Quick Addendum to the Little Jewel of New Orleans Post!

I mentioned in the previous post that I wanted to try everything on Chef Marcus Christiana-Beniger's menu. So today we can cross another one off the list. After the auto show downtown Saturday morning, I swung by The Little Jewel to pick us up some lunch. Sam wanted to try the Muffuletta so we got a half order of one of those, but I wanted to sample the Roast Beef Po'Boy.  Take a look at this hunk of deliciousness:

I was expecting the kind of roast beef that you'd get in a deli -- you know, rare, and sliced really thin. But this roast beef was more like a long, long braise of chuck or short rib. It was extremely tender, and so, so flavorful. Beef was packed onto this bread, which was dressed with the usual Po'Boy fixings of mayonnaise, shredded lettuce, tomatoes and pickles (see, I am fast becoming a Po'Boy expert). Again, this one sandwich is huge!

Here's that Muffuletta in case you missed it the last time! I had wanted to get it toasted, but because we weren't eating this right away, I'll have to leave that for the next time.

So if you haven't gotten the message, get downtown to the Little Jewel.

www.littlejewel.la.com

NOLA just took on a whole new meaning -- New-Orleans-In-Los-Angeles! And lucky for us. Little Jewel is a gem.

One recent Saturday after a surf session up at Zuma, we had Po'Boys for lunch. In fact over the past few months, it seemed, Po'Boys had been all over the radar screen. I had been reading about them and seeing recipes here and there, and I had been wanting to make one at home. I could get oysters from McCalls and fry them was the idea. Then we had some late fall tomatoes from the garden that were green and were most likely not going to ripen, so I figured, hey, why not a fried green tomato Po'Boy? That sounds good, right? I researched a bunch of recipes and came up something like this: I sliced the green tomatoes and dredged them in flour. I dragged them through beaten egg and then rolled them in panko. After that they got shallow fried until crisp. I sliced open one of Karen McCall's baguettes, slathered on mayonnaise, and lay down the fried tomatoes. These were topped with shredded lettuce, sliced red tomato and pickles, and that was it. The results were pretty good, but they were nothing like the Fried Catfish Po'Boy I had at the Little Jewel of New Orleans not too long ago that you see here:

Doesn't that look awesome? The fish was mild and fried to perfection. There was just the right amount of lettuce, tomato and pickle, and lots of mayonnaise, which is a very good thing in my book. A few dashes of Crystal Hot Sauce and it's sandwich heaven. Also, it was huge! You could have easily fed two, but I ate the whole thing, along with the bag of chips, and no I don't regret it. Below is the one I made us, for comparison. It's okay, but kind of amateur hour, I'd say. Something to work on, though.

I think my bread was a little too crusty, and I'm not sure if my dredge was traditional. I think with the panko, definitely not. But I plan to keep at making these guys at home, maybe with those Oysters from McCalls next time.  Or I'll just pick one up at the Little Jewel.

I don't exactly know when I first read about the Little Jewel of New Orleans, which was opened by Chef Marcus Christiana-Beniger and partner Eunah Kang, but once I did, I knew I had to get down there. Here's a confession: I've never been to New Orleans. It's on the list, but we just haven't gotten to it yet. I want to go just for a few days of eating delicious things, and drinking Sazeracs. But I can easily get to the Little Jewel, and the first time I went, for that Po'boy, I even found a parking space right in front that still had time on the meter! It's such a cool little place, with bluesy music playing in the background and a colorful downtown clientele. It's both a deli, and a market that sells things you don't normally find in L.A. I definitely want to try a bunch of these things, but most especially, since I'm a mayo freak, the Blue Plate Mayonnaise. Here's a little glimpse inside. Note the sign that says "desire" right over the door where the Chef comes out to bring you your food. That's appropriate, I'd say.

I started following the Chef, and the Little Jewel, on Instagram and Twitter and soon I learned Muffulettas were coming. I've talked about our love for the Italian Sandwich, for both the definitive version, the Godmother, from Bay Cities in Santa Monica, and for a version I've made at home. Well, the Muffuletta is a close cousin, lots of delicious meats and cheese piled on a roll, but here with an olive salad on top and then the whole thing is weighted down for several hours or even overnight, so all the flavors meld. Take a look at Little Jewel's version (which, again, is huge by the way -- this is the half order!)

This sandwich was insane! I mean just look at all that meat and cheese, and the olive salad, salty and a little spicy, provides the perfect counterpunch to the sandwich's richness. Wow, just so, so good.

But wait, there's more. I found out this was a special on Mondays:

Yep, red beans and rice, one of those meals that's really so simple and elemental. I like those kinds of meals. Well, this past Monday I got the red beans and rice, and like everything I've had so far at Little Jewel, it rocked. The beans were tender but a little firm, there were nice sized pieces of smoky sausage in the mix, and the broth was rich, with a little bit of spice. So good with the rice, and that little piece of toasted garlicky bread. I could have ordered a sausage link on the side. But I restrained myself. Maybe next time. I still have to go back for gumbo, for a muffuletta that's toasted (I didn't know you could get it toasted…gotta try that), for the hush puppies and for just about everything on the Chef's menu because it all sounds so enticing.

This place is indeed a jewel in downtown Los Angeles.  GO!

Here are some vitals:

Little Jewel of New Orleans:  www.littlejewel.la.com
On Instagram: @chefmarkvsaugustvs
On Twitter: @LittleJewelofNO
McCalls for baguettes and oysters: www.mccallsmeatandfish.com

Here's to another Rebel Chef. Plus escargots! Petit Trois? Go!

There are some who say that surfers are rebels. Why? Well, for one, it seems that many don't hold down what one would call regular nine-to-five office type jobs. They work, for sure, but they work to earn enough money so they can take time to surf where they want and when they want. That's sort of rebellious, isn't it? When we lived in Malibu, for example, our plumber surfed. If the surf was really pumping and we had a plumbing problem, we were out of luck!

Plenty of surfers, of course, hold down regular jobs. So do plenty of chefs. But then there are chefs who seem to be rebels too, because what they're trying to do is break down the normal way of doing things, shatter the status quo, and instigate change. I've posted about Roy Choi, and he definitely falls into the rebel category, but another chef who seems like a rebel is Ludo Lefebvre, who to my knowledge was the first to popularize the idea of a pop-up, a restaurant within a restaurant, where food you would find in a fine dining establishment was available in a far more casual and more accessible setting. Although we tried, we never made it to a Ludobites, which the Chef had started after heading kitchens at super-high-end, fancier places like L'Orangerie and Bastide. Ludo also started a truck, which sold Fried Chicken in various forms. I loved this truck. Sadly, the truck is no more, but the chicken can still be found downtown, LudoBird at Staples Center, so that's a good thing if you're going to a Kings game.

Then came the best news: Lefebvre was teaming up with Animal Dudes, Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook  (no slouches in the rebel department themselves) to open first Trois Mec, and then more recently Petit Trois next door, which is where I had the lunch you see here:

More on this amazingly delicious lunch later. But first let's talk Trois Mec, where Sam and I had an anniversary dinner. We have eaten at Dotolo and Shook's other most excellent restaurants, Animal and Sun of a Gun, so the idea that they were teaming up with Ludo could only be considered a very good thing. Trois Mec promised to be something different and, in some ways, radical for the restaurant business. The biggest difference, of course, was you'd make a reservation -- online, no phones -- and pay for your meal before you ate it! This was, I think, largely a way for the restaurateurs to avoid the dreaded no-shows, and it's fair as far as I'm concerned. Dining out has become something like theater, and you pay for theater tickets beforehand, right? Because we wanted reservations on a certain date, I was sure to try and be the first to put in a request online the second the seats became available,about three or four weeks in advance. We got our spots and on the appointed night headed over. Now here's another thing about both Trois Mec and Petit Trois -- if you're looking for them, look for the signs for the pizza place and the donut shop that used to be where they are because that's what you will see!

I love that they've kept up the old signs. It's cheeky, and it shows they don't take themselves too seriously and have a sense of humor. Dinner at Trois Mec is a set menu, you have to be prepared to eat what they put in front of you, so be adventurous! (I think they do make accommodations for vegetarians, but otherwise I think substitutions and special requests are frowned upon). I eat pretty much everything, but Sam is not a huge fan of duck or raw things, but he ate it all too and loved the raw beef and duck courses. Here's a look at the menu from that night. By the way, everything you may have heard about the Potato Pulp is true. It's amazing.

If you like to watch cooks in action like I do, make sure to sit at the counter. Here's a short video of the kitchen crew in action:

So cool.  Like a ballet, no? So that was dinner at Trois Mec. I wanted to eat at Petit Trois from the moment I heard about it, and I wanted to even more after I heard Escargots was on the menu. I love Escargots. I read somewhere that some folks didn't know what to do with the funny little device you eat them with, and I thought, 'how can that be? They have never had Escargots in the shell?' This dish is again one of those sort of Proustian things -- it brings me back to when I was a kid, and our parents took us out to French restaurants in the New York suburbs back in the day. Those places always had Escargots on the menu, and I always ordered it. So one day last week I showed up at Petit Trois for lunch, getting in line shortly before the noon opening. Chef Ludo happened to be walking in too (not my first sighting -- he once took my order when he had the truck, he was there the night we were at Trois Mec and here he was again). In fact I tried holding the door open for him as a gesture of respect, but he politely insisted I head inside first. Unfortunately the people in front of me in line got the prime counter seats, but I took one of the ones opposite the small open kitchen. I knew what I was having, but here's the menu:

I ordered the Escargots and, because I was feeling somewhat decadent, Frites! First came a basket with a small perfect baguette and the most excellent French butter you will ever eat. Look:

I would have devoured it all almost instantly, but if you like Escargots, you also love all the garlicky melted butter that comes with it, and you need bread to sop up all those juices (although Frites were good for that too. Just saying!). Here's the Escargots before I started in:

I know some people are squeamish about snails, but come on…this is so good.

The small space filled up fast. Everybody on the crew was super-friendly. And if all the conversation was in French you might have been in a little bistro in Paris. What a fantastic, truly stellar lunch, and I can't wait to get back because I pretty much want to eat just about everything on the menu. Sort of like the couple perched on stools next to me -- they ordered the Steak Frites, the Omelet, and the Croque Monsieur, and were happily sharing, digging into all of it. One final cool quirk about Petit Trois -- don't bring cash because they don't take it! Credit cards only.

So if you're in the mood to be transported from LA to another place for lunch, hit up Petit Trois. You might even feel a little rebellious!

Here's some important info:

Trois Mec: www.troismec.com
Petit Trois: www.petittrois.com
Ludobird and all things Ludo: www.ludolefebvre.com
Don't forget the cookbooks: Crave and Ludobites