Los Angeles Cult Recipes

by Victor Garnier Astorino

Take a journey to the city of Californian dreams through 100 iconic recipes that capture the spirit of Los Angeles.

Victor Garnier Astorino captures snapshots of this glittering city with eclectic tastes. There are recipes for chili hot dogs like you’ve never tasted before, avocado cheeseburgers, granola, lobster rolls, French-style tacos, fro-yo, kale pizza, acai bowls and shrimp pad thai. LA worships at the temple of the healthy green juice and also at the the temple of the hamburger. From food trucks and vegan coffee shops, doughnuts, hot dogs and noodles, to the original Californian roll – this is where food fusion began.

Genres: Cookbooks, Food

272 pages, Hardcover

Published October 5, 2017

Reviews

[Scott Andrews · Rating 4 out of 5]

four stars for the technique of poaching eggs on pg 216.

Everything else was a little depressing because
1. L.A. has been destroyed by bad politics and will never be the same it was when I lived there in the late 90s and early 00s and
2. the photos remind me of some really bad neighborhoods and ugly streets.

The rest of the recipes are "meh", but who cares. It is worth adding to a collection of Americana cookbooks even if you do not use it every week.

But, seriously, thanks for the tip on the eggs.

[Julie Botnick · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ventura, Ojai, and Malibu are not LA neighborhoods. It's hard to take a book seriously that proclaims California Pizza Kitchen's Thai chicken pizza to be "an emblem of the Los Angeles food scene and of California, generally." (P. 52)

I'm not sure how this book got published. Skip it.

[Jean MacLeod · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great mouth-watering compilation. I can hardly wait to try some of the recipes, especially Canter's Matzo Ball Soup. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

[Elizabeth Judd Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much tasty comfort food…can’t wait to work through these recipes…

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an Angeleno, it’s hard to rate this book - L.A. is a city that changes the longer you live here and this book is sort of a “what you see first” version of the city. There is a lot made of the photos in the introduction, but I found it maddening that many images were geographically mismatched with the section of the book in which they appear. It’s very strange to have a full page photo of P.C.H. in Malibu right after a Burbank Larry’s Chili Dog recipe. Then a page later there’s a photo of the Melrose Trading Post. These are three distinct L.A. locales that are not only culturally very different parts of the city, but are actually quite far away from each other - all mashed into itself I found it hard to recognize the city I’ve lived in for more than twenty years. Props to Astorino for putting the book together - It would have been nice if it was titled differently - in that the term “cult” implies some kind of insider insight and I found the selection of the dishes highlighted as well as the recipes lacking in complexity and accuracy (the corned beef at Canter’s most certainly is cured yet in the recipe here there is no mention of sodium nitrite). I’m sure if I wrote a book about French food after living there in college, the French would feel the same way I do about this book.

[Dawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of repetitive statements and "like" recipes.