Childless Summer Adventures 2021 (4/5) – Los Angeles

In this series…

San Francisco
Carmel-by-the-Sea
Seattle
Los Angeles
East Coast

Our final childless weekend in 2021 was spent re-visiting LA. We had been there several times, including two road trips last year during the pandemic. As such, it was not so much a vacation of exploration, but rather a trip to relax and to eat. Um yeah, what else is new?

Hotel: Oceana Santa Monica

We spent a couple nights at Hilton’s new LXR hotel on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, thanks to free weekend night certificates from Amex. It was a chic casual resort-ish place, a luxurious boutique with attentive service. Its price tag edged out Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome as the most expensive we had ever come across.

The exterior is fairly unassuming except for the comprehensive coverage of vines and trees.

Bookcase and snacks in the front corner of the room.

With our Hilton Diamond status, the stay came with $50 per day of dining credits. It sounded like a sweet promise for some king-sized breakfasts, until of course we saw the price on the menu. $6 for a croissant? $8 for a coffee? I had no idea how people afforded this kind of stuff without heavily leveraging credit card perks. For now, we just pretended to fit in with the real wealthy folks around us.

Each croissant came with a disc of butter in equal weight.

Tacos

Immediately after getting a rental car at LAX, we headed to a famous taco truck named El Chato. It was the utmost stereotypical taco truck in my mental images… brightly lit on a dark SoCal street corner, late at night, under some billboard advertising lame TV drama and surrounded by a bunch of questionable people. Not exactly the kind of picture I associated with words like “property value” or “family friendly”.

But how is it that I had so much prejudice against something I knew nothing about? The toxicity of second-hand racism affects our lives in such subtle ways. We may have never attempted to engage with this subset of American culture if the pandemic hadn’t already prompted us to try, and then fall in love with, Mexican street food.

Approaching El Chato was slightly intimidating because the road was dark, the traffic fast, and there was nowhere to park except in front of a nearby garage. When we got a clearer view of the “questionable people”, though, we began to understand what a popping food scene it really was… there were couples like us, tourists dragging suitcases around, a hippie lady who may have walked some distance to get there, and a 3-generation Indian family who brought tailgate chairs and pulled off a dinner party behind their SUVs. Waiting in line at this taco truck took no less time than getting a table at a fancy ramen restaurant.

All these people from different walks of life enjoyed their tacos, burritos, and quesadillas right there in the dark parking lot. We joined in using the trunk of our rental Infiniti as a makeshift table. It was not only one of the most delicious meals in recent memory, but also an extremely memorable community activity that we took part in.

The masks could not contain our excitement, just like how the truck could not contain the yummy smell of its food.

This Infiniti costing more than our two cars combined was now a perfect vehicle for holding a plate of greasy tacos.

These were some of the most delicious tacos ever. If it weren’t bed time already, I would’ve gone for a second serving.

On the next day, we went for some fish tacos as an afternoon snack. Ricky’s was another highly famed taco truck, but we thought the food was just alright.

As indicated along the top of the truck, this brand had been endorsed by quite a few media outlets.

All the raw lettuce, green pepper, and tomato made it rather hard to taste the fish.

Little Tokyo & Downtown LA

This Japanese neighborhood was one of the few destinations in LA we had not previously visited. We arrived there fairly early to eat a second breakfast at one of the bakeries, but their pastries were not great. Then we took a walk around downtown LA before coming back for lunch. There were quite a few toy and game stores that fascinated us, but the lines to enter them were unreasonable.

We beat most shop owners here. It was not this tranquil any more a couple hours later.

Angels Flight Railway… is it the world’s most expensive way to avoid 3 flights of stairs?

Grand Central Market. It was difficult walking through here without stopping to eat at its many stalls.

Lunch was at Shinsengumi, a popular ramen restaurant in Little Tokyo. Its name came from a police force under the Tokugawa Shogunate, organized in opposition to what eventually emerged as Meiji Restoration. No idea what the cultural relevance is, but is it kind of like naming a restaurant “the Confederate Army”?

It was good! (sorry, not a ramen connoisseur and can’t elaborate)

Glad to see Mazinger! It was one of the first cartoons I watched on TV.

Iced drinks were a must after hours of strolling in the SoCal sun.

The Silver Lake Stair Streets

Having been to LA plenty of times in recent years, we ran out of touristy things to do. Beside making food plans, we spent some time digging up second- and third-tier attractions around the city. This pretty set of stairs came up and we squeezed it in as an afternoon activity. It turned out to be nothing more than a hilly walking path in an otherwise pedestrian-unfriendly residential neighborhood, with a heart painted on each step.

This sign was instrumental in letting us know that we had arrived.

Not exactly the same as SF’s 16th Ave Tiled Steps.

The car didn’t have to wait here for long.

Koreatown

This was one of our favorite neighborhoods in LA, though we seemed to always visit the same places.

Hae Jang Chon, a delicious barbecue restaurant.

Bingsu at Sul & Beans, the one stop we always make when in LA.

Myung Dong Kyoja, or more modernly known as MDK Noodles. They had good food, but we came here primarily for their kick ass kimchi.

We bought 4 large jars of their kimchi to go. It took some explaining for the waitress to understand our intent. If you wonder if we had planned this purchase, note that I partially justified booking a business class flight just so we could check luggage for free and bring a suitcase full of kimchi back home.

Santa Monica Pier

I first learned about Santa Monica Pier from playing Midnight Club Los Angeles… it was a platform sticking into the ocean that I could drive my fancy race cars on and fall down from. I had been intrigued for some time, but never been despite having visited the Santa Monica beach several times. It was usually too hot during the day to walk the extra half mile in scorching sand just to see a Ferris wheel, and the pier was closed to public during our 2020 visits.

This time around, we didn’t exactly plan to go there either… but our bellies were over-stuffed with Korean BBQ and a stroll was in order. The beach was far more pleasant at night than during the day, and we arrived after putting one foot in front of the other for a bit of time. And we sure were glad to have done it… we love this kind of festive places. Even though we didn’t drop a penny here (too full to enjoy funnel cake), people watching and being among the crowd gave us all the joy we needed.