Even as traffic slithers to a crawl west of the 405 Freeway on Santa Monica Boulevard, drivers may be hard-pressed to notice the small storefront known as Naan Hut standing on their periphery. Neither its name nor its red-and-yellow signage offer any indication that a 1,000-year-old Persian tradition of baking naan sangak is upheld within these walls in the heart of Tehrangeles, the unofficial name for the West L.A. stomping grounds of L.A.’s Iranian diaspora. An ancient bread, legend ascribes the origins of sangak to the 10th-century Persian military. Soldiers would march together carrying small river stones known in Farsi as “sangak,” arranging them together at their day’s destination to aid in the special technique of baking this bread come chow time.

Ahead of our recent launch in Los Angeles, we spoke to our L.A. editorial advisor Hadley Tomicki and L.A. walk leader Ethan Brosowsky about their relationship with food in the city and their views on its culinary atmosphere. Hadley is a Los Angeles-based critic and journalist whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine and many other places. He is also one the co-founders of the site LA Taco. Ethan has been guiding people around Los Angeles for over two decades, first as a skipper on Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise, then later as a private guide. Ethan studied at University College London and received his bachelor of arts in politics and history of art from New York University.

2021 was the second-driest year in California’s recorded history. In L.A., there was no rain in November for the first time since 1992, and the mercury settled above 80 almost every afternoon that month. Our climate is usually arid, but this is extreme. We are in a drought (despite some recent record-breaking rain), with depleted reservoirs and dusty hillsides. But there was a silver lining: 2021 was also a year of eating outdoors, in parks and on decks, standing next to open trunks or sitting on the curb, in parking lots converted into patios and parklets jutting into the street, so we needed those blue skies.

This beige-walled, gray-roofed supermarket, squeezed between razor wire-rimmed industrial warehouses and North Hollywood train tracks, isn’t much to look at. The name, Pacific Coast Food, fails to hint at what one may find inside: a nirvana of edible nostalgia for those who grew up in the Soviet Union and Communist Eastern Bloc. Colloquially, it’s known as the “Russian Costco,” after the American wholesale giant, and a more fitting name for the aisles upon aisles of snacks and mainstays coming from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus region. The business was initially opened as a wholesaler in 2010 with San Fernando Valley’s Slavic, Baltic and Western-and-Central Asian communities in mind; notably Studio City’s huge Russian enclave and the Armenian strongholds of North Hollywood and Glendale.