Cold salads, tuna 3 ways, a grilling shortcut

Plus a trip to my new favorite sushi spot

Egg, tuna, and chicken salad, three of the most popular foods in America, are on the verge of having a “moment,” according to Eater, as long as they’re served as an artless scoop on a plate and not inside of bread, on rice, or over a bed of greens. The piece predicts a rise in nostalgia-pilled, mayonnaise-based “cold salads.” “Cold”—a sector of salads so large that I don’t believe it requires a distinction. In my opinion, some of the salad-ification processes require a temperature reduction.

Bub & Grandma’s cold salad with a cold scoop of tuna.

My favorite cold salad ball is from Bub & Grandma’s, atop first-rate vegetables and Bub’s creamy vegan dressing. Get some potato chips on the side. They started doing live jazz nights there on Sundays and Mondays. Andy, their owner, said they’re serving burgers, some meats and cheeses, and rolling out an eventual dinner menu. Sunday night jazz with a B&G bread basket sounds a bit fun. I discovered a new sandwich spot by my house called Corner Market. Here's their tuna sammy sans cheese; add avocado, onion, and honey mustard, per the owner's suggestion. A great, light tuna sandwich, low on mayo, but I’m not missing it. Their bread, a 10-inch sourdough roll from Melrose Baking Company, is perfectly straightforward.

Tuna sandwich, loaded, hold the Swiss.

We hit Yui last night, one of my favorite sushi spots in Sierra Madre, California—a sleepy mountain town deep in northeast Los Angeles with an old-timey ice cream shop and stuff like that. Yui does a really inventive but affordable omakase full of things I haven’t found anywhere else, but we ordered from their non-sushi menu last night. Their spicy tuna with pine nuts in butter lettuce has a clean Mediterranean bite that could sit on any seaside Grecian or Sicilian lunch menu. The often-chopped-to-bits spicy tuna paste is replaced here by fresh chunks cut and seasoned to order, one of the better slept-on “skinny girl” bites in Los Angeles.

Mr. Chow could never.

Next, their ara-ziru, a monger’s soup made from fish bones—Chilean sea bass tonight—is served with paper-thin jalapeño slices to help cut the richness. Nobody does paper-thin like a sushi chef, after all.

Bone marrow soup. A steal at $8 until you remember it’s made out of fish bones.

I loved how dry and muted in color the Hokkaido sea urchins’ braids sat in their crispy cups.

More of a Santa Barbara guy myself, but these Hokkaido had me tweaking.

Lastly, keeping with the theme of sushi by-products, we had a grilled sea bream head, butterflied with charred fins and chicken-oyster-like face bits. We skipped the eyeballs.

Do not fold this back up like a taco. You’ll see a face and not a fun one.

Yui Restaurant (Instagram)

24 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Unit A

Sierra Madre, CA 91024

Shortcuts

I’m mostly against them, in the kitchen at least. I don’t want a 15-minute dinner. I want a dinner that takes all day to prepare and 15 minutes to finish. I want to buy a piece of salmon in the morning and leave it salted and uncovered in my fridge all day. I want to pull it out hours later and slowly sizzle it, skin side down, in olive oil and butter on low-medium heat (not medium-low)—never flipping the fish, but basting it toward the end until the skin is crackling like pork and the flesh is unable to support its own weight.

Salmon👍🏼

But what about shortcuts that don’t take away from the overall quality? It’s Memorial Day this weekend. I didn’t realize it until yesterday, but it makes sense, as the pull of the grill has been strong lately. After visiting Stir Crazy’s one-year anniversary and watching Macklin, one of their owners, grill oysters with an espelette butter on one of those little Japanese ceramic grills, I’ve been trying to think of ways to scratch the charcoal itch without pulling out the Weber, building a fire, waiting for the coals to burn their black smoke off, cleaning the grates, etc. It’s really fun to grill, and the flavor of smoke and heat and charred corner bits is unable to be duplicated, but it’s a pain in the ass to get to the point where you’ve got tongs in one hand and a beer in the other, saying “yep” under your breath to nobody in particular.

Within 30 seconds of arriving, I spilled oyster butter all down the leg of my pants and then ran into 45 people I knew.

What started as a craving for Night + Market’s tofu larb turned into a herby-green crispy rice salad with some grilled fish. Karolyn used Night + Market’s crispy rice recipe but added romaine and extra herbs like Thai basil, mint, green onion, and cilantro. Luckily for me, my fish grilling shortcut was a lot more fun (and got a better char) than doing it the hard way.

Grilled ginger turmeric tilapia over crispy rice salad.

The best part about grilling, wok cookery, or even omelet making is that things move quickly, and constant attention is required, or you’ll fuck it up beyond repair—like riding a bull or cutting your bangs. So I got my charcoal chimney starter, tore up a Whole Foods paper bag or two, and drizzled some vegetable oil on the paper before filling it up with my charcoal. This helps keep the paper burning long enough to light my coals. Once lit, I use an additional Whole Foods bag, folded tightly, to fan the flames the way my Armenian brothers do when cooking kebab in the park. Twenty minutes later, my coals were gray and glowing, and thanks to my five-dollar grill grate, I was blasting my tilapia straight over the chimney starter—no need for a whole-ass grill. You can assemble this setup for $20 on Amazon and take it anywhere.

A quick note about last week’s newsletter: I failed to mention that Keith McNally no longer owns or operates the New York institution The Odeon, so credit is due to Lynn Wagenknecht for running the show.

Also, I’ll be OOO next week, so there will be no newsletter. I’m going to Tbilisi and Greece because avoiding cheese in Los Angeles has become too easy.