Everyday values
DELICIOUS DEALS
Ethnic eats and a towering salad offer more bang for your buck.
11. Bara chirashi bowl at Takumi, $9.50. Bara chirashi is a particularly festive style of chirashi-zushi, which is a bowl of seasoned sushi rice topped with sashimi. Bara chirashi is topped with a mixed dice of sashimi (bara means scattered). Takumi's, served as a lunch special, is chock full of fresh, chopped yellowtail, tuna, salmon, squid, tamago (omelets), radish sprouts and salmon roe, garnished with shiso, wasabi and pickled ginger. It's a great deal for the same fish that the restaurant uses for its premium sushi sets. It comes with miso soup, too. Takumi, 333 E. 2nd St., Los Angeles, (213) 626-1793; www.takumirestaurant.com.
12. Golden beet and baked goat cheese salad at Little Flower Candy Co. Cafe, $10.50. It's a tiny, tiny cafe but the salad is HUGE, the greens are pristine, the beets -- at least a pound of them -- are farmers-market sweet. And they use a well-selected Spanish goat cheese that tastes like a million dollars even before it's seasoned with olive oil, salt and pepper. Little Flower Candy Co. Cafe, 1424 W. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (626) 304-4800; littleflowercandyco.com.
13. Octopus ceviche, at Puro Sabor Peruvian Food Restaurant, $13. A huge plate of octopus marinated in lemon and Peruvian spices, with Peruvian corn (two ways: cooked and roasted), halved boiled white and sweet potatoes -- all for $13. The ceviche is tender and perfectly seasoned, not particularly spicy (if you like it hot, ask for a squeeze bottle of the house-made hot sauce), and the roasted corn is amazing, crunchy and intensely flavorful. Order a large glass of chicha morada (purple corn juice) for an extra $1.75. Puro Sabor Peruvian Food Restaurant, 6366 Van Nuys Blvd., Van Nuys, (818) 908-0818.
14. Bun bo Hue at Quan Hy, $7.50. It may seem that Vietnamese cuisine is dominated by its northern dishes such as pho, but among the country's many noodle soups, it's bun bo Hue (from the central city of Hue) that offers the most flavor. Quan Hy's bun bo Hue helped canonize the dish a few years ago, and it's still a standard for those looking for a mild introduction to the soup: chubby rice noodles twirled together with nearly every cut of pork and beef and lighted up by a broth powered by a heavy helping of red chile. Quan Hy, 9727 Bolsa Ave., Westminster, (714) 775-7179.
