Plugs — Now Serving

L.A. food, drink, and leisure recs from cookbook connoisseurs Ken Concepcion and Michelle Mungcal + 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!)

#88 is Now Serving, aka Ken Conception and Michelle Mungcal, the couple behind L.A.’s essential cookbook shop. Everyone who reads The Angel knows Now Serving, or at least should: it’s where you’ll find the most exciting new cookbooks to hit shelves in addition to vintage titles, culinary zines and magazines, and even kitchen gear. And if there’s anything Ken and Michelle don’t have in stock, you can always ask them to order it for you. Now Serving also hosts a delightful and engaging event series featuring authors in conversation with other writers. (Next week, Meghan McCarron is interviewing

John Birdsall

about his latest book, What is Queer Food? How We Served a Revolution.) Before opening Now Serving alongside Michelle in 2017, Ken worked as a chef in St. Louis and Los Angeles for nearly two decades, including a long tenure with Wolfgang Puck. Michelle is a Southern California native, makeup artist, and former restaurant professional. They live in Pasadena with their daughter, Frankie. Here they are with their Plugs — this edition has been a long time coming!

---

Restaurant — Ototo

We love experiencing a good meal out, but between managing the shop, events, and our seven-year-old, we hardly get the opportunity to dine out and try new places as much as we really would like to. If we’re not cooking at home or grabbing something to go, the places we crave are places with good food, excellent service, and an easy laid-back vibe. When you don’t go out to eat a lot, where you spend your money and time matters. And we also love a good bar seat. So a place that makes sense for us for the rarefied adult-only meal is a restaurant like Ototo in Echo Park. The menu — the Shaki Shaki! The fish sando! The potato salad! The okonomiyaki! — is stockpiled with bulletproof bangers. And don’t skip dessert! Not being super familiar with sake, we love placing all our trust in what the staff likes or anything seasonal that we shouldn’t miss out on trying. Because of how casual it is, Ototo is a place you can just pop in for a quick bite before a show or kick back and build an entire evening’s experience. The energy is always buzzing. If you have a group of friends, the little PDR is a super cute power move. It’s hard to leave Ototo without thinking how much you love it and what you’re going to order the next time you go back.

Photo courtesy of Ken and Michelle.