No matter how fierce your outfit, how rarefied your game or how brilliant your dance moves, at a certain point in the evening you realize you’re either going to hook up or give up. For the Street Issue, SOMA has devoted our nightlife prowess to scouring the best places to drink, dine and mingle, followed by the best street vendors for soaking your sorrows in chili cheese sauce if all roads lead to futility.
LOS ANGELES
Axe | 1009 Abbot Kinney Blvd., 310.664.9787
A true anomaly amongst southern California dining establishments, one will witness walking into Axe an utter lack of LA whiparound. The food at Axe is similarly grounded with a no-frills emphasis on organic, seasonal ingredients. This stripped-down approach is anything but boring. Lamb couscous, sautéed cauliflower and even roasted chicken – yes, chicken – are so flavorful you wonder why everyone was getting so jacked up over sea urchin reduction in the first place. The decor is “friendly industrial,” a manageable nod to minimalism with a polished concrete floor, rich wood tables and a charming outdoor patio for those who still live on the edge and have a smoke after dinner.
Teddy’s | 7000 Hollywood Blvd., 323.466.7000
Most reviews of Amanda Scheer-Demme’s star-addled enclave at the Roosevelt focus on how hard it is to get in. But it’s really not that hard at all. Simply call up the hotel, whose people kindly direct you to a New York PR rep, who then refers you to an LA rep, who then tells you to call someone named Jennifer. You leave Jennifer a few polite messages, refrain from leaving a third for fear of sounding desperate, and then, when the night rolls around when you were supposed to review the establishment, get really drunk on Proseco and vodka and watch the first four episodes of The OC from your Netflix queue. Piece of cake.
Pink’s | 709 N. La Brea Blvd., 323.931.4223
Open till 3 a.m. on weekends, Pink’s hot dogs have served the Hollywood masses since 1939 for good reason. It’s simply the best chili dog of all-time, and even the Space Mountain-circa-1987 lines stretching around the block shouldn’t deter your devotion. It’s good fun perusing the celebrity clientele photos – everyone from Billie Dee Williams to Christian Slater has ponied up for a delicious late night dog.
El Matador | Corner of Western and Lexington, East Hollywood
Conveniently located by the 101 freeway onramp, and nestled cozily in an auto shop parking lot, you’ll find truly deliciosa tacos at El Matador, one of LA’s most legit taco-purveying trucks. Gorge yourself on asada, al pastor and carnitas tacos, heartily garnished with onion, cilantro and spicy roja salsa. The meat is expertly grilled, and the tacos are served fast, hot and cheap ($1 per taco). The only thing missing is a Tums dispenser, but what’s a little heartburn between tacos? HEATHER BRADLEY
LONDON
Annex 3 | 6 Little Portland Street, London W1, +44 20 7631 0700
At Annex 3, the menu is basic, that tedious mixture of Asian fusion, sea bass and Thai curry. However, it is the bar that the place is really frequented for and the reason for my recommendation. Sit amongst the eccentric fixtures and fittings from the same brains behind the winning Trois Garçons restaurant and watch the watering hole fill with Saudi princes, Tom Ford and thirsty office workers alike, a tempting vista of the current state of London streets.
St. John Bread & Wine | 94-96 Commercial Street, London E1 6LZ, +44 20 7247 8724
St. John’s is serious about food and attracts a similar crowd. The foodie, arts and literary crowd gather in the establishment over fat loaves of freshly cut brown (baked onsite), spread with salty butter, washing it down with red vino whilst they wait for their exhilarating if somewhat rough dishes. Meat is a specialty but not of the steak tartare variety. Here you’ll find meat served in the thrifty English rural style of years gone by: offal, suckling pig, ox tongue and hare leg can all be devoured with cabbage, mash and swede. It’s not, I may add, a place to take a vegetarian.
The West Cornish Pastry Company | 1 Piazza, Covent Garden, London WC1, +44 020 7836 8336
Step into the Cove and you find yourself transported to a small Cornish fishing village. Quaint, charming and away from the busy streets of Covent Garden piazza, this little bolt-hole is a great place to take you away from the mean streets of London town. Pastries have long been a comfort food to grab on the run for Cornish sailors. A pasty is an oval shaped pastry pie with such fillings as steak, cheese, potato, onion and turnip. Cheap, cheerful and filling, they are best consumed with a pint of beer or chips with a dash of salt and vinegar. Note the cheeky pirate logo of company that adds a dash of Cornish flavor. Sit underneath the timbers and imagine the pirates marauding around the Cornish streets of old.
La Crêperie de Hampstead | 77 Hampstead High Street, London NW3
Set off the genteel and atmospheric Hampstead High Street, La Crêperie is more suited for a Sunday stroll than a post pub snack. Sold from a white van (with its own permanent numbered address, number 77 Hampstead High Street), the crepes and galletes are both sweet and savory and served in fish-and-chip-style cones. Like any good street food, the queues are not always so sweet, but once you have your cone in hand, amble down the high street. As you wander past the imposing period houses, imagine yourself as the English peachy rose Helena Bonham Carter (it’s her stomping ground), if only for a minute.
Amaya | 19 Motcomb Street, London SW1X 8JT, +44 20 7823 1166
A ladies-that-lunch venue does not always conjure up images of street food. Ladies do not, as we know, favor streetwalking. However at Amaya, the chi Knightsbridge Indian bolt-hole, the food is streets away from a chicken balti. Eschewing the English fave of a chicken vindaloo (there is a even a pop song to celebrate vindaloo), Amaya concentrates on authentic Indian food with different styles of cooking that include tandoori, char-grilling and iron-skillet. This is where the street element of the restaurant comes into its own. Rather than settle on (and let’s be frank) the rather un-experimental and bourgeois method of eating, share a little tapas and feel the love. KERRY OLSEN
PARIS
Les Bouquinistes
Many an iconic image springs to the mind when daydreaming of Paris, but you could veritably dynamite every major monument in the capital, and still, there would be la Seine. Mostly, the ethereal stretch of the river that cleaves Paris is there to keep a comfortable distance between le Rive Gauche et le Rive Droit, from the bohemian posturing in Saint Germain and the high-culture poncing about across the way. It also inspires lots of snogging at sunset.
But la Seine also anchors the trade of Les Bouquinistes, whose presence is as exigent to the aesthetic fabric of Paris as that of chain-smoking intellectual at Café de Flore. On any clement day, stroll the Quai Conti to the Quai Voltaire, the 6th Arrondissement to the 7th, and you will find Genet and Duras, Breton and de Sade, perhaps even Mirbeau and Nin. True, Paris’ open-air, used-book sellers also hawk no small amount of Eiffel Tower magnets and tired Lautrec posters. But should that utterly harmless trade contribute to your serendipitous scoring of a first edition copy of Miller’s Tropic of Cancer or de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, then you may find yourself actually giving thanks for the existence of the free-spending tourist hordes. Just a little.
They pay a pittance for annual rent, their selections are sometimes haphazardly arranged, and you could overthrow a couple of regimes in the time it would take to actually get to the top of the waiting list for a stall; but without Les Bouquinistes, you would be forced into dusty old shops, rather than attempting to expand your literary horizons while in clear in eyeshot of the Louvre. There’s nothing quite like it, really.
For full literary effect, book into L’Hotel, at 13 rue des Beaux Arts, where Oscar Wilde wrote to a friend, “I am dying beyond my means,” just before expiring. And make sure to lunch at the endlessly trendy Voltaire, on the Quai Voltaire. Ken Scrudato
