Porridge and its (dis)contents: Congee, jok, haleem and what Grandma ate

Porridge in Los Angeles: Seven restaurants, across cultures, that serve great bowls of it.

Jonathan Gold • Los Angeles Times • December 19, 2014

Last week, we visited Porridge + Puffs, chef Minh Phan’s monument to the warm, oozy bowls of happiness that obsess so many of us this time of year, when temperatures plunge into the 50s at night, backyard trees groan with citrus and the waves are...

The full article can be read on the Los Angeles Times website.

Seven great places for congee

Jonathan Gold • Los Angeles Times • January 8, 2016

Delicious Food Corner If Siam Sunset is the most Thai place in Thai Town, and it is, then Delicious Food Corner, a breakfast place at the southern edge of Monterey Park, may be the most Hong Kong place in the San Gabriel Valley, which is saying a...

There’s crocodile and hog stomach, but Jonathan Gold is all about the crusty rice at Nature Pagoda

Jonathan Gold • Los Angeles Times • April 6, 2018

At Nature Pagoda, the crucial moment of your meal is when the super-heated clay pot hits your table, a small bowl of dark sauce balanced on its dome-shaped lid. A server hands you the sauce. A server removes the lid. You dribble the liquid down...

Jonathan Gold: At Porridge and Puffs, spoonfuls of devotion in every bowl

Jonathan Gold • Los Angeles Times • December 12, 2014

We all have particular ideas of what a porridge restaurant might look like, whether a Hong Kong-style congee shop like Delicious Corner in Monterey Park or a Taiwanese porridge hall like Lu’s Garden in San Gabriel, Atlacatl and its list of...

Review: Jonathan Gold can't stay away from Grand Central's Sari Sari Store

Jonathan Gold • Los Angeles Times • October 6, 2017

I have stopped by Sari Sari Store five times in the last three days, and I’m not sure if I should be admitting this to you or to a therapist. On Monday, I walked over with Times Food editor Amy Scattergood, my Sari Sari Store enabler, and tried...

Review: At Porridge + Puffs, rice is Minh Phan’s canvas for sophisticated self-expression

Bill Addison • Los Angeles Times • February 13, 2019

The word “porridge” means something different to everyone, conjuring bowls full of soupy spoon foods from every curve of the globe. At her Historic Filipinotown restaurant Porridge + Puffs, Minh Phan begins her interpretation with a strain of...