in 1984. Her pizzas share a lineage with Presti's because of their mutual emphasis on quality dough, and the purity and simplicity of traditional flavors. But Kleiman is not tethered to the distant past. Twenty-five years after opening, Angeli Caffe continues to make a consistently revelatory pie. In a neighborhood that boasts Nancy Silverton's über-hyped – and admittedly delicious – Pizzeria Mozza, Angeli makes the only LA pizza that I actually crave.

Angeli Caffe

7274 Melrose Ave.

Los Angeles

(323) 936-9086

www.angelicaffe.com

Geraci’s Restaurant

2266 Warrensville Center Rd.
University Heights

(216) 371-5643

Presti’s Bakery

12101 Mayfield Rd.
Little Italy

(216) 421-3060

www.prestisbakery.com

Chicago: Gregg's Barnyard Tour

Visiting family in Chicago, I gave my savvy brother marching orders to plot a day of eating in his adopted city. He wanted to tour the south side and eat every animal found in a Midwestern barnyard. But living in a hot dog-deprived portion of the country, I insisted on returning first to Hot Doug’s, the kitschy hot dog joint famous for defying Chicago’s now discarded ban on foie gras. However, the Hot Doug’s that I encountered was effectively closed until further notice while it attempted to feed Chicago’s massive population of hipsters who became acquainted with Doug Sohn’s hot dog funhouse only after watching the recent Tony Bourdain excursion to Chicago. (In the Department of Irony, I find it hugely entertaining that a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker had to instruct the Second City hipsters about where to get a quality Chicago hot dog.) Despite my two pre-noon attempts to go to Hot Doug’s, the hordes of mustachioed, bespectacled Caucasians waiting for hours in single-digit weather for a hot dog prevented a visit.

On the bright side, I was spared the indignity of paying $7.50 for such a Wonka-esque creation as “a mandarin orange and teriyaki chicken sausage with chili-garlic mustard and valfrais chili-paprika cheese.” Or $4.50 for the so-called “Cinci Dog,” which consists of a quarter-pound hot dog with yellow mustard, Cincinnati Skyline Chili, and what I can only imagine must be a blizzard of grated cheddar cheese. As any Clevelander knows, it is an absolute blasphemy to spread yellow mustard on a hot dog, which is nearly as revolting as putting ketchup on a frankfurter. (A hot dog, preferably from Miles Farmers Market, is perfected by Bertman’s Ball Park Mustard and sauerkraut.) Speaking of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, there is a reason that Ruhlman turned up his nose at the doubly repulsive outpost of Skyline Chili on Mayfield Road in the Cleveland episode. (Skyline never caught on in the Cleve, as Clevelanders have extremely refined palates, for Ohioans. Perhaps this is one reason why my very wise former supervisor at the CCPO used to say he lived in the State of Cuyahoga, which tactic has the added benefit of shielding the personal shame of being otherwise associated with the dullardry formally known as Ohio State University.) How Cincinnati “chili” turned up at Hot Doug’s cannot be explained on culinary grounds and remains an enduring mystery. As it were, my quest for a hot dog would be postponed until a visit to the Weiner Circle the following afternoon where I enjoyed a most succulent chardog in the company of a few noisome men lacking adequate shelter, yet preternaturally skilled at the art of self-conversation. That is why Weiner Circle might be the most solid place in Chicago. Ok, onward.

So we began our day with some appetizings at Calumet Fisheries, another Bourdain selection that is so deep in the Chicago sprawl that it is somehow closer to Gary, Indiana, than it is to Wrigley Field, such is the size of the City of Chicago. Located in a dreary shack on top of the Calumet River, Calumet Fisheries is a traditional smokehouse no different than those famed temples of barbeque in Texas, except that Calumet focuses on shrimp, salmon, and trout; and it has no seating. The smoked fish and shrimp, which were served in their shells, were a revelation for their rusticity and the history they represent. In the bygone era of U.S. supremacy in the steel industry, Calumet’s customer base consisted of local mill workers of Eastern European stock who had an affinity for smoked fish. Decades later, it is self-evident how Calumet’s straight-ahead style of smoked fish would be hearty enough to satisfy even a non-unionized steel worker on lunch break. The fish and shrimp have a robust smokiness and an appealing rugged texture. This is food that should be eaten with the hands, just like the beef and pork at Kreuz’s Market. Russ’s daughters would find Calumet completely foreign. The dozen or so deep fried offerings should be avoided, however.

We moved on to another traditionalist, Birrieria Zaragoza, an establishment that shows how much Chicago has changed in recent decades. (It is located on Pulaski Road, a major thoroughfare; if the road were to be renamed today, my hunch is that any new name’s ending vowel would be an “a” or an “o.”) Zaragoza is a lunch counter that serves only birria tatemada, a specialty from the owner’s hometown of La Barca in the Mexican state of Jalisco. The Zaragoza family’s warmth and painstaking devotion to the preparation of (and for the gringos, an education on) birria make the counter a perfect place to watch and converse. Birria tatemada, as conceived by Juan Zaragoza, is young goat slowly steamed for up to six hours. (According to the Chicago Reader’s Mike Sula, Mr. Zaragoza is searching for a wood-burning oven for this stage of the process, which will allow him to incorporate red oak and agave leaves and thus remain more closely yoked to tradition.) Then Zaragoza applies a mole sauce that he makes from ancho chiles, which are effectively dried poblanos. Finally, the goat is roasted in the oven. The Zaragozas serve the goat with a tomato-based consommé that is made without goat drippings and, of course, with the de rigueur homemade tortillas and salsa, as well as toasted chiles for anyone desiring extra heat.

Despite my brother’s noble efforts, I’ll never be a convert to the pleasures of eating goat. But I will admit that Zaragoza’s tatemada was enjoyable and much less gamy than the goat platter served at fellow Jalisciense El Parian, whose once legendary tacos de carne asada have faded into mediocrity in recent years. In fact, it could be argued that Zaragoza’s birria was downright mild and needed the toasted chiles, especially since the mole rub was imperceptible. Nevertheless, Birrieria Zaragoza is a local gem because of the lovely family that runs it and their unwavering dedication to the traditional preparation of one item from the small town of La Barca. While authenticity as a culinary concept is either bereft of meaning or unhelpful in light of its strict constructionist overtones, integrity is crucial, and Birrieria Zaragoza is certainly its winsome votary.

We eventually found our way to central Chicago, the home of restaurateur Paul Kahan’s ambitious project, The Publican. Kahan developed his reputation in Chicago with haute Blackbird and, later on, avec Avec, which offers a hodgepodge of small plates inspired by several northern Mediterranean nations. Kahan is a ballsy and shameless fellow, very clever and a terrific operator. With Publican, he opened up the equivalent of a tragically hip banquet hall, appropriating dominant trends circulating through West Coast and East Coast restaurant circles in the process. Kahan understands what well-heeled Chicago diners want, which is either to be legitimately challenged, or, I speculate, to be in a restaurant that has all the trappings of sophistication. Famed New York chef Mario Batali has of course popularized the consumption of offal, and it is can be seen in some, albeit geeky, circles as a badge of honor to eat, e.g., guanciale, cabeza, or sweetbreads. Kahan understands this trend, almost flauntingly so; on his menu’s list of cooked meats, veal brain, beef heart, and pork belly appear first. If you’re wondering, the chicken is the list’s penultimate item.

Kahan also steals from the best restaurant on the West Coast (and the country), namely Chez Panisse. Accordingly, Kahan understands that restaurant patrons today want to know the source of dishes’ primary ingredients with the understanding that they are farm-fresh, so to speak -- even in the depths of a nasty, brutish, but not-so-short Chicago winter. As a consequence, Publican’s menu is littered with footnotes and citations, including farm name and location. If I wanted to re-read Infinite Jest, I would have stayed home, for four months. Of course Publican succumbs, like Gjelina before it, to the bizarrely irresistible temptation to employ communal seating.

But what of the food? As in any restaurant with a large menu of small plates, there were a few hits and a few misses. Overall the execution was solid, if sterile. I adored the Monterey sardines, which were roasted in olive oil and served with kumquats and celery. The sardines were plump and delicious, and I could tell that that Judy Rodgers's cookbook was somewhere in the building. The fried veal brains had a pleasingly creamy texture, though they never should have been served in a glop of mayonnaise. Much less successful was the grilled octopus in a viscid fava bean puree. It was obvious that the fava beans were not in season in mid-February because the puree’s shade of green was algal, not vernal. (I wasn't responsible for ordering the dish.) The grilled octopus was adequate at best.

The Publican had much greater success with its pork dishes, most of which were from—watch it Chicagoans, for a Smug Alert may now be in your forecast—“Becker Lane Organic Farm, Dyersville, Iowa,” including the pork in the potee, which technically may not have been a potée. According to Saveur, potée is a “French meat and vegetable stew” and “two essential ingredients for most authentic potées are salted pigs' ears and tails.” (Yes, I know.) Potée can be thought of as the pork companion to pot-au-feu, and the famous Alsatian dish, choucroute garni, is a typical potée. The Publican’s “version” consisted of pork tenderloin, boar, and crepinette, a sausage made of minced pork, lamb, and veal and wrapped in pig’s caul, which is the fat covering a pig’s intestine. With all this pork on a single plate, the dish was perforce good. But the “ham chop” was even better. It was a grand cut of pork that was brined and then smoked in hay, and GSG totally and justifiably buried it. I was lucky to snag a slice. The chop was the most flavorful and original item of the evening, and the hay preparation added an element of humor. It was obvious that Kahan’s staff was happiest and most comfortable serving Midwestern pork to its Midwestern clientele.

Calumet Fisheries
3259 East 95th Street
Chicago
(773) 933-9855
www.calumetfisheries.com  

Birrieria Zaragoza
4852 South Pulaski Road
Chicago
(773) 523-3700

The Publican
837 W. Fulton Market
Chicago
(312) 733-9555
www.thepublicanrestaurant.com

Gjelina: Los Angeles's Hottest Mediterranean and Locavore Fusion restaurant

Let’s cut to the chase. Gjelina is a perversion of a restaurant. It is insidious and offends me. It is a trite scenesters’ parlor masquerading as a genuine restaurant, which is why its rank misappropriation of the voguish “Farmer’s Market cuisine” label is so bothersome. Los Angeles, on the strengths of its endless demographic diversity and access to California’s agricultural bounty, is clawing its way to culinary self-respect. (The automobile is also a crucial factor; by comparison only the most intrepid and dedicated New Yorkers are going to take a 70-minute ride on two subways to try some esoteric restaurant.) But this growth cannot rest solely on the shoulders of Suzanne Goin, Jaime Martin Del Campo and Ramiro Arvizu, and Sarintip Singsanong and Suthiporn Sungkamee. There must be some depth, and Gjelina fails to provide it, that is, assuming it even cares.

Graciously invited to a dinner by SinoSoul, the affable, frenetic, prolific, fearless and droll trencherman, and accompanied by the Gastronomyblog.com duo and Miss Insider, we (or at least I) relished ridiculing Gjelina’s lack of identity throughout the evening. The restaurant’s main dining room is rife with communal seating, a practice which should have been retired after New York’s Mercer Kitchen tried it over a decade ago. The restaurant’s spacious rear patio is festooned with a silly architectural scheme that is intended to signify stylish intelligence, but just irritates the eyes. Specializing in the cuisine of at least three large European nations, the menu sprawls over 30 dishes, excluding charcuterie, cheese, and oysters. A.O.C offers a similar number, and even with the illustrious Ms. Goin at the helm and its philosophically more concise menu, it also fails to achieve a high degree of consistency. (Still, A.O.C., unlike Gjelina, would not deign to serve both pizza and cassoulet and is capable of greatness, though not at our dinner there last Tuesday.)

The party split several dishes, including the grilled eggplant with roasted peppers, white anchovy, and pecorino. There was no evidence of any anchovy in the dish, which was just as well, because the combination of white anchovy and any form of cheese is incoherent. Pizzeria Mozza, the local standard bearer on such issues, currently offers two pizzas and one sandwich with anchovies, and none includes cheese. This technicality aside, the eggplant was tasteless and perfunctory.

Gjelina, following yet another local trend, fancies itself as a pizzeria and allegedly possesses a wood-burning oven left over from a former tenant. (Where have we heard this before?) We settled on the margherita, which is the only way to test a pizzaiolo’s chops. Since a margherita consists only of the pizza dough, mozzarella, tomato, and basil, the ingredients and preparation must be pristine. There is no margin for error. Gjelina’s manager, who dropped by the table to check on us, agreed that the margherita is the benchmark for pizza, although he probably regretted it after C told him that Gjelina had no business serving pizza. The manager put up a lame defense, asking whether we had the mushroom pizza, his favorite. (He actually asked if we had the funghi pizza, as Italian is pretentiously spoken in this Venice.) The manager’s query was moot, however, because Gjelina’s dough had more in common with Arabian Joe’s pita bread from Trader Joe’s than good pizza dough. Moreover, the sauce reminded me of gussied up Hunt’s Tomato Puree. Like a slice joint catering to 2am inebriates, Gjelina’s pizza was so flaccid that when holding a slice by the cornicione, it drooped anemically. At this point in the meal, I stopped caring. Gjelina had devolved into a joke.

We labored on with the grilled Peruvian octopus with white beans, arugula and smoked paprika. I don’t know why Gjelina sought fit to tell us that its cephalopod is of Peruvian descent, but I do recall seeing Peruvian octopus on Craft’s menu a year or so ago. I guess if Gjelina is going to steal unabashedly, Tom Colicchio and Nancy Silverton are not bad places to start. (After the weak conclusion of Top Chef 5, I’m not sure I’d steal from Colicchio any more.) Gjelina’s contribution to the dish was overwhelming blandness, a distinction it also brought to the Prince Edward Island mussels in a white wine broth, emasculating the chorizo in its midst. So much for the restaurant’s exhortation to “eat local.” Surely there must be some quality mussels and octopus somewhere along the West Coast.

The dinner culminated in a feckless insult to cassoulet, a Gallic classic and one of my favorites that when prepared correctly, such as at Yountville’s Bistro Jeanty, captures French cuisine’s nonpareil lustiness. (While the San Francisco Chronicle last December documented Jeanty’s purported decline, the Ever Sagacious Primipara pointed out that we have never had a non-sublime meal at Jeanty and were there as recently as last summer.) Gjelina barely followed the basic contours of the dish: crispy duck leg (though not confit de canard), lamb sausage (foolishly, instead of pork), braised greens (irresponsibly), and flageolet beans. Whatever chef Travis Lett’s intentions were, there was no trace of guttural, carnal pleasure here. This cassoulet was unobtrusive and polite. My only conclusion is that Lett, a veteran of hackneyed Tengu, the self-proclaimed “hottest Asian fusion and sushi restaurant” in Los Angeles, should not be permitted to cook in a restaurant east of Doheny. I suppose what he does on the West Side is his business.

Gjelina

1429 Abbot Kinney Blvd.
Venice

(310) 450-1429

Clyde Common

SW Stark Street between 10th and 11th Avenues is further evidence of Portland's evolution as a budding culinary center, though with traces of excessive youthful naiveté. The affordable and modish Ace Hotel anchors the block and is sandwiched by today's subject, Clyde Common, and a branch of acclaimed roaster Stumptown Coffee. (Stumptown's espresso was, if not watery, too thin and overly precious. Coffeehouse Northwest, with its characteristic fastidiousness, achieved greater results with the very same Stumptown beans.)

A brasserie, Clyde Common has a spacious and airy dining room with an open kitchen, a very long zinc bar, and an even longer list of whiskeys. The menu changes frequently, and unlike Los Angeles analogue BLD, Clyde Common avails itself of high quality local produce and challenges its customers, such as with the inclusion of a tongue sandwich on its lunch menu. With limited time before a business meeting, I solicited a recommendation from our sprightly server. He counseled the sole pasta dish on the menu: a fresh egg pasta, basically spaghetti, with arugula pesto and walnuts, topped with shaved pecorino romano. While I normally eschew pasta from non-pasta specialists or chefs of unproven technical soundness, the server's advice and the $11 price tag for the larger portion were all the wheedling I needed.

The dish proved to be inventive and delicious. The arugula pesto was, at least for me, a new idea, and the kitchen succeeded in capturing the leaf's peppery bitterness. The pasta itself was toothsome, and the walnuts and cheese provided the requisite nuance. All in all, the dish was quite nourishing on a sleepy and snowy day.

Frustratingly de rigueur in several modern Portland restaurants, communal dining is also the practice at Clyde Common. Though the Portland everyman is a shade under 30 and has defaced his epidermis with depictions of girlfriends past and kitchen utensils, there is no social compact that requires everyone to sit together. Portland is a vibrant and compelling city and does not need to act like a living, breathing Obama rally. (We already won.) Besides, communal dining is always available at the bar, and Clyde Common has a good one. But I'll forgive the Portland pioneers for this conceit. It may be a necessary evil supporting Portland's rewarding dining scene.

Clyde Common

1014 SW Stark Street
Portland

(503) 228-3333

www.clydecommon.com

Agra Cafe (or, A Brief History of Balti)

Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are infamous for their lawlessness and poverty, and for hosting the Taliban and Al Qaeda (whether wittingly or not). The FATA’s remoteness and impenetrability have left the region beyond the meaningful reach of the U.S. military and the writ of the Pakistani state; instead, it remains in the hands of the local inhabitants, the disagreeable and dysfunctional Pashtun tribes.

Within the FATA is Landi Kotal, a small and ancient frontier town, located five kilometers east of Afghanistan at the top of the Khyber Pass, the mountainous and ancient trade route that connects Afghanistan to Pakistan. It is hardly a surprise that Landi Kotal is an infamous center of smuggling, drug dealing, and weapons sales. But it is also a center of commerce for the Shinwari and Afridi tribes, which are ethnically Pashtun, and most of NATO’s supplies in Afghanistan come through Landi Kotal and the Khyber Pass. NATO’s supplies have recently come under Taliban attack, just as the British struggled with the Afridi uprising in the frontier town in the late nineteenth century.

According to Khaled Ahmad, a prominent Pakistani journalist, Landi Kotal may be the original home of the deliciously spicy balti stew. Not being a historian of the Pashtun and being a denizen of the ‘wood, I could not discover what the balti stew’s original composition was or when it may have been concocted, especially since the Pashtun are known to eat little other than meat.
We do know, courtesy of Mr. Ahmad, that the balti stew is named for the round, open, double-handled pot in which it is prepared, i.e., the balti. In an unusual fit of linguistic cross-pollination, the Urdu word “balti” is actually a transliterated Portuguese word, introduced into India and meaning a “cylindrical pail.” (Apparently Vasco de Gama brought with him a lot of pails. Yes, I just made a Vasco de Gama joke.) However, in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, the word "balti" bizarrely took on the definition of the double-handed pot, which in southern Pakistan is known as a karahi. (The Portuguese word is actually spelled “balde,” but the revised "balti" is a more convenient spelling according to Ahmad.)

Since Landi Kotal is essentially a small and ancient transit point, the balti dish would have to travel to find a larger audience. It found its way into Punjab, the heavily populated region that sprawls across India and Pakistan, where it rose in popularity. It subsequently found its way into the Western world when South Asians, including many Kashmiris who have claimed it as their own, immigrated into Britain in the late Seventies and early Eighties and served the dish in their new restaurants. A cottage industry of balti specialists, the so-called Balti Triangle, famously took root in Birmingham, Britain’s second largest city and the home of 200,000 “British Asians.” The composition of the dish is now much better known in the English-speaking world:

It is a type of curry. The food is cooked quickly in some ways akin to a stir fry. The ingredients are generally fresh meat and/or vegetables which are first marinated and then cooked with spices. The meal is served piping hot as soon as it has been cooked . . . The dish contains spices such as coriander, ginger, cumin, cloves, cassia bark amongst others. It is best sampled with naan bread or chapattis.

Indeed, the dish has proved so popular in Britain that there has been a movement to give balti a protected status under EU law as a food that originated in a particular area, in this case Birmingham. Yet some Birmingham restaurateurs have been dismayed by these efforts, citing the Pakistani origin of the dish.

Balti’s elusive origins of the dish and its popularity in Britain have provoked deeper questions on the issue of “British Asian” identity, providing succor to British social critics such as Ziauddin Sardar, who recently wrote Balti Britain. Peter Barber, reviewing Sarder’s book in the Financial Times, argues that “The ‘traditional’ Punjabi cuisine known as Balti turns out to be an invention of Birmingham’s Asian communities. It is . . . a product of the UK’s long entanglement with the subcontinent. It shows how Asian immigrants have repackaged tradition and mixed it with modernity to create something new, and how the rest of the UK still insists on reducing them to an undifferentiated mass.” Put more crassly, Sarfraz Manzoor argued in the Observer that “balti (which means 'bucket' in Urdu) is a generic term, in this case one that was basically cooked up by enterprising restaurateurs to fool whites into believing they were eating something significantly different from regular curry.” As for Sardar himself, he writes that “By attaching a different label to what is basically the same food . . . the Indian restaurant reframed its image,” such that “British Asians can be authentic to themselves, reclaim their history, in a number of different and innovative ways.”

We’re a long way from Landi Kotal, and much of the story is incomplete. But to the Fress, these writers’ assertions have some validity. One of the foremost balti restaurants in Birmingham is Muhammed Arif’s Adil, which has been in existence since 1977. Adil has such a staggering number of balti dishes on its menu -- well over 100 -- that the word is either devoid of any meaning and really is a marketing tool, or so expansive that it means any food cooked in, say, that round, open, double-handled pot described by Ahmad. We could then refer to much of Chinese food as “wok.” (Which we probably should do, regardless.) At the very least, there would be a link back to the original Pakistani hinterlands.

The complexities of the British Asian experience and the elusive roots of the balti dish have, of course, found their way to Los Angeles. Pursuant to local custom, they have been condensed into a nondescript-looking restaurant -- in this case Agra Cafe -- which is located in the elbow of a shabby strip center, beneath a tae kwon do studio and adjacent to a seedy liquor store (the sign would indicate that it is simply called “Liquor”). Agra is in Silver Lake, which would seem unlikely relative to, say, Artesia which boasts a large Indian population. But if balti is a food for unsuspecting Caucasians like the Birmingham natives, then Silver Lake with its ironically dressed hipster population ("dot-nose" belt buckles, Members Only jackets, etc, etc.) is the perfect home. Nevertheless, I love this place.

Other than its 10 or so distinguishing balti dishes, Agra offers the same standards seen at virtually every Indian restaurant in the city, though the menu is significantly more comprehensive than the ones that so often litter our doorstep. Moreover, Agra executes these Indian favorites with consistency and notable quality. (The smoky and sublime baigan bhartha, or roasted eggplant with spices, is one of my favorites.) The service is efficient if curt, and well-deserved compliments on the food (particularly the excellent lamb balti) are met with silence. According to Agra’s menu, the stew is made with chopped onions, green peppers, turmeric, cumin, garlic, ginger, and crushed tomatoes. Not having been to Birmingham or the Punjab, I cannot make any determination as to the authenticity of Agra’s balti. But I can confirm the accuracy of the restaurant’s description of the dish as “rich and hearty” with a nice balance of “hot & sweet spicing.” The lamb is unfailingly tender; it may be the rare example when take-out is superior to dining in, for the lamb soaks up the sauces for greater lengths of time.

I attempted to interview the proprietor about balti stews, but he seemed to know as little as I did. (Well, he knew how to make them.) He seemed to believe that balti is a Bengali dish, popularized in England. I attempted to inquire further, but he grew annoyed with me and finally just asked if I was going to order something.

Growing up amidst Cleveland’s gray winters and Iron Curtain demographics, this Jewish boy was raised on schnitzel, spätzle, pierogis, wurst, and other Central and Eastern European staples -- the food of classic Jew-haters. A native-born Angeleno, my infant daughter should grow up to love the classic stews and dishes that come from another region of the world not known for being on the Bar Mitzvah circuit.

Agra Cafe
4325 W. Sunset Blvd.
Silver Lake
(323) 665-7818
www.agracafela.com