GQ USA – May 2017

ever happened to prime rib?” flit across your

mind than half of Eater’s “Heatmap” is sud-

denly devoted to its retro-renaissance. My

brother, who is a doctor but also an expert

backyard smoker, has long mused about leav-

ing medicine behind to open a combination

pastrami/ice cream stand. This year a pop-up

serving exactlythat opened. Two blocks from

his house. In the back of a sex shop.

It was hard to be too surprised. After all,

we live in an ever more casual world of food

trucks and pop-ups, counter service and

grab-and-go. By now we’re all used to the

signifiers of informality: the poured-concrete

floor and exposed ductwork, the empty walls,

the clever number to bring back to your

table after ordering. (Playing cards! Plastic

dinosaurs!) Backless chairs are still with us,

though I wonder whether they can survive

the aging of this foodie generation; dim light-

ing and small menu type already have dining

rooms lit up by baby-boomer iPhones like the

encore at a James Taylor show.

It can be difficult to determine whether

these are the markings of casual or the mark-

ings of cheap. Nearly every dining develop-

ment can be seen as a creative exercise in

getting it done in the face of the industry’s

ever more formidable mathematics. Too many

times the accommodation is cynical, allowing

shortcuts and laziness to masquerade as an

aesthetic philosophy. But when done with

smarts and care, the dance between creativity

and economy feels like the future.

CERTAINLY THAT’S THE VIBE at the gleam-

ing Westfield Santa Anita mall, just east of

Pasadena, in the San Gabriel Valley. The

Young Joni serves

Korean small plates

and wood-fired

pizzas, pictured here.

Young Joni’s well-

flanneled patrons

take refuge from the

Minneapolis cold.

Salazar, an unlikely

slice of escapism

on the edge of the

L.A. River, features

several Mexican

delicacies, including

the Joven y Alocada,

a coconut filled

with a boozy rum

concoction.

SANDWICH

• KITFO SANDWICH
  Lalibela, Los Angeles
  Tenagne Belachew rose up ˆ
  from working in other people’s
  kitchens in Little Ethiopia to
  open a place of her own, where
  one addictive star is French
  bread stuffed with kitfo—all-
  but-raw chopped beef
  seasoned with spices and
  bathed in drawn
  butter.

BEST OF

2017

05.17/GQ/ 93

OPPOSITE PAGE: COURTESY OF THE RESTAURANT PROJECT (6). THIS PAGE, FROM LEFT: COURTESY OF THE RESTAURANT PROJECT; JOE SCHMELZER.