About a decade ago, in the halcyon years of the early 2010s, Los Angels underwent a culinary renaissance. The city transformed from a metropolitan area notorious for its deficit of high quality cuisine to one of the driving forces of a new American cooking. Restaurants like Animal and whatever Jose Centano was cooking pushed culinary culture forward, forefronting a masculine style of cooking focused on offal, fat, and a primeval savory richness. Suddenly the entire city was consuming foie gras, pig ear, and ox tail. Over the course of a decade, this style of cooking disseminated through the city, infiltrating every neighborhood and ethnic enclave. Japanese food featured hearts, livers, and pickled meats. Mexican cuisine fixated on tongue and stomach. Bacon and brussels sprouts could be found on every New American menu. Unfortunately, like all good things, this shift was not to signal a permanent change. Instagram reoriented cooking to feature aesthetics first, and ingredients second. The focal restaurants of this movement slowly lost favor and dissipated from business. The people, as with anything in our fast changing city, moved on. Los Angeles once more became a city of route, pedestrian cooking. So where to find exciting, unexpected flavors? The answer, as always, lies in the most unexpected of locations. Any exciting cooking this city has to offer can be found in the nooks and cranies of this metropolis's ethnic strip malls. Within these unassuming locations can be found the richness of a globalized culinary culture. In Koreatown one can stumble upon gopchang - delicately grilled cow intestines. The sidewalks and hovels of Thaitown feature the breadth of Northern Thailand and Laotian delicacies, which encompass everything from fermented crab to raw meat salads. Little Armenia is home to basturma, a specific varient of cured beef salami. The most delectable of sushi can be discovered in any neighborhood across the great swath of our city, with fish sourced from the San Pedro fish market, the busiest and freshest seafood depository outside of the many islands of Japan. Though the most prominent restaurants from its culinary heyday have since ceased to exist, Los Angeles is still a culinary capital of unparalleled breadth. One must simply know what neighborhoods bear fruit, and what unassuming storefronts are ripe for the plucking. The dingier the restaurant, the greater the prize, and the adventure one must take to get there only makes the meal all the more worthwhile.