A lot of Latin American restaurants feel the need to include Mexican food to draw otherwise unsure customers in. For that reason, I am always excited to find ethnic restaurants sticking to their goods. One such restaurant is Peru Chix, basically a hole-in-the-wall type of place in Gardena. Peru Chix has such Peruvian favorites as Lomo Saltado, but I kinda thought chicken would be the way to go.

So I went ahead and ordered half of one. As a combo, which is most likely meant for multiple people, it came with two sides and a drink. I chose the fries and fried plantains, then looked at the pretty Peruvian meal in front of me. The chicken was rotisserie style fully clothed in skin and nicely seasoned. But, like all good Peruvian restaurants, they had some aji sauce to dip all foods in, as well as some sort of house dip. The aji was surprisingly spicy, but delicious.

The sides were pretty damn good too. I always love me plantains and they managed to cook them up with a bit of crisp and none of the oiliness that sometimes accompanies fried plantains. Perhaps best of all, the whole shebang was only 10 bucks. It’s a great deal for some satisfying food.

Tucked into a row of warehouses in Gardena there is a big secret. In fact, the secret is so well-hidden, if you weren’t looking for it, you could miss it altogether. This secret is Eatalian Cafe, an Italian restaurant that resides in a warehouse itself and serves up some classy cuisine.

Eatalian specializes in pizza moreso than other Italian food, so our group decided we needed to start out with one of those. After little debate, we decided on the Pizman, which came with tomato sauce, mozzarella, speck, porcini and gorgonzola. Porcini, despite sounding like a beautiful cured meat, is actually a mushroom, yet I realized as someone splitting a pizza I would have to pick it off myself.

The pizza took a surprisingly long time to cook, but when it came out, we went right to work on it. The dough was incredibly thin and I was happy to see that the toppings spread all the way to the edge of the pizza, leaving little extra crust. The crust that did remain was perfectly crisp. In all, the pizza truly reminded me of pizza in Italy. Granted, I haven’t been there for twelve years, but it sure brought back memories.

I also had myself some gnocchi. That sexy potato pasta is made fresh and came with a choice of sauces. I asked the waitress for help and she failed to narrow things down, so I opted for their meat sauce. As usual, this was a good choice and the gnocchi did not let me down.

It’s almost a shame that Eatalian Cafe is hidden away in a row of warehouses in Gardena. It’s a restaurant that deserves to be shared with the world, yet its location is part of its charm. Anyone willing to seek it out will be rewarded with a tasty treat.

For too long have I been subjected to people who believe the beginning and end of Japanese food is sushi. While living in Japan for half of a year, I believe I ate sushi once. This was not because I was avoiding sushi, but because sushi just wasn’t as prevalent as we are led to believe. Sure, you can find sushi if you are looking, but it is not as though every corner has a sushi place. Rather, it is much more common to find ramen. This isn’t your Cup O Noodle college hangover ramen, but a real, hearty bowl of broth with noodles, meat and more. Recently, some coworkers of mine were heading out to “that ramen place” in Gardena for lunch and I joined them, fingers crossed that this place would be the true Japanese food I’ve been waiting for.

When we pulled into the parking lot, I knew this place had to be good. There weren’t any Fords or Chevys (no offense, Detroit) in the parking lot, but it was full of Honda, Toyota and Nissan. I looked at the sign, which read Hakata Ramen Shinsengumi and knew I was going to a good place. Inside and outside, everything was written in both English and Japanese. Waiters were yelling random words in Japanese around the place, which could have been obscenities for all that we knew, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t since so much of the clientele was actually Asian.

I took a look at the menu and pretty easily found what I wanted. This was the B-Set, which was a bowl of Hakata Ramen, gyoza dumplings and steamed rice. Rather than telling the waiter what we wanted, we had a slip of paper to write our orders on. This gave you many options on how to order your ramen. I ordered my noodles hard, my oil normal and my soup base strong. I also ordered some Spicy Miso in the soup. At the end of the options, there was a section called “Un desire able?” None of us could quite figure out what this meant, since it seemed semi-Spanish. I thought that whatever this was, I would want two, but I was wrong. Our waiter told us that this was ginger and green onions. I only got the ginger, which I suppose constitutes only half of an “un desire able.”

My ramen (pictured above), gyoza and rice arrived together and looked so awesome that a drunk man wandering the streets of Osaka at 2 am would have been proud. I dug into both and was a happy man. The gyoza was crispy on the bottom and soft on top, just as it should be. When I took a look at the ramen my friends were eating, I knew I had made the right choice by going with hard noodles. It’s kind of like getting al dente with Italian pasta, but better.

The spicy miso was a great addition to this soup, also. It came in a scoop like ice cream, but happily dissolved into the broth with a little twirl of the chopsticks. It turned the broth into a beautiful orange color and added some delicious flavor. The only real problem with this soup came after I had eaten all of the noodles and meat. When the broth was all alone, it was too salty and strong. This was mostly my fault for ordering a strong soup base, so I have learned my lesson and will get the normal soup base next time.

As a bonus for having extra broth at the end of my meal and being childlike, I discovered the art of ramen oil painting. This involved me squirting bits of oil into my soup and shaping it with my chopsticks. If you look closely, you can see the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus to the right!–>

So, yeah. This was a pretty great place to get some lunch, and cheap too! The ability to customize your ramen is a pretty sweet option that can make anyone happy. Also, they have their own YouTube page, with is pretty badass. This is Japanese food as it is meant to be and not some silly, trendy sushi restaurant with rolls stuffed with jicama.