Plugs —Tejal Rao

L.A. food, drink, and leisure recs from The New York Times' food critic at large + 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!)

#75 is Tejal Rao, a critic at large for the Food section of the New York Times and one of my all-time favorite food writers. Tejal has written for The Village Voice, Bloomberg, and the NYT as a restaurant critic. She’s a two-time winner of the James Beard Foundation’s Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Review Award. In 2018, she was named the New York Times’ first California critic and subsequently moved to Los Angeles. In her current role as critic at large, she covers all facets of food culture, from the chilling food on Severace to the evolution of Panda Express (and Inn), and how the immigration crackdown is affecting restaurant workers. Those are all recent links; I’ve loved so many of Tejal’s stories over the years, it’s too hard to select highlights. She’s a brilliant prose stylist, a skilled reporter, and a sharp analyst. I’ve been a reader of hers since long before we both lived in Los Angeles. Now that we cover the same food scene, it’s been a joy to get to know her. Here’s Tejal with her Plugs!

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Restaurant — Komal

I already loved going to Mercado La Paloma, but even more now that Komal is open. The tortillas are excellent in this really dynamic way, a little different each time — Fatima Juarez is running a molino inside the restaurant, nixtamalizing a few varieties of heirloom corn from Mexico and making many kinds of dishes with that fresh masa every day. I always get an order of the tortillas with mole, which is unexpectedly thin and smooth and drinkable, and I always go home with a mix of blue, red, and yellow corn tortillas. I love that I can bring my kid, who's a year and a half, knowing that she'll eat well and be super comfortable too.

Photos by Tejal Rao.