The online dining guide for SoFi Stadium lists 30 options — 15 of which are bars, including Pacifico Patio, Michelob Ultra Bar, Johnny Walker Bar, Hendrick’s Gin Bar, Crown Royal Bar and 1800 Tequila Bar. The dining options lean toward the generic, with names that include the words BBQ, burgers, Baja, charred, deli and pizza.
Compared with the culinary exotic to be found at Dodger Stadium, this mostly feels like a Midwest commuter airport approach to food — just grab and go. Which also happens to be one of the dining concepts at SoFi.
For many of us who are lucky enough to cadge a ticket to watch the Rams lay waste to the competition on their inevitable path to the Super Bowl (Will the Chargers also be there in February? One can hope.), grab-and-go won’t be good enough. Sure, traffic to SoFi can be so arduous that the notion of stopping nearby for a feed on the way just isn’t in the realm of reasonable options. And afterwards, you’ll want to get back home to your Barcalounger to chew on some cold leftovers, and relive the sight and sound of 350-pound linebackers colliding at full speed.
But trust me, there are good eats to be found on the streets leading to and away from SoFi Stadium: remarkable soul food … the breakfast of dreams … old school Italian … African soul food fusion … fresh-from-the-sea Mexican. And more. It’s all there.
Before a game, after a game or (if need be) during a game, these eats make any trip to SoFi Stadium a culinary touchdown.
The Serving Spoon
1403 Centinela Ave., Inglewood; 310-412-3927, www.theservingspoon.net
When: Breakfast and lunch, every day
The Serving Spoon is part restaurant, part neighborhood gathering spot, part cultural phenomenon — and part inspirational message. Or, perhaps I should say, messages because upbeat affirmations are all over the restaurant. One says, “Take Your Place/Make Your Mark/Live Your Life.” Another reads, “Faith Dream Believe.” Then, there’s “Life Is Art/Paint Your Dreams.” And, what may be my favorite: “Thank You For Honoring Our Business.”
You show up for breakfast, and the choices are … so many. I guess the prime choice is one of the breakfast combinations that involve two eggs (any-style, of course), meats, and grits, rice, home-style potatoes, oatmeal or sliced tomatoes. Oh, and a choice of toast, an English muffin, corn bread or a biscuit. Sounds simple enough, right?
Except there are more than a dozen meats to choose from — everything from spicy Polish sausage to catfish to a ribeye to salmon croquettes. Even the choice between the corn bread and the biscuit is tough. Luckily, you can get them à la carte as well.
Add on to that the numerous omelets — including one called Everything with Chili on Top, and a bunch of pancake, waffle and french toast combos — and you’ve got a breakfast menu that demands some consideration. (Unless, as a regular, you know what you want soon as you step through the door!)
There are Mimosas as well, along with champagne by the glass. Unusual for a counter! No wonder people linger so long at their seats; this isn’t food, or drink, to rush through. The soul food options seem to be mostly on the daily specials — smothered turkey wings on Tuesdays, smothered oxtails Wednesdays, smothered short ribs Thursdays, shrimp and grits Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
Grits! A good taste, a nostalgic taste. It’s a taste for when, as the wall tells us, “Friends and Family Gather.”
Roscoe’s House of Chicken ’n Waffles
621 W. Manchester Blvd., Inglewood; 310-981-4141, www.roscoeschickenandwaffles.com
When: Breakfast, lunch and dinner until late, every day
The fabled Roscoe’s House of Chicken ’n Waffles — “Pecking around since 1975” — on Manchester Boulevard right off the 405 in Inglewood is pretty much packed every day for lunch and dinner. For Roscoe’s isn’t so much a restaurant, as it is an homage to the joys of fried chicken, and the almost shocking degree to which fried chicken and waffles were meant to live in harmony on your plate.
And goodness knows they do, in combinations with names like Scoe’s, Herb’s Special, E-Z Ed’s Special, and Carol C. Special. Who these folks are, who have been blessed with a preparation of chicken and waffles at Roscoe’s, I do not know; the menu offers no biographies. But it does offer a lot of dishes built around chicken, and more chicken.
And though it is possible to get a chicken-free meal at Roscoe’s, I suspect few do. Plop half a bird down in front of me, and in minutes it will be reduced to a skeleton, just a pile o’ bones. Which speaks volumes in and of itself.
The options, variations and permutations are many. Interestingly, the menu begins with fried chicken — without waffles. (Though you can get them as a side order.) But it does come smothered — on both the Sir Michael and the Lord Harvey — with gravy and onions, with a side of grits and hot biscuits.
Then comes Stymies Choice — which has long stymied me, for it’s a choice of smothered or fried chicken livers or giblets, with grits, eggs and a biscuit. I grew up eating giblets, which do little for me. But chicken livers really ring my bell. I love chicken livers.
The menu moves on through a choice of more parts (breast with leg or wing), into plates of nothing but chicken wings, and even a few omelets with chicken. There’s a posse of chicken chilies — over white rice or beans, in a bun with cheese (yup, Dave’s Sloppy Chili), topping french fries.
There are chicken sandwiches. There’s a chicken salad. There’s a chicken burger. There’s chicken sausage. There’s mac and cheese with chicken parts. Even the chef’s salad is made with chicken. At Roscoe’s, chicken is everywhere, ubiquitous, and that’s a good thing.
Sunday Gravy
1122 Centinela Ave., Inglewood; 424-227-6500; www.eatsundaygravy.com
When: Lunch and dinner, Wednesday through Sunday
Sunday Gravy is a concept from the past, joyously brought back to life at a railroad car of a restaurant, on Centinela in Inglewood — where families do indeed gather for more food than they can consume, with lots to take home.
This is a restaurant filled with pure joy, a room with not a whit of pretension — that even includes a trio of Southern dishes, acknowledging the Southern roots of many in the neighborhood, for whom grits and not gnocchi are the carb of choice.
The menu is a one sheet, as unpretentious as the food, as easy going as the service — which brings you your food, after you place your order at the small front counter, where they affably juggled dine-in customers with a legion of those showing up to pick up takeout orders. (If you’re one of them, bring a second person in the car because the parking lot is as small as the restaurant, and tricky to back out of.)
The menu is familiar as a well-worn pair of jeans — and just as comfortable. It’s also well sourced; the ciabatta used for the garlic bread is from the wonderful nearby Cadoro Bakery, one of the treasures of Inglewood. The garlic bread exudes garlic — this is not shy bread fearful of offending delicate fee-fees. The cheesy variation is a mini pizza.
The breads are served with tomato sauce; Sunday gravy to kick off the meal. The fried Brussels sprouts redeem this oft-maligned veggie.
The appetizers of baked eggplant and meatballs with ricotta made me want to invite my whole block for a meal — so many more mouths were required.
The fries come topped with short rib ragu, mozzarella and pecorino; an outlandishly good combination. And then, there’s the red scampi shrimp and grits. The shrimp are boldly spicy, the grits properly bland. Together, they’re a revelation.
There’s short rib ragu and grits, too. Such happy madness. The salads run to Caesar, chopped Italian, simple arugula. The strawberry and burrata salad seems a curious outlier. The meatball sub is a taste of home. There’s no carpaccio; we didn’t eat it then, we don’t eat it now.
The pastas are 13, not unlucky at all, “made locally in Inglewood” — fusilli, rigatoni, bucatini, mafalda (shaped like a ribbon), lasagna, tagliatelle, linguine, fettuccine, pappardelle, gnocchi and, of course, spaghetti. There’s no risotto. But there are chicken cutlets.
The wine list is short, and mostly Italian. They don’t serve red wine in unlabeled jugs. That was then. This is now.
Two Hommés
902 N. La Brea Ave., Inglewood; 424-227-6266, www.twohommes.com
When: Dinner, Monday and Thursday through Saturday; brunch, Sunday
Two Hommés serves Ghanaian Jollof rice and honey berbere chicken bites. Jollof rice is at the heart of the cooking of Ghana … and of Nigeria, too. But where the Ghanaian rice is made with basmati, the Nigerian is long grain. The result is a softer rice from Ghana — a rice cooked in spiced tomato sauce, that gives it both color and flavor.
Occasionally, in my life of eating around, I’ve taken a bite and felt my world shift under my feet. The chicken bites did that for me. They had the quintessential crunch of Korean fried chicken — a crispness that seems downright otherworldly. But they were sauced with both peppery hotness and honey sweetness. They were an instant addiction. I kept telling myself I should bring some home. Still, I kept eating them. And I need more even now.
The two hommes of Two Hommés are Marcus Yaw and Abdoulaye Balde. One is from Ghana, the other from Senegal. They’ve inhaled enough influence from Inglewood to give their African food a soul food twist. I’m not sure there’s anything quite like it in town.
Consider, for instance, the za’atar zucchini. The zucchini slices are cooked till they’re affably soft, served in a cream sauce that tastes very Middle Eastern — another dish worthy of worship, though it doesn’t travel nearly as well as the chicken bites. (They stay crisp for, seemingly, days. The zucchini doesn’t begin crisp, so it’s just what it is.)
The chicken on the Sunday brunch chicken and waffles are those honey berbere chicken bites — which sounds beyond wonderful. The waffle is coated with brown sugar and powdered sugar. There are shrimp and grits, crab cakes, and black bean and egg tostadas.
Brunch also includes all the Jollof rice and garlic noodle add-ons. When you’re heading for SoFi with the kids, chicken and waffles are always a good dish. And if they’re honey berbere chicken bites, they’re even better.
Coni’Seafood
3544 W. Imperial Hwy., Inglewood; 310-672-2339, www.coniseafood.com
When: Lunch and dinner, every day
At Coni’Seafood, the meal begins with their requisite basket of chips — and a green salsa that seriously challenges the taste buds; one swallow, and you’ll be grabbing for your Penafiel or your Jarritos.
The appetizers — cocteles and entremeses — take up about a third of the menu, and can easily make for a very satisfying meal. Those mini tostadas are a total knockout, a wonderful plate of beautifully prepared mini-tortillas, with layers of flavors that keep getting more intense, the more you dwell on them.
There’s the acidic tang of the shrimp and octopus ceviche, and the textural bounce of the seafood. Under that, comes the sweet softness of the marlin pate, kind of like fish made into butter. And finally, the crunch of the tostadas. There are four on the plate. If there were more, I would have gladly eaten them.
The ceviches are many — shrimp, octopus, oyster, crab and fish, mixed and matched in various marriages. One of the quirkiest is the cevisushi, which is more “cevi” than “sushi” — a mix of jicama, shrimp and octopus in a habanero chile sauce. Spicy. But then, so is a good chunk of the menu, including the near essential aguachile, which is shrimp “cooked” in lemon juice, then flavored with that palate sizzling green sauce. It’s the essence of culinary pleasure and pain — you can’t stop eating it, but you do moan with every bite and swallow.
There’s even more that’s cooked at Coni, much of it built around the joys of camarones. Under the heading Platillos Tradicionales, there’s breaded shrimp, shrimp in butter and garlic, shrimp with bacon and mushrooms, shrimp with cilantro and onions, smoked shrimp, and breaded shrimp with onion rings.
There’s shrimp soup as well, along with a soup of shrimp, octopus, crab and fish — a Mexican bouillabaisse on Imperial Highway. At Coni, nothing is as expected. And nothing disappoints.
Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email mreats@aol.com.