The L.A. Omnivore emerges
Beauty and nourishment: An array of dishes at n/naka.
(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
When I took on the job of L.A. Times Food editor four years ago, I felt I had everything to prove. Why would a journalist who’d spent much of his career chasing hard news in L.A., Mexico and Latin America suddenly get a job as cushy-sounding as this? What makes him qualified?
Though I’ve written about food for almost 20 years, hosted multiple food documentaries and led the editorial relaunch of the local site L.A. Taco, I doubted my own pedigree on the matter for a few discordant moments.
Being “Food editor” sounded like it involved nightly feasts in hushed white-tablecloth dining rooms with fleets of nose-up waiters gliding around my chair with plates. The job is actually about four-fifths meetings, reading lots of copy, monitoring budgets and saying “yes.”
Still, the Food staff routinely eats at low-budget, midtier and astronomically high-end restaurants in order to have a fully panoptic view of the dining scene in L.A. Although I have dined in many restaurants considered the best in the world, at my core, I am the sort of eater who lives on diners, taco stands, cantinas, food trucks, pochas, sports bars and chain restaurants. I am satisfied when food is simple, comforting and affordable.
Which is why, early on, I’ll admit that I fantasized about lurching our content away from luxury restaurants, where dinners can cost $200, $400 or even $800 per person. Why keep centering places that many of our readers can’t afford to visit?
Then I had my first dinner at n/naka.
It’s a concrete building with rounded corners that I’d zipped past hundreds of times on Overland Avenue in Palms. Honestly, it looks like it could be a dentist’s office. But inside is a California kaiseki restaurant by chefs Niki Nakayama and Carole Iida-Nakayama that, if I may humbly submit, has the potential to permanently alter an eater’s mind.
When I dined there in September 2022, as a guest of Times restaurant critic Bill Addison, who was still working anonymously, I knew I was somewhere extraordinary by the time the traditional hassun seasonal starting courses arrived in a disarmingly whimsical plate arrangement. Eating my way through the dishes — a Hokkaido scallop, oyster aioli, fermented asparagus gelee and other delights — I began to enter an enraptured state. Then the wine and sake pairing started, and there was no turning back.
Food that can alter an eater’s mind: The hassun course at n/naka in 2022.
(Daniel Hernandez / Los Angeles Times)
Every bite and sip that came was more eye-popping than the last. Everything about the experience, better than water itself, just flowed.
Dinner at n/naka costs $395 before tax and gratuity. The wine and sake pairing is either $195 or $395 for the premium option. This was both an exceptional and an exceptionally expensive meal. Was it worth it?
None of the expensive meals I’d eaten before were as composed, as thoughtful, as naturally elegant as this.
More than that, I got to thinking about the chefs and their skill level, as well as the hosts, the servers, the workers at every level, and the values of their salaries. The n/naka meal wasn’t just “high-end,” it was something I believe the finest “doers” of Los Angeles are very good at: high performance.
Niki Nakayama, right, with her wife and co-chef Carole Iida Nakayama, in the kitchen at n/naka.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
I remember telling Bill later that night that if given the choice between a plane ticket for a few nights to, say, Hawaii or Vancouver, or this meal, I’d choose a night at n/naka over a short vacation on the Pacific. Easily.
It was the start of a fascinating epicurean education in What It Means to Dine at the Highest Level across our competitive Los Angeles restaurant market. I took on the learning as any serious journalist might, studying and soaking up everything.
Sometimes I came away feeling like I’d just inherited the Iron Throne. Other times I’d leave disappointed, with an upset gut, and eager for a couch. Hayato, Quintonil, Vespertine, the polemical $1,500 tasting menu at Noma L.A. — each high-stakes upscale meal challenged me and taught me something new. Some I savored along with the team or while reporting myself, and some I splurged on entirely on my own.
At Em in Mexico City, I had the most artfully composed tuna tostada I’ve ever seen, with a layer of delicate half-moon avocado slices covering the fish. An omakase meal at Morihiro taught me that the rice is actually the most important part of any sushi experience, and no one molds it with it as much panache as chef Morihiro Onodera.
Chef Val Cantú’s cuisine at Californios led to the San Francisco restaurant becoming the first Mexican restaurant to earn three Michelin stars.
(Carolyn Fong / For The Times)
At Californios in San Francisco, I experienced the operatic arc of dinner at the world’s first Mexican restaurant to earn three stars in the Michelin guide. And during a birthday dinner gift to myself at Mono Inn overlooking ancient Mono Lake, I learned how an ambitious chef in Jason Custer is interpreting top-notch local ingredients against the stark surroundings of the Eastern Sierras.
I’ve been struck by the impression that a fine dining moment — as any great jazz record, oil painting or novel might do — can sometimes approach the sublime. When it clicks, when a chef does something alchemical with all the moving parts of a hospitality experience, even the most skeptical, salt-of-the-earth diner can’t help but come away impressed.
Of course, these meals were just a small fraction of my role. The job took on another layer of meaning: stewardship. Food at the Los Angeles Times must cover the restaurants of L.A. at all tiers, no matter how popular or how elite. When everyone is doing something amazing, what rises to the tippy-top? The Food section’s job is show you, from the best tacos in a sea of possibilities, as we did with our 101 Best Tacos guide, to our list of 50 terrific places to eat dinner for under $50 a person.
I’ve relished this work.
Yet all the adages are true. Seasons change. Careers transform. New challenges beckon. Earlier this year, I pitched an idea to my bosses. They found it exciting, and approved. I have stepped down as Food editor and started a new role at The Times.
This month, I am launching a newsletter on food and culture called L.A. Omnivore. Sign up early here. I’ll be reporting on food and its intersections with our society from a bicultural, binational and Angeleno borderlands perspective. Because this is who I am. It should be a worthy companion to our desk’s slate with Tasting Notes and Cooking by Cody Reiss.
The rest of the team’s writers — Addison, Jenn Harris, Stephanie Breijo, masterful pros at what they do — have done an outstanding job and will continue to do so with the leadership of general manager Laurie Ochoa, deputy editor Betty Hallock and senior editor Danielle Dorsey.
Today, I still love a diner or a bar-and-grill, but I’ve also been transformed. As I said since Day 1, everyone is an outsider until they’re an insider. I’ve become one of those people who is more than willing to spend far too much of one’s personal leisure budget on a fancy-pants dinner that manages to convince me it’s “worth it.”
I blame that late summer meal at n/naka in 2022. Call me sentimental, but an epiphany at a table can linger for a long time. So next time you’re weighing a $400 plane ride during a bout of forlorn airline searches, I’m begging you, reconsider. Set an alarm and open that tough-as-hell reservations tab. Score a seat. Then tell me I’m wrong.
More from L.A. Times Food …
Silky tofu battered with active charcoal at Nandao Rice and Noodle in Monterey Park.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
