Food highlights from my US trip
My favourite LA cafe, solo dining and meeting Hetty Lui McKinnon
I went overseas for the first time since 2019! The holiday felt like a prize because it was mostly free. A brand offered to fly my brother Derrick to New Orleans for a music festival and he asked if I wanted to join.
It was so much fun travelling together, especially because we live in different states and mostly catch up on Whatsapp. This is a very bloggy update with lots of photos — you may need to click ‘View entire message’ to see it all 👀
Los Angeles
It’s overwhelming going from a small town to a metropolis. Luckily, I had
’s crowd-sourced LA food recommendations, including her three top picks. I visited two, starting with Jurassic Magic, which was my favourite cafe of the whole trip. It had the nicest, sunniest vibe. We were fresh off the plane and acclimatised with jasmine, chamomile and honey iced teas.I slept zero hours on the flight from Sydney, so it was a miracle to be awake at dinner. Derrick’s friend took us to Woon for Chinese and I loved it so much for the fairy lights, the people watching, the food and the fit out. Even the takeaway bag was cute!
We were in Echo Park the following day, where I had the crunchiest fish burger at Little Fish, picked up books, postcards and an iced peppermint tea at Stories and then sped bought secondhand clothes with 10 minutes left on our parking.
On a solo day, I loved Little Tokyo for being delicious, walkable and accessible by train. I got a strawberry mochi from Fugetsu-do sweets shop (with the tiniest chocolate button!) and saw one of my favourite exhibitions of the trip — Paul Pfeiffer at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.
Other fun things: finding LA State Historic Park while walking off some jetlag, finally making it to one of Derrick’s listening parties 🥹, freshly squeezed OJ from a tree in someone’s yard, walking around H Mart (walls of kimchi, fridges full of corndogs, shelves of banana milk!), LA light and my first In & Out burger.
New York
We lucked out with a big room at the Ace Hotel and I loved waking up on Sunday morning to do a little grocery shop, pick up the weekend New York Times and order coffees from Stumptown.
We went to Bowery Market for ramen after I saw it on Priya Krishna’s Instagram, followed by window shopping in SoHo, which is also home to The Drawing Center. I loved the Joan Jonas exhibition here, more than the MoMA one!
Last time I was in New York, I had firmer food plans and a lot more fomo. Because this trip came as a bit of a surprise, my expectations were looser and I liked seeing where the day took me. Being a mostly solo diner was handy, I never had to wait for a counter seat, even at busy spots. There was excellent eavesdropping at Superiority Burger, which had such a fun and moody fit out and my favourite drink from the trip — a pandan creaming soda.
One night I had dinner with
, which was a dream! It was our first time meeting IRL despite years spent working together. Hetty writes a monthly recipe column for the site I edit (her vegetarian bolognese just went up, it’s very good).Turns out exchanging many emails, ideas and stories over the years makes hanging out feel very normal. We went to a book talk for Chanel Miller’s latest then for Georgian food across the road. It felt right that our evening featured lots of cheese and veggies. There was Khachapuri, a cheese-filled bread, roasted cabbage and Khinkali (Georgian dumplings).
![Blurry photo of Georgian dumplings, a cheese-filled bread and roast cabbage at a restaurant. Blurry photo of Georgian dumplings, a cheese-filled bread and roast cabbage at a restaurant.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F84d3a596-377c-4ac0-a841-2850fdbfc787_1536x2048.jpeg)
Chocolate chip pancakes came up at the book talk, so the next morning I made my way to Clinton Street Baking Co. My short stack came with butterscotch sauce and I loved sitting alongside other adults ordering similarly kid-like things, like milkshakes that arrived with whipped cream and a cherry on top.
Every time I go to New York, I have an excellent choc chip cookie. Derrick brought back Seven Grams Caffe’s gooey choc chip cookie from a late afternoon coffee run. It was so rich, it needed to be eaten in two sittings.
New Orleans
I went to an NBA game and a bunch of gigs in New Orleans, but some of my favourite days were spent doing low-key things. I ate vegan gumbo at Stanley while waiting for my laundry one afternoon and listened to buskers as I walked through streets lined with candy coloured buildings.
There were so many local specialities to try, and I relied on Joy the Baker posts to guide me. I went to Bakery Bar for doberge, a delicately layered cake that takes four days to make. It was so relaxing sitting in an air conditioned space on a steamy day, while the bartender sang along to Champagne Supernova in the background.
We were visiting for the Jazz & Heritage Festival, which also featured a massive food market, including a multiple stands selling homemade pies. I went with two crowd favourites: crawfish bread (stuffed with crawfish, cheese and sauce, which was very strong at first bite!) and a tangy mango freeze sold by a local radio station.
More delicious things: everything I ordered from Levee Bakery Co and especially the coffee-glazed twist, icy lemonade at Cochon Butcher which was the right amount of sour and perfect alongside their muffaletta, and the salads, short rib and expertly seasoned fries at Sylvain on our last night. And then of course beignet and cafe au lait!
Big thanks to my brother Derrick for inviting me on this trip — I loved travelling with you.
Back in a couple of weeks with recipe recommendations 😋
I know all these stories but still thoroughly enjoyed reading and reliving!
Reading this made me SO hungry!!! What a trip!