“This is totally gorgeous,” said Anissa Helou in her British-inflected accent, referring to both the sight and taste of the glossy buckwheat noodles we were sharing. They’d arrived alongside a course of mysteriously inky amberjack, marinated in seaweed and charred scallion before being smoked over hay.
We were at Baroo, and Anissa was having the complex interpretation of Korean flavors she’d hoped to experience on this visit to Los Angeles. Which made me very happy.
Anissa Helou at the L.A. Times offices.
(Calvin Alagot / Los Angeles Times)
A Lebanese cookbook legend comes to town
If you’ve followed my work for a while, you might know that Anissa — a fearless and constant traveler, a ferocious wit — is one of my favorite figures in the food sphere. Born in Beirut to a Lebanese mother and Syrian father, she began her professional life as an art dealer before dedicating herself to writing cookbooks, beginning with “Lebanese Cuisine,” published in the U.S. in 1994.
She was in L.A. last month for the first time since 2019, when I was new at The Times and we tore through the region eating at as many Iranian restaurants as we could humanly reach.
Her primary reason for being in California this time was to put out the word on her latest cookbook, “Lebanon: Cooking the Foods of My Homeland.”
She joined the Food team in the L.A. Times Kitchen preparing a recipe for a video that went live this week: mafrükeh, a quick-cooking dish of herbed bulgur simmered in tomato sauce from the village of Deir Intar in southern Lebanon.
Bulgur is one of those wheat variants that in this country seems tethered to an unfair reputation as a leaden relic of 1970s health-food fads. Anissa likens the texture of mafrükeh to risotto, or a cooked version of tabouleh. Minced bunches of mint, scallions and parsley shift the mixture into warm-salad territory, particularly with the silken sheen of good olive oil that Anissa drizzles over at the end. In Lebanon the dish is often scooped with fresh vine leaves; Anissa served it to us with fresh cabbage leaves. It would make an ideal summertime lunch.
Anissa Helou visits the Los Angeles Times Kitchen to showcase her recipe for mafrukeh, which is featured in her new cookbook, “Lebanon.”
(Calvin B. Alagot / Los Angeles Times)
As she explains in the video, “Lebanon” is for her a full circle from her first book, for which she adapted the delicious recipes her mother made for her family entirely from feel (with instructions like, “Just cook it until it’s done!”) and memory. But she came to understand that her mother’s repertoire was specific to her Maronite upbringing in the Lebanese mountains, and that her tiny country, with its many cultural factions, includes copious variations on familiar staples, and also countless numbers of dishes previously unfamiliar to Anissa.
She researched the book over two years for weeks at a time, following introductions and dinner invitations and traipsing through villages. “Lebanon” is an account of her journeys and also a crucial document of preservation.
I joined Anissa for a talk about the book at Now Serving L.A. while she was in town. Given how specific the discussion turned around regional specialties, I’d say 70% of the crowd appeared to be either from Lebanon or of Lebanese heritage. Older generations there joked with me that my rudimentary Lebanese Arabic reminded them of their American-raised kids speaking the language.
And, as we do, Anissa and I ate and ate through restaurants. People in our profession kid about the “food writer’s curse” — that we take someone we respect to a restaurant we love and we end up having an off-night and the visitor doesn’t understand what the big deal is about while we near-shout, “I swear, it’s usually amazing!” It had been seven years since Anissa’s last visit. I wanted no curses.
She appreciated the rigor and imagination at Sora Craft Kitchen, where chef Okay Inak continues his one-man operation, unspooling and rewiring regional Turkish classics. Among his newest creations: a reworking of levrek marin, a mezze of marinated fish, into mussel-shape tartlet shells layered with raw branzino zinging with flavors of tangerine and mustard and crowned with diced pickled peppers and lime caviar. Anissa zeroed in on a dolma variation of sun-dried eggplant, reconstituted and snipped into triangles stuffed with herbed ground beef and rice. Inak sets them over pools of cooling yogurt and tart-sweet pomegranate molasses.
We swung by downtown treasure Kippered for glasses of bubbly and a plate of cheeses curated by the indomitable Lydia Clarke, and devoured our way through Sahar Shomali’s sweet and savory Iranian pastries at her new bakery Kouzeh. Worn out after our talk, we felt well cared for at Camélia, where restaurant-critic-turned-hospitality-ace Patric Kuh has recently become service director.
The Korean meals were important to plan. The cuisine is one of Anissa’s later-life obsessions, which she would tell you in part is fueled by the many Korean TV series.
Mul naengmyeon — buckwheat noodles submerged in icy spiced broth — had been a specific request. At Lee Ga in Koreatown, I watched the server knock away the boiled egg atop Anissa’s bowl with kitchen scissors before snipping the noodles into bite-size pieces. Across the table, I’d ordered ugeoji wang galbitang (short rib soup with dark cabbage leaves), which hissed and bubbled around the edges of its miniature cauldron.
Baroo was the finale. Anissa had never been to the original, threadbare Hollywood strip mall iteration of the restaurant last decade. I trusted she’d admire Kwang Uh’s evolution, his through-lines to Korean temple cooking and how his menu, in whatever modern courses it charts, still closely conveys the essence of the cuisine.
Baroo‘s owners, chef Kwang Uh, left, and his wife Mina Park, right, at their modern Korean restaurant in the Arts District.
(Silvia Razgova / For The Times)
Uh had dressed the fantastic buckwheat noodles in a dressing made from ultra-fine threads of gamtae seaweed, persimmon vinegar, ganjang (the Korean equivalent of soy sauce) and minty perilla oil imported from Korea. The flavors of silky, emerald emulsion rolled in so many directions: earth and sea, astringent and herbal, rich and soothing, doubling back.
Peggy Keplinger became Baroo’s first wine director last September, and she’s quickly created studied pairings for dishes: a high-acid Grüner Veltliner for the noodles, say, or complexly sweet makgeolli (rice wine) brewed locally in Fullerton for a creamy seafood stew.
Anissa later posted on Instagram, calling Baroo “exceptional” and one of her new favorite restaurants. I had done my job as ambassador. Food writer’s curse avoided.
50 dining experiences that define L.A.
For visitors and locals alike, the Food team set out to frame a fun, summer-friendly angle for experiencing our peerless food culture: What are the 50 dining experiences that define L.A.? Our answers include strolling Olvera Street for L.A. Mexican classics, sipping through a flight in a Black-owned wine shop, savoring Japanese breakfast in Little Tokyo and meeting the barista who recently made history as the first-ever James Beard Award-nominated coffee pro.
What do you think we missed? Let us know.
Local-amberjack crudo with cucumber and lime at Azay in Little Tokyo.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Also …
- Speaking of the James Beard Awards: The foundation held its annual event honoring restaurants and chefs in Chicago on Monday, and Los Angeles took some key awards. Plus, one of the chefs who shaped our dining culture received a lifetime achievement award, and one of our vital food-focused nonprofits was recognized. Stephanie Breijo has the roundup — and also a huge congratulations to Stephanie, who won the Jonathan Gold Local Voice Award at the foundation’s media awards last weekend.
- Jenn Harris finds a new waffle to obsess over. It’s best, she says, smeared with cinnamon and cardamom honey butter and gilded with two fried chicken thighs.
- June gloom is nearly behind us, and Danielle Dorsey has a guide to 7 new rooftop restaurant and bars.
