Plugs — Jeff Gordinier

L.A. food, drink, and leisure recs from a veteran restaurant writer + LINKS

Plugs is The Angel’s recs column. Every week, 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, plus a selection of Angel-curated links. (Plugs are for paid subscribers of The Angel only; upgrade your subscription to receive all six!)

#71 is Jeff Gordinier, an accomplished journalist with three decades of experience covering food, music, and politics. Jeff has worked as a reporter for The New York Times and as an editor at Esquire, and he’s contributed to many publications, including Food & Wine, Fortune, Entertainment Weekly, Travel + Leisure, Air Mail, Outside, Fast Company, and Elle. He’s also the author of Hungry (2019), a portrait of chef René Redzepi of Copenhagen’s Noma. Most recently, “The City That Rice Built,” a longform feature he co-wrote with George McCalman, was nominated for a National Magazine Award from ASME. What’s more, Jeff is a Los Angeles native who recently moved back after 30 years in New York. To say he knows his way around the city is an understatement: he’s got a deep knowledge of L.A.’s lesser-known institutions, and he’s plugging some of them today. Here’s Jeff with his L.A. Plugs.

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Restaurant — Grand Casino

For almost a decade now, the core of my job at Esquire has been to seek out new places for our annual list of the Best New Restaurants in America. My dark secret (one that I suspect I share with many food writers) is that I love old restaurants, and I wish I had more time and money to visit them. Grand Casino is an Argentinian restaurant and bakery that opened in 1987. All last summer, I found myself repeatedly driving by it, wondering what was happening inside. One day, I gave in to curiosity, walked in, took a seat on the front patio beneath the blue awning, and treated myself to a perfect lunch: a skirt steak (medium rare), a bowl brimming with chimichurri, a scoop of potato salad, and an iced tea. It was an immensely satisfying meal — one of the best lunches I have had in Los Angeles since I moved here with my family in July. I now view Grand Casino as my satellite office; I take meetings there. If I suggest meeting someone at Grand Casino and the person balks at doing so, then I know that I have identified a character flaw. Meanwhile, one of my twin sons, Jasper, likes to come along with me to the bakery at Grand Casino early in the morning — at 6 a.m., right when it opens — to select pastries and empanadas that we bring home to everyone for breakfast.

Photos by Jeff Gordinier.