#48: I'm a Valley girl now
Death By Consumption
4/1/25 - 4/7/25
I do not expect any sympathy for this, but due to the nightmare that is air travel in this country, I arrived from LA past 2am last night, so this email is coming to you from a delirious haze. I hope I don't write anything humiliating!
This week is mostly about eating and drinking in LA, since that's more or less what I did all week. (This email is largely thanks to my dear friend Ali, who always has a list of new restaurants we have to try, no matter how many times I visit.) Most of our previous times in LA have focused on Hollywood and Silver Lake/Los Feliz, but this trip we stayed mostly in the Valley, which gave us a fun glimpse at how the pushing-40s crowd lives in Los Angeles. Why do you LA people slander the Valley? It's nice! Grow up! When I wasn't out and about stuffing my face, I took advantage of an on-theme reading moment to finally enjoy the new book about LA's two biggest literary divas, Eve Babitz and Joan Didion, as well as another book I've already mostly forgotten, thankfully.
Kebabs — at Pardis in LA
One of life’s greatest pleasures is the moment after you’ve ordered at a restaurant, when all you have left to do is sit and talk and wait for delicious things to arrive. But an even greater pleasure is when you go to a new restaurant where a friend knows the food and is happy to take the lead. You don’t even have to look at the menu — all you’re left to do is just scoop out your brain and accept the gifts, like a pharaoh. My friend Afshin handed me a 5mg edible and took a group of us to this Persian restaurant, where he ordered for the table. As Afshin conducted a symphony of incredible dishes, I had the stoned thought that the rest of us at the table were baby animals waiting in our den for our mother to bring back food. The culinary equivalent of being a kid and falling asleep in the backseat of the car and waking up in your bed. I loved it! Anyway, I couldn’t tell you most of what we ate, but all of it was delicious, especially a kebab of grilled beef that had been marinated in pomegranate juice, which gave it a smoky-sour flavor I had never before experienced. Sometimes, a new taste is all you really need to fix your entire life, for at least a little bit.
Four pastas — at Antico Nuovo in LA
I’ve been thinking I’ve gotten pretty good at making my own pasta and focaccia, but Antico Nuovo was a welcome reminder that, in the presence of real Italians, I am less than nothing. I am worthless, an amateur at best, and everything I have labored to create is trash when compared to centuries of Italian culinary genius. The focaccia at Antico Nuovo must have been 6 inches tall, somehow, perfectly airy inside and crisp on the outside, served with a burrata and scallion oil we nearly licked from the bowl. Three of us ordered four pasta dishes — each of which made us scream, exposing us as the least-formal diners in the joint — but the star was the agnolotti, tiny pillows of meat and cheese wrapped in pasta so thin it was translucent, with a sauce made from the braising liquid reduced with butter and sage. By the time we got to the cannoli, brittle and thin, bursting with fresh cream and California strawberries so sweet they were practically candy, we had pledged our souls to our waitress, a brassy upstate New York legend named Gail. Should I abandon my life and move to Italy to study pasta-making under the greats? If the recession gets bad enough, this isn’t not an option…
The Classic Italian — at Ggiata in LA
On this trip, I wanted to finally visit Something About Her, the sandwich shop by Ariana Madix and Katie Maloney from Vanderpump Rules, but Ggiata, a new sandwich shop in the Valley, swooped in and stole my sandwich attention all week. (I’m sure Ariana’s bank account won’t notice my absence from her restaurant, but Katie could probably use the cash.) The classic Italian sub was pornographic and possibly the best I’ve ever had. I also tried the meatball parm, an obscenely perfect sub, as well as the chicken caesar wrap, which weighed about 200 pounds and had a surprising kick to it, with spicy peppers chopped into the filling. I know I shouldn’t say this as a New Yorker, but Ggiata might just beat us at the sandwich game. We can’t let LA take this from us!
A sad beer — at Jax's Studio City in LA
I wasn’t going to spend all week in the Valley and not visit Jax Taylor's haunted sports bar. This was a mandatory visit. And, look, we definitely showed up at the wrong time, so take my judgment with a grain of salt. Maybe it's a riot on the weekend! But when we visited, the vibe was… bleak. Empty. As icy cold as Jax's heart when Brittany's drinking is causing a GERD attack.
We sipped a couple beers and shivered under a heater in the converted parking lot that is this bar, marveling at the absolute gall of a recovering cocaine addict choosing as the centerpiece of his bar a neon sign that says “Okay Just One More.” The bartender — whom I won't be surprised if we see Jax hitting on now that he'll be single in season 2 of The Valley — came out to check on us roughly every 90 seconds or so, either out of boredom or attraction to Justin or because she was genuinely concerned about what sort of people would actually drink there. Anyway, I’d probably go back. Why pretend I’m better than Jax’s?
Tempura udon — at Daichan in LA
This is the LA experience I truly love — enjoying delicious Asian cuisine (in this case, Japanese comfort food) while trying to figure out the name of the character actor dining next to you (Garret Dillahunt). We ordered way too much, but I couldn’t stop. Everything at Daichan was great. The udon is as good as you’ll find in Japan, thick, springy noodles in a delicate broth that doesn’t leave you overstuffed despite arriving in a bowl that practically juts over the edges of the table. The zaru soba, one of my all-time favorite Japanese dishes, is the perfect mixture of sweet, salty, and spicy thanks to a dab of wasabi — a cold noodle dish that's as refreshing as a drink. This place made me understand why people move to the Valley. I could do this, maybe!
A glass of rose — at The Sunset Restaurant in Malibu
Our favorite Malibu beachside spot, Moonshadows, tragically burned down in the fires, so we drove further north to Sunset, where the vibe is considerably stranger but the view is still beautiful. We snagged the last seats by the windows overlooking the beach, which we yanked opened despite the chilly breeze, while enjoying drinks and some extremely bad triangle-shaped arancini. Next to us, a couple ate a full lava cake as an appetizer, before they ate a burger. Outside, an elderly man walked by, a small stone statue of a dog tucked under his arm, as if his beloved Frenchie had once upon a time looked at Medusa. I’m telling you, the vibe was very strange here, like one of those sideways universes where nearly everything is the same, except in this world people wear hats on their feet. Before we left, we closed the window, and every table around us erupted into desperate cries of gratitude. Turns out, while we had been judging everyone else, we had been the true freaks of the restaurant, subjecting everyone to a shivering, miserable dinner. There's a lesson here, but I won't learn it.
Spicy chicken & scallion waffle — at The Dutchess in Ojai
We also drove out to Ojai — we really got around, try to keep up! — where we had brunch at The Dutchess, a spot known for both Burmese breakfasts and also pastries, I guess. The breakfast was fantastic, especially the spicy Burmese fried chicken and scallion waffles, but I can’t speak to the pastries, as they were pretty much sold out by the time we sat down. Four of us split one strawberry cupcake, which even a non-cupcake enjoyer like myself could admit was exceptional. This feels like the rare place that you’d find on a TikTok girly’s page that’s actually worth the hype.
Wine tasting flight — at Old Creek Ranch & Winery in Ojai
Ojai has wine tasting rooms in its downtown, but we were hungry for natural beauty, so we drove 15 minutes out of town to this vineyard, which we were told is the only rural winery in the area. We sat in a lovely veranda, overlooking stunning beauty, tasting delicious wines, listening to the sheep bleat in the meadow, and debated whether it was every mom’s dream in the 90s to open their own winery. 90s moms, weigh in!
Didion and Babitz, by Lili Anolik (2024) — hardcover
This book, written after Lili Anolik discovered a collection of Eve Babitz's mostly unsent letters after her death, goes deep on the twisted, painful, beautiful and harrowing relationship between Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, the twin literary queens of LA. It's a story of female ambition and the sacrifices required to succeed, and the outrageously complicated ways these two women mirrored, attracted, and repelled each other. I devoured this book. I loved how fearlessly Anolik exposed both women's messier, uglier sides, while still offering them the tenderness neither really ever gave themselves. It humanizes them while also somehow turning them into even larger icons than they already are.
The book is also spectacularly gossipy in that casual 60s and 70s way, in which LA feels like a small village where everyone knows each other and everyone is famous. Harrison Ford won't stop showing up in every chapter, building cabinetry for people while almost accidentally becoming the biggest star in the world (and apparently having sex up to nine times a day). The book is rich with gossipy stories about legends, like this one told by Eve's ex-boyfriend Dan Wakefield, about the time they ran into another of Eve's exes, Jim Morrison:
One night, Eve and Wakefield ducked into the Liquor Locker, a hundred feet or so from the Chateau Marmont, to pick up a bottle. There, checking out the selection, was Jim Morrison. "Now, I'd got into a terrible fight with Eve over Jim the month before," said Wakefield. "What happened was, it was morning, and that's when Eve liked to talk on the telephone. She never whispered or even lowered her voice. She just figured that if my eyes were closed, I was asleep. I wasn't. So, she was talking to her friend Diane Gardiner. And I heard her defending me to Diane, saying that my private parts were a, quote, nice change, unquote, from Jim's, evidently much larger. Well, I jumped out of bed, stormed out of the apartment. Oh, I was so mad—and embarrassed, my God, was I embarrassed! A couple of hours later she called me at the Chateau to tell me that she'd talked it over with her mother—with her mother!—and that her mother had explained to her that men were sensitive about size. That was her apology! So, we spotted Jim in the Liquor Locker. This wasn't long before he died, by the way. He had his back to us. Eve came up behind him and sort of goosed him. They were friendly, they talked. But he seemed a little scared of her, if you want to know the truth. I think he was nervous of what she might say. And I understood how he felt!"
Or this little aside from Barbra Streisand's former lover, co-producer, and hairdresser Jon Peters, on the making of A Star Is Born, which has nothing to do with anything in the book but was so good it clearly couldn't be cut:
“I wanted Elvis go play John Norman Howard. I mean, can you imagine how that would’ve gone over—Elvis Presley and Barbra Streisand, together? I went to Vegas to meet him. He was heavy at the time. He didn’t sit in a chair, he sat on the floor. And he seemed upset. ‘What’s wrong?’ I said. He said, ‘I had a fight with my girlfriend.’ I said, ‘Oh yeah? Where is she?’ He said, ‘She’s in my 747, circling above Vegas.’ ‘What?’ I said. ‘I’ve had her up there for three hours,’ he said. ‘I haven’t decided whether or not to let the plane land.’ He wanted to play the part, but the Colonel made him turn it down. I don’t know what happened to the girlfriend.”
Throughout it all, you have these two women either observing (Didion) or participating (Babitz) in all the glitz and grunge of the LA of 60 years ago, while competing over who can best spin the whole scene into literary gold. Didion won, of course, but Babitz is so endlessly charming — and the two of them, for better or worse, so eternally entwined — that, by the end, you really can't separate them in your mind, nor would you want to.
The Book of George, by Kate Greathead (2024) — library ebook
This book attempts to skewer the modern Millennial male, by embodying the archetype in George, a self-absorbed, bumbling, stunted man. There were moments where, sure, I shamefully recognized parts of myself, but beyond that it all felt surprisingly toothless. We're not supposed to hate George, I don't think, nor are we supposed to love him, or even pity him. In fact, if there's anything you ever feel about George, it's annoyed. He's unpleasant! I hated spending time with him. Good riddance!