Go to your local bookstore and pick up a copy of Guns, Germs, and Steel. It is a book that attempts to answer why Spaniards with horses and guns landed in south American and conquered the indigenous tribes, rather than the other way around. One of Jared Diamond’s major points is that the region known as the fertile crescent had vastly more crops and animals the early human population was able to domesticate. This lead to a better immune system, which lead to an agrarian society, which resulted in longer survival rates, and spawned cities, artisans, and technologists. The fertile crescent gave rise to the Babylonian empire, the Assyrians, the Persians, and what is now Israel and Syria. These early civilizations spread their farming technology across the region, due to similar climates and farming abilities. Language and technology spread across the longitudinal meridian and voila, the Mediterranean cuisines all have a similar GUI. Greece appropriated a lot of this long pre-history and claimed it as its own. Turkey, Macedonia, and Italy all have an antagonism towards certain aspects of Greek society for this reason. What is true Greek architecture? True Greek art? It’s like asking what is American. Greece was the dominant civilization of its day and appropriated the world into itself. But Greek food does taste different from middle eastern and Persian food, even though so much of it looks the same. Sofi’s is one of the few true Greek restaurants in the city, with both traditional seafood choices, as well as poultry and beef entrees. They make a wonderful Avgolemonu, a lemon-egg soup that is a sublime balance of tart and creamy, with tender chunks of chicken and orzo. They fish is stupendous, as are the traditional moussakka and lamb dishes. They have a splendid outdoor patio, but it’s usually populated by ugly smokers. Two people can dine for thirty dollars.

8030 3/4 W 3^rd St., Los Angeles

Overpriced and unimpressive. The special here is asshole, served nightly.

176 N Canon Drive, Beverly Hills

Persian food is the safe way to say Iranian, or middle-eastern cuisine. You’ll find that many restaurants will even just say they are “unique ethnic food” because Americans tend to be so stupid they can’t separate radical fundamentalist factions from exiled entrepreneurs who worked under a puppet government. Iranians frequently are industrious businesspeople who are creating jobs and contributing to their communities. Shamshiri serves large portions of shish kebab with a metric ton of Jasmine rice with saffron. They do whole roast chickens, lamb, spiced beef kebab, and a really good lentil soup. They also do a vegetarian rice dish with cherries that will have you slamming the table it’s so good. When you’ve got the need for a whopping plate of spicy meat, get your face over to Shamshiri. Average price for two people has been about twenty five bucks.

1712 Westwood Blvd, Los Angeles

In 1988, John Cusak and Tim Robbins starred in a hilarious movie that no one saw, called Tapeheads. They play two dorks from the suburbs with a passion for old soul music and a burning desire to make music videos. In the movie, they make a spec TV commercial for Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles. I saw it well before ever moving to Los Angeles, so when my first roommate told me that it really existed I practically broke my neck getting over there. Thankfully, ‘Scoe’s is nothing like the fake ad in the movie. Roscoe’s does indeed serve chicken and waffles, and until you’ve had it together you never realized that they were a perfect match. My personal favorite is the irony laden Big Mamma’s special. It’s ironic because it’s an omelet impregnated with fried chicken and cheese. Which came first? The chicken or the omelet? You can get your lemon Kool-Aid fix here, along with greens and cone bread. The Hollywood location is by far the more cozy, but you’re more likely to get a table at the Pico/La Brea spot. Every year, it’s worth going into the Hollywood location at Grammy time. Trust me. Every east coast R&B and rap superstar is waiting for a table. Two people can eat well here for twenty five bucks.

5006 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles
1514 N Gower St., Hollywood
106 W Manchester Ave, Los Angeles
830 N Lake Ave, Pasadena
730 E Broadway, Long Beach

If you’ve never had Ethiopian before, get a group of good friends together and go to Rosalynd’s. Tell your waitress or waiter that you’ve never done it before and you want them to guide you through it. The delight of Ethiopian food is that everything is served community-style on a large plate of injiri bread. Your food is laid out on the communal plate. A plate of injiri bread is served separately, and you use a small piece of the soft bread to scoop the food into your mouth by hand. Part of Ethiopian dining is to feed your friends by hand, it is a sign of love and care. I think it underscores how infrequently we touch one another, and how we’ve disconnected ourselves from simple, intimate experiences like dining. The food really does qualify as exotic to most people’s palates. Ethiopian spice combinations are complicated and rich. The vegetarian platter will come with greens, yellow lentils, marinated cabbage, red lentils, and a savory potato salad. All of these are really quite good, each different, each even more wonderful when scooped together. We usually order our meat dish a la carte, and both the lamb and beef are delicious. Food for three or four tends to be about thirty to forty bucks before tip.

(323) 936-2486, 1044 S Fairfax, Los Angeles

It took me a while to warm up to Ronnie’s. There’s nothing really remarkable about it at first, until you realize that their menu is basically without crappy food. Most diners I go to are a process of choosing something “less bad” for me. I’ll figure out some sort of combination of eggs and meat and try to avoid ordering the huge, pillowy biscuit, or the complimentary cinnamon bun – or worse – the deadly combination of the two (damn you, Dolores!). But at Ronnie’s, the whole menu is diner food made by an ex-bodybuilder health nut so the rice is brown, the beans are black, and vegetables are steamed and few things are fried. Give Ronnie’s a whirl sometime when you’re looking for an unpretentious, healthy meal served by nice folks just running a good joint. (With possibly the most uncomfortable bench seats.) About ten bucks per person.

(310) 578-9399, 12740 Culver Blvd, Los Angeles

When you want to know how you should be eating, it’s time to take a trip to RFD. Mostly vegan, RFD specializes in making incredibly healthy, incredibly tasty vegetarian meals. I am an avowed carnivore and I love this place. Start with the walnut pate appetizer and then try one of the bowl combinations with tempeh, sea vegetables, brown rice, and your choice of sauce topping. I could eat here every day and not only love every meal, but also feel better about what I put in my body. Most vegetarians you meet are sickly malnourished creatures because they don’t know how to make a complete protein to save their lives. The vegetarians you see at RFD are healthy; they glow from within. I wonder what they taste like. Average cost for two people is around twenty five to thirty dollars.

242 S Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills
414 N La Cienega, West Hollywood
514 Santa Monica Blvd, Santa Monica

Nancy Silverton (Campanile, La Brea Bakery) and Mario Batali’s (Iron Chef, clog model, and candidate for gastric bypass surgery) new pizza restaurant absolutely freakin’ rocks. My belly is filled with insanely delicious carbs! The menu is specifically for foodies with a strong knowledge of Italian specialties, and while the wait staff is happy to translate, the environment is so noisy it will be impossible to hear. (The only bad thing about Mozza is that it is designed in the modern fashion of amplifying the ambient noise into cacauphony.) But it is so worth it. My wife and mother swooned over the oven roasted olives, while my father and I took the porcine train to pigtown with Batali’s father’s carne sampler plate. The La Quercia Speck was pure animal fat heaven. My mother pounded the table over her arugala, mushroom, and piave salad – which we all agreed was the right response. The mushrooms were damn near buttery, with fine slices of perfect piave cheese. But though we delighted in these antipastis and insalates, the real reason to go is the pizza. Simply put, it is spectacular. You cannot replicate these pizzas at home. Perfect pizza can only come from a 750 degree oven, taking all of three minutes to completely cook the pie. Your oven at home maxes out at 500 degrees (if you’re lucky) and adding a pizza stone helps cook the bottom quickly, but it’s still an issue of temperature. An outdoor grill doesn’t even get hot enough to do the job. L.A. has a remarkable dearth of good pizza, primarily because few restaurants are willing to invest in the right tools. Mozza’s brick oven, combined with the pure ecstacy of flavor that Nancy Silverton and Batali bring to the menu means we finally have an incredible pizza joint in L.A. Each of us ordered our own pizza and were thrilled. The white anchovies on my mother’s pizza were tart and salty in new and startling ways. My three cheese white pizza (bianco with fontina, mozzarella, sottocenere and sage) was a thing of otherworldy delight, and my wife’s rapini, black olives, cherry tomatoes, and anchovy pie was swirling in salty and veggie goodness. At around $13 per pizza, and anywhere from $8-$15 for each appetizer, Mozza gets pricey quick

641 N. Highland Avenue, Los Angeles, (323) 297-0101

Philippe’s, The Pantry, and Cole’s PE Buffet remain the very last of the 1920’s dive restaurants. Philippe’s claims to be the home of the French Dip sandwich, and though others profess the same few do it as well and with such old-school panache. This is the place to lunch when touring downtown, Union Station, and the parts of L.A. considered “old”. Coffee costs $0.10 and there used to be a sign left over from the ’70’s apologizing for the hike during the coffee embargo. Philippe’s is a place that clings tenaciously to its brief history, a desperate plea to be remembered in a city that worships the young and beautiful and erases its sawdust floored past.

1001 N. Alameda St. downtown Los Angeles