Plugs — Meghan McCarron

L.A. food, drink, and leisure recs from an award-winning food reporter + 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!)

#84 is Meghan McCarron, a James Beard Award-winning journalist covering food and culture. Formerly on staff at Eater for nearly a decade, Meghan has bylines in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Bon Appétit, among other outlets. She won a JBF Award for a package on campaign eating leading into the 2020 election and was a finalist for her investigative story on Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Recently, she’s covered headways in home kitchen businesses, the golden age of American bakeries, and the slow demise of the middle class sit-down restaurant. Meghan is a seasoned reporter and an incisive writer whose stories I’m always quick to read. (I recommend subscribing to her sporadic newsletter, which is consistently full of great nuggets.) She almost agreed to write an entire Plugs column devoted to her favorite L.A. mall. Instead, we’re including it as a bonus plug. Here’s Meghan!

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Restaurant — Mapo Dak Galbi

This is the restaurant I’ve been to the most in L.A., besides the handful that I go to because they’re around the corner from me. I drive here on purpose, and you should, too. They specialize in one dish, dak galbi, a spicy stir-fried chicken with vegetables, prepared right in front of you.

Jonathan Gold reviewed it in 2015, which is the year I moved back here, so that must be how I found it. I think it was also in a long-disappeared Lucky Peach atlas of L.A. The galbi is as much a performance as a meal you eventually eat. First, the chicken hits the tabletop grill. Then, batons of sweet potato and rice cakes. Then a chile-forward sauce, squeezed with abandon by the confident servers, and then a mountain of cabbage and green herbs. All of this cooks together into a stewy, spicy, somehow creamy mess. The cheese is optional, but also, it’s not.

There aren’t any decisions to make. All of the servers are older women with the most profound auntie energy of anywhere I’ve been in Ktown. It’s a perfect place to catch up with a hungry friend over beer and banchan and chicken, or feed an unruly group of six. I love taking out-of-towners. God, it’s been too long since I’ve been. See you at Mapo Dak Galbi?

Photo by Meghan McCarron.