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.

Birria is among the biggest culinary buzzwords across the U.S. today – only it’s not the goat-based Jalisco recipes that get the attention. birria de chivo, the signature dish of the state. Most people, especially Jaliscans, traditionally think of birria as being made from goat. Hector’s version, tatemada, involves a final roast of birria de chivo in the oven, making the skin charred and crisp. When the hour strikes eight on Saturday morning, Hector Ramirez pulls the wooden handle on a cast-iron lid sealing his self-constructed, propane-fueled, cylindrical oven and unveils his birria tatemada.