Travel

Sunny side up

About two and a half years ago, during one particularly ambitious eating trip, we went to Los Angeles for 24 hours and dined at the Bazaar by José Andres at the SLS Hotel, Animal, the Kogi BBQ food truck and Katsuya.

All four spots were worth visiting, but we were especially dazzled by chef Roy Choi’s kimchi sliders and short-rib burritos at Kogi and the oh-so-meat-centric, highly refined dorm-room food we found at chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo’s Animal.

This wasn’t the LA of salads at the Ivy and Wolfgang Puck’s California cuisine. This was punk rock, bursting with flavor and fun.

And this, lucky for LA, was just the beginning.

Choi is still slinging food-truck fare to devoted fans including the nearly 100,000 Twitter followers of @kogibbq, but he now also has three casual-cool restaurants — rice-bowl spot Chego, “modern picnic” joint A-Frame and Caribbean food-inspired “roadside cookshop” Sunny Spot. Shook and Dotolo still serve foie gras moco loco at Animal, but they now also have a seafood-focused restaurant, Son of a Gun. And Sam Nazarian, the hospitality mogul behind the SLS and Katsuya, hasn’t slowed down either. He keeps opening scene-y hotels, eateries and nightclubs, but he’s also bought into Umami Burger, a restaurant chain that has much more in common with Choi or Animal than it does with velvet ropes.

Clearly, it’s time for us to revisit LA. And away we go:

A-Frame in Culver City serves a better version of the food you eat at the bar or on the beach. And Choi, a classically trained chef and a master of culture mash-ups whom his crew lovingly calls “Papi Chulo,” can’t help but serve you dishes that will get your hands dirty. He wants you to try everything and share food with friends and strangers. So get messy with the Hawaiian-style kettle corn and the cracklin’ beer can chicken with kimchi, century egg, salsa roja and verde (Choi really should have his own hot sauce line). Don’t skip the cornbread and chicken salad with Italian sausage ragout, salsa verde and pickled red onion. And save room for the banana bacon crème pie.

You’ll need lots of napkins at Sunny Spot in nearby Venice, too. The sugarcane-fried pig’s feet with chili vinegar sauce is the best kind of spicy-sweet grease bomb. And Sunny Spot’s diablo prawns and the pirate-style fisherman’s stew with shrimp, clams and cod collars are way better than anything New Yorkers can get at Miss Lily’s.

Like all of Choi’s projects, there’s a sense of whimsy and pure imagination here. Choi is a man who clearly trusts his own palate, a chef who just knows what things should taste like, but also a man who says that Sunny Spot came to him “in a dream.” He couldn’t get the idea of this food out of his head, so he knew he had to open this restaurant.

“It stuck to me and I couldn’t shake it,” he says. “So, I did everything I could to make it real so others could live in it too.”

Keep dreaming, chef. We’re eager to see what you come up with next.

Our other standout meals in LA: 1. Son of a Gun in West Hollywood, where the briny, spicy spaghetti with clams, uni aglio-olio, chili and breadcrumbs was just perfect. 2. Aburiya Toranoko in Little Tokyo, an izakaya with solid sushi, an even better robata menu and juicy Jidori fried chicken, next door to much buzzed-about sister restaurant Lazy Ox. 3. Ink Sack in West Hollywood, the sandwich shop (an offshoot of the hotter-than-hot Ink restaurant) from “Top Chef” winner Michael Voltaggio. The sandwiches are small, so use that as an excuse to get two or even three for lunch. Our picks: the spicy tuna with miso-cured albacore, sriracha and mayo, the cold fried chicken and the “reuben” with corned beef tongue. 4. The North Cahuenga location of Umami Burger where the special truffle burger poutine was as decadent and delicious as it sounds.