Colonia Publica

101 Best restaurants of Los Angeles

@latimes

"#83 In Uptown Whittier, on the aptly named Greenleaf Avenue, Colonia Publica is the great Chicano public house of Southeast L.A., a destination for Baja-made craft beer, michelada Sundays and the most down-home Mexican dish of them all: sopita de fideo. Five years after chef Ricardo Diaz debuted Colonia, the idea of a restaurant dedicated almost entirely to vermicelli-in-broth still feels revolutionary. A mainstay of Mexican and Mexican American home kitchens, the dish is still widely understood as fast, cheap sustenance for the working class. At his restaurant, Diaz ennobles the dish with a hip, ramen bar-inspired twist: endlessly customizable bowls featuring toppings traditional (nopalitos, queso fresco) and not (cilantro chutney). Someone hands you a long slip of paper and you make your selections. What results is a simmering bowl of wispy noodles, steamy in a light tomato broth, topped with a fried egg, bolts of smoked sausage and maybe a sprinkling of roasted corn. Lest you think fideo is everything at Colonia Publica, the menu is chockablock with excellent tacos and light Mexican aperitivos. The chicharrón quesadilla alone is worth a cross-town drive. Beer and wine. Street and city lot parking. Credit cards accepted."

Sean Glass

@sdotglass