Ethnic Foods

Selling lettuce for 33 cents a head and hiring neighborhood youths turned down for jobs elsewhere, the 32nd Street Market just north of USC has softened some of the hard edges in the densely populated community for half a century. Generations of hungry but cash-strapped students knew they could wangle IOUs. Senior citizens flummoxed by impersonal big-box stores or chain supermarkets found the staff's old-fashioned gabbiness uplifting.

After concluding a three-hour inspection, Los Angeles County health officer Siu-Man Chiu sat down at a table in a closed-off banquet room to tally the letter grade for a Chinese dim sum eatery in the heart of the San Gabriel Valley. She noted the uncovered glass left in the food preparation area. No paper towels by the hand sink. A moldy refrigerator. Dead bugs in a plastic container used to hold pig's blood.

David Tran is a Vietnamese refugee and a successful American entrepreneur, but the best evidence that his business is one more cog in the vast machinery of global commerce -- licit and illicit -- comes from what we might call the Great Hot Sauce Counterfeiting Caper. No one is ever surprised to hear about Chinese factories assiduously knocking off Rolex watches or Windows software.

ALTHOUGH I've stopped into this bakery on a whim, the sweet breads and pastries at Panaderia Antequera in Santa Monica are so appealing I can't buy just one or two but leave with a sackful. Then, on my way to the car, the aromas of yeast, cinnamon and anise wafting from the sugar-topped sweet rolls, flaky puff pastries and golden brown fruit-filled empanadas overwhelm me. I can't wait till I get home: I bite into one before I even get the car door open. I admit it.

Casual Hawaiian cuisine is going mainstream on the mainland. Cashing in on the happy memories of the Californians who pack the beaches of Maui and Oahu each winter, restaurateurs are serving up kalua pork, Hawaiian barbecue chicken and steaming bowls of saimin soup from San Francisco to San Diego.

Forget the burger battles and taco tussles. The latest food fight in Southern California is between wok-wielding foes vying to dominate the market for fast, fresh and affordable Asian fare. Pei Wei Asian Diner, Pick Up Stix and others are expanding despite the hurdles: an abundance of mom-and-pop competitors, a shortage of prime restaurant sites and the complexities behind churning out shrimp with lobster sauce, vegetarian stir-fry and three-flavored dumplings.

It's not exactly Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Paris, but in its own way, it's definitely a movable feast. A hungry, adventurous band of Angelenos -- a core group of about five, usually augmented by three to seven ever-fluctuating invitees -- has gone out to an early Sunday dinner three or four times a month for most of the last nine months. The fare is almost always Asian, usually Chinese, and as befits the polyglot culture of Los Angeles, the group is ethnically mixed.

In the parking lot of the shuttered Little Joe's Italian restaurant in Chinatown, noodles were celebrated in innumerable ways. They were being handmade, boiled, fried and slurped-up by hundreds of people at the first Chinese Food Festival, which transformed the corner of Broadway and College Street into an epicurean Eden. "There's nothing like fresh pasta," said Roj Brandston, a chef from New York who said he attended because, "I love Chinese food."

Chinatown, once the center of Chinese culture in Los Angeles, has been overshadowed for more than two decades by the San Gabriel Valley's wealthy immigrants and the perceived authenticity of their cuisine. But the neighborhood north of downtown wants to reclaim the status it held for generations. And in a culture where people greet each other by saying, "Have you eaten yet?" Chinatown leaders say it's fitting that they are fighting back with their best weapon -- food.