Street food gets a bad rap. As anyone who has plunged into an icy mango con chile on a searing summer day, or devoured a steaming tamal of warm, melty cheese and savory, Salvadorean-style beans on a corner at midnight well knows, Los Angeles has a rich street food tradition.
However, “rich” is often the operative word when dealing with sidewalk vendors. There’s nothing healthy about bacon-wrapped hot dogs, terrifyingly-large and lardy burritos or slurpy, spicy menudo. They may quiet your hunger, and maybe even soothe your soul, but these gastric bombs are far from good-for-your-body food.
Café Nagomi is bucking this time-honored tradition by offering a tasty—and mobile!—sidewalk nosh that’s good for mind, body and spirit. With a joyful explosion of light, wholesome fare that’s organic and health-conscious, they’re loading up their robin’s-egg-blue kitchen on wheels and toodling their way through the streets of LA.
Chef Taka Kuroda and his dedicated skeleton crew—today it’s Akiko, tomorrow Ishigro—specialize in Japanese-influenced organic offerings, many of which are macrobiotic and animal-free. The principle of macrobiotic eating—a system that originated in Japan—is to maintain balance; food should contain equal parts yin and yang. For the chef, this presents a unique set of challenges: he or she must account for the seasons, time of day, oil and salt ratios, colors of the products used, temperatures of various ingredients and the five flavors: sweet, bitter, sharp, sour and salt. Freshness and quality is of paramount importance, and minimal processing of ingredients is standard.
These rigorous principles are expressed most emphatically in Café Nagomi’s salads, composed of the freshest and brightest-flavored greens ever to grace a to-go box. (All of Café Nagomi’s food is precisely and artfully arranged for take-out; a good thing, because standing in LA’s sweltering late-summer heat while attempting to balance a plate in one hand and chopsticks in the other is an unthinkable proposition.) Vibrant baby greens, slightly-spicy, bittersweet and astringent, are the star of the dish, rather than a supporting player to the dressing. A soba salad arrives with noodles perfectly al dente and heady with buckwheat’s characteristic nutty fragrance. Crisp snapping green onion, honewort, baby red cabbage and various seasonal greens ring with peppery flavor. A citrus soy dressing with a comforting sesame aroma—cloying in large amounts but just right here—could use just a bit more lemon to brighten the flavor, but is warm, floral and utterly seductive nonetheless.
Every day Kuroda offers two “main dish” plates. One is animal-free—and that includes eggs and dairy—and the other features fish as a component. “Some of the fish are not macrobiotic because the flesh is too strong in color and fat,” explains Kuroda; but when they’re this fresh, nutritious and tasty, who cares? When we visit, the fish of the day is Dover sole (which, incidentally, being light and not oily, is macrobiotic). Wrapped artistically in a little packet of foil, it’s prepared with thyme, dill, shallots and jewel-like dices of fresh tomato. Rounds of thinly sliced lemon nestle beneath the fish, lending it flavor and slowing the cooking process as it marinates the flaky, light filet. This ideally-sized portion makes an artistic assemblage with its attendant side dishes and Café Nagomi’s outstanding brown rice, which, in true macrobiotic tradition, is as important a component of the plate as the Dover sole. At many restaurants, rice is an afterthought or filler. Here it’s nutty, toothy and robust.
On a ragingly hot summer afternoon, nothing is more blissful than Café Nagomi’s iced green tea with fresh, local mint leaves. It’s a testament to the profound fragrance of these leaves that even after I gulp down the tea, the aroma of leftover mint in the bottom of the glass suffuses the interior of my car. Kuroda’s soy smoothie with cantaloupe (also available in banana, strawberry, mango, banana/green tea and banana/cocoa, all made with mild beet sugar) plays up the exotic, jasmine-hinted perfume of the cantaloupe and creates a perfect coda to an outstanding meal that is, in the truest sense of the word, balanced. It’s nice to know that Café Nagomi delivers on its promise of “being nice to your body.” What’s more, when food is lavished with this much care and attention, you leave truly balanced—a feeling you don’t often get by stepping out onto an LA sidewalk.
So the only question is: when are they coming to my office?
Lunch at Café Nagomi between the hours of 10 and 2 in West Hollywood on Wednesdays and Culver City the rest of the week. They’re also available for event catering. CafeNagomi.com ; 310.923.8515.