Plugs — Benjamin Oreskes

L.A. food and drink recs from a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

Plugs is The Angel’s recs column. Every Saturday, you’ll get six picks — a restaurant, a bar, a shop, an ingredient, a person, and a treat — from someone in Los Angeles who knows what they’re talking about. (Plugs are for paid subscribers of The Angel only. However, if you’re in the restaurant industry and want a free subscription, hit me up. :))

#17 is Benjamin Oreskes, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and a Pulitzer Prize-winning breaking news reporter. Ben currently covers state and national politics for the Times. Beforehand, he was on the City Hall and homelessness beat. He is brilliant at what he does, and he is also one of my oldest friends. Although he’s only lived in Los Angeles for seven years (still, more than me), he knows the city better than many native Angelenos—a proficiency that includes myriad excellent food and drink establishments. He loves crawfish boils and karaoke, and here are his L.A. plugs!

P.S. Given Ben’s workplace, I’d be remiss to not acknowledge the recent and crushing mass layoffs at the paper and want to express my utmost solidarity with everyone affected. Our local newspaper remains as important as ever.

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Restaurant — Taylor’s Steakhouse

Los Angeles is awash in inventive food presented stylishly and hyped endlessly. I love to try the new spot as much as the next person; But it’s the old classics the excite me the most. 

Cooking a steak right—which for me is medium rare—so the blood can be sopped up by potatoes and mixed with sautéed spinach is high art. I want a man in a suit slicing the tomahawk steak correctly and not fussing over me too much. I also want a shrimp cocktail and a dirty martini full of ice chards floating like little islands. 

Few places are as affordable and do all the aforementioned as well as Taylor’s in Koreatown. Famed Times critic Jonathan Gold described it as “a Wednesday-night steakhouse, a two-martini place where your parents would have felt comfortable — and may in fact be enjoying right this second, along with half of the USC law school Class of 1962.” 

The lack of pretension, reliable service and great food keeps me going back.