{"id":11102,"date":"2019-12-10T09:59:17","date_gmt":"2019-12-10T17:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/hi-lo\/?p=30000005291"},"modified":"2019-12-10T12:51:43","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T20:51:43","slug":"addison-play-amor-thomas-ortega-best-la-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/food\/addison-play-amor-thomas-ortega-best-la-times","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach’s Playa Amor named one of the region’s best restaurants by L.A. Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chef Thomas Ortega’s Playa Amor, the East Long Beach extension of his Amor family of restaurants, has been named one of the best restaurants<\/a> in the region by the Los Angeles Times\u2014and for good reason.<\/p>\n

The list is a simultaneous upholding but definitive divergence from the list founded by Jonathan Gold, whose final No. 1 restaurant before he died\u2014the mind-boggling concept restaurant Vespertine\u2014now sits in dead last at No. 101.<\/p>\n

And while Gold sung the praises<\/a> of Ortega’s first step into a full sit-down experience, he perpetually left Long Beach off of his list while current Los Angeles critic Patricia Esc\u00e1rcega has lifted the local restaurant to the No. 59 spot.<\/p>\n

Esc\u00e1rcega calls Ortega’s food “smart,” “delicious” and “smudging the line between high and low”\u2014and I’ve long agreed.<\/p>\n

Playa Amor, for me, is Chef Thomas Ortega\u2019s very personal love letter to Mexico from the United States. That dichotomy is important in his food: Like many Mexican-Americans\u2014too “pocho” for their Mexican relatives still living in the motherland and too Mexican for white Americans\u2014his food simultaneously uplifts and reinterprets Mexican food. This is his confession: Ortega loves Mexico\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>the United States.<\/p>\n

And like any great confession of love, it comes with challenges to the status quo-definition of love. This is modern, playful food for which Ortega is unapologetic.<\/p>\n

His verison of\u00a0pescado zarandeado,\u00a0<\/em>a fish that is slow-cooked over extremely hot coals, is proof that he can be playful but careful to the point of being respectfully referential: using Chilean sea bass instead of the more traditional snook, you\u2019re offered a cleaner but direct descendant of the classic Sinaloan dish.<\/p>\n

And don\u2019t think he won\u2019t slyly throw in a full-on wrench into what you think defines Mexican food. He, indeed, has a pasta dish: spaghetti is tossed with roasted New Mexican Hatch chiles cream sauce, garlic, and pecorino when the chiles are in season (which is right now, by the way).<\/p>\n

Either way, whether you play it safe with\u00a0<\/i>Chamoy-glazed pork belly or short rib\u00a0birria\u00a0<\/i>or become adventurous by trying a bowl of\u00a0chapulines<\/em>, grasshoppers that Ortega classically fries to a crisp and tosses with citruses and spices, or getting his Mexicano shrimp\u2019n\u2019grits with house-made hominy\u2026<\/p>\n

Long Beach should be honored to have a place that is even remotely like Playa Amor.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most disheartening is the list\u2019s exclusion of anything else, particularly\u00a0Ellie\u2019s and\u2014I know this might seem outta the blue\u2014as well as Phnom Penh Noodle Shack and El Pollo Imperial.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ellie\u2019s deserves it simply for quality and execution.<\/p>\n

But the list has a particularly culture-centric vibe where it (wonderfully, I might add) shows off the region\u2019s great cuisines thanks to immigrants. And missing are Cambodian and Peruvian food, two of which the best examples sit right here in Long Beach.<\/p>\n

But, I digress…<\/p>\n

Playa Amor is located at 6527 Pacific Coast Highway.<\/em><\/p>\n

Brian Addison is a columnist and editor for the Long Beach Post.\u00a0<\/em>Reach him at\u00a0brian@lbpost.com\u00a0or on social media at\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0Instagram<\/a>, and\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Times critics called Ortega’s food “smart,” “delicious” and “smudging the line between high and low.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"featured_media":65565,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[144],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[2691],"class_list":["post-11102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food","tag-east-long-beach","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11102"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=11102"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}