Every few months, a small part of quiet West 87th Street near the Los Angeles International Airport turns into a scene of nighttime street food. On these evenings, Ayara Thai – a family-owned restaurant that has been around for 19 years – sets up a makeshift kitchen on the street and puts tables out on their sidewalk and the street patio that was originally installed during the pandemic shutdown. Thai hotpot, barbecue and street food popups are among the special events Ayara Thai holds throughout the year, but there is one that is the most unique and perhaps the most popular: the kancha boat noodle. Thai boat noodle is a noodle soup with a rich broth made from pork or beef, dark soy sauce, herbs, and typically thickened with cow or pig’s blood.

In the grab-and-go section of Katsu Sando’s second L.A. location hangs a T-shirt that reads: “Krispy and thicc sandos bruh.” That’s not a typo. The extra “c” in “thicc” refers not only to the audibly loud crunch you get from the casual Japanese restaurant’s panko-crusted pork and chicken cutlets, but to the generous fillings and fat slices of honey-milk bread that make up its eponymous dish, the katsu sando. Katsu is a fried cutlet, an iconic element of Japanese cooking. But sando is not just a shorter way to say sandwich. It is the translation of a Japanese interpretation of a “Western-inspired sandwich” – a fitting star dish for this L.A. spot. The bread itself (shokupan), made with milk and honey, is meant to be an elevated version of fluffy American sandwich loaves like Wonder Bread.

It’s Sunday morning in Los Angeles. Behind the white door of a single-story house that blends in with its suburban neighbors, Jalia Walusimbi starts her day as she does every other. Stripping the tough green skins from a cluster of plantains, she plunks the peeled fruit into a boiling pot to prepare a dish of matooke covered in peanut-based binyebwa to pair with the samosas, mbuzi goat soup and luwombo she’ll shortly place before the homesick Ugandan expats and curious culinary tourists who visit the informal restaurant she runs from inside her Van Nuys dining room.