So by now, you’ve all got your March issue of Saveur, and you already know L.A. is a great food town.

They can point out all of the specifics, but the big one for me simply is: in February, you can eat beautiful fruits and vegetables. Yes, they’re eating potatoes and kale out there, just like we are on the East Coast, but they’re doing it in the sunshine, and that makes all the difference. Where we subsist on two varieties of tangerine (the only dose of color in my winter diet), they have about 46.

I had the pleasure of meeting the brains behind A Thinking Stomach, and she arrived with Meyer lemons and a bag of snap peas, like it was no big thing. Snap peas! In February! I’m crying.

In part because of this freshness, and in part because L.A. is like Queens but a million times bigger, we ate amazing food three nights in a row, without even trying.

Moles La Tia, on Cesar Chavez in East L.A., is the kind of place we just don’t have yet in New York–Oaxacan food, a little fancier than you might expect, not dirt cheap and all exceptionally good, right down to the clearly housemade salsa and the slightly funky goat cheese grated on the guacamole. Man. I totally misordered (wound up without any mole), and it was still better than most Mexican we get here. And semi-fancy Mexican–I’ve watched a ton of these places go under, just in Astoria. Breaks my heart.

The next night, we went to Soi 7, downtown, for Thai food. Having just come back from Thailand, I was starving for everything, but slightly skeptical that it would measure up. Again with the misordering–following my suggestions, we wound up with chili-basil everything. But whoa–so good. There were wee sweet scallops in the noodles, and the eggplant is something I’d want to eat for lunch every day. And because we weren’t in New York, we could sit for a full four hours at our table and talk and talk. We got about eight rounds of tea (white, with black fruits–so delicate!).

And on Sunday, I went to a Chicks with Knives dinner. I have spent the last nine years or so throwing dinner parties for fun and very occasional profit. I got a book deal out of it, but I’ve gotten precious few reciprocal dinner invitations. And I’ve never gone to someone else’s supper club. (I was just about to go to Lightbulb Oven, but then she moved to Dallas–kills me!)

So I have fresh appreciation for anyone who has ever made the trek to Sunday Night Dinner, showing up totally cold in the middle of a strange neighborhood. And I’m sorry I couldn’t provide them with the fabulous digs I enjoyed at the Chicks with Knives event. Again, we were downtown–this time in a fabu loft. And the food was fantastic–I love hollandaise on anything, but who knew it would be so delicious on fennel? And I have to start making my own butter, stat.

And I have to start rounding up some more smarty-pants friends. New Yorkers–watch your backs. You think you’re the wittiest, most intellectual folks around, but, no offense, because you don’t have to drive home, you get pretty sloppy drunk by Hour Three and start repeating your jokes.

Which is about the only point in favor of a car culture that I can think of: staying sober enough to drive home leads to far more charming conversation. If you’re not sure how to cope without the sauce, please see the Dinner Party Download.

So we come relatively full circle. And because I have no other photos in this post, here’s a random one, from the cathedral downtown:

Reasons to Like Los Angeles, Part 1: Downtown
Reasons to Like Los Angeles, Part 2: Weirdness