The Brief

Growing up in a family of post-Soviet Jewish immigrants in Los Angeles meant fusing together our food with American food. This often meant making do with what we had. My Eggo waffles were topped with blackcurrant jam from Odessa Grocery. Trader Joe’s Chinese-inspired chicken gyoza potstickers were boiled, sprinkled with dill, and dipped in sour cream to stand in for traditional pelmeni.

The beloved Croatian seasoning, Vegeta, was generously added to everything, including buttered noodles and boxed mac and cheese. Whether intentional or not, we were dipping into the world of fusion cooking.

The history of fusion cooking is the history of the American kitchen. From the infamous Thanksgiving feast that fused together traditional English stuffed fowl with Native harvested beans and corn pudding, to the ‘80s and ‘90s fusion restaurant boom with Wolfgang Puck combining French cooking with Asian influences, resulting in the popularization of Madame Wu’s Chinese Chicken Salad.

By the time we arrived at pan-Asian corporate restaurants like P.F. Changs dishing out Chinese kung pao chicken, Japanese sushi, and Thai lettuce cups all on one glossy menu, however, fusion had become an icky word.

In a 2022 Los Angeles Times article, restaurant critic Bill Addison asked his readers, “Can we let go of the term ‘fusion cooking’ once and for all?”

Chicken and Mole made with Mary's chicken confit, orange gastrique, and sesame seeds, served with steamed bok choy and topped with seasonal citrus that's served with a 21 ingredients white mole and a handmade piadina (flour tortilla).

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WONHO LEE

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His gripe with the word fusion was that it’s “a hydra slur” or “shorthand for 'Asian fusion,' which is insultingly reductive; Asian, Asian American and Pacific Island cultures are not monoliths.”

Addison continued: “It also carries a bad taste that suggests one is doing something silly or slapdash or nonsensical. No wonder chefs who are cooking to their personal narrative say in interviews, 'Don’t call what I’m doing ‘fusion.’”

Yet despite the body blow to the word itself, the idea of merging foods from distinct cuisines is still attracting chefs today, inspired by the limitless creativity it presents.

Here are four new-ish restaurants attempting to reinvent the concept — while tip-toeing around the unnecessary negative connotations of the word itself.

Pijja Palace puts an American spin on Indian classics, with chicken tenders, wings, and garlic bread

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These restaurants serve flavor combinations as unique as the people of Los Angeles, with a more playful and authentic take on the American immigrant and third culture experience. As cringe as the word can be, fusion — telling the food stories of multicultural Angelenos — is not going anywhere.

Pijja Palace

Malai rigatoni, Pijja Palace

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Named one of Bon Appetit’s 24 Best Restaurants of 2023, Avish Naran’s Pijja Palace is having a good year. The casual Indian-American sports bar-meets-restaurant tucked into the former plaza of Silver Lake’s infamous Happy Sad Foot sign, Pijja Palace is bursting with unique flavors.

A traditional caesar salad is given a facelift with mango pickle, dried tomatoes, and a dusting of panko. Hardy lamb pasta is tossed with sumac, fennel, and creamy yogurt and feels like it was assembled by a sweet Indian-Italian grandma. Chicken wings are doused in a mixture of jalapeño, cilantro, mint, chives, and served with a cool yogurt sauce. But the star of the show is the classic chutney pizza.

A stoner invention with a thin crust pie, perfectly melty cheese, sweet tomato sauce, and a generous glaze of green chutney inspired by chef Miles Shorey’s Puerto Rican grandma’s sofrito and Lavineta’s Pizza that would offer under-the-table chutney to the growing Indian community in Lakewood.

Build your own pizza at Pijja Palace

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Pijja Palace translates to Pizza Palace, a play on the Indian accent. Naran grew up in Los Angeles as part of a third culture, “eating everything” along with his Indian auntie’s chicken curry served with not naan, but tortillas.

Naran is most inspired by LA legend and father of the beloved Kogi truck, Roy Choi.

“One of the cool things about Roy is that [his food] never felt like fusion. He was a Korean guy who grew up in Koreatown, around a lot of Hispanic culture, so the whole thing was super organic,” Naran said.

Pijja Palace feels super organic, too. A reflection of the second generation’s melding of familiar flavors: American pub food and Indian delicacies.

Amiga Amore 

Carbonara ravioli with duck egg and requeson, pancetta and micro cilantro

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Amiga Amore is co-owned by husband and wife duo Alessandro Zecca and Chef Danielle Duran Zecca. The cozy Italian-Mexican fusion restaurant was a natural combination of flavors as Duran Zecca grew up in a Mexican-American family near Frogtown, while her husband grew up in a small town near Verona, Italy.

After a traditional French culinary education and 10 years of cooking in Michelin star restaurants in New York City, Duran Zecca “felt stagnant” and moved back to Los Angeles to open her own restaurant.

“The real influence [for Amiga Amore] was my husband, because he didn't like Mexican food. I didn't really realize that until we moved to L.A.…So, I started to put Mexican ingredients into pasta and other dishes and I kept creating, and I kept noticing so many similarities between Mexico and Italy,” Duran Zecca said.

The combination of flavors from both their childhoods worked, and led to a successful pop-up and the opening of Amiga Amore in Highland Park, with mouth watering dishes like Chorizo y Clams, a mixture of clams, brothy cannellini and pinto beans, Meyer lemon, and jalapeño butter served with homemade bread, and Elote Agnolotti, "street corn" filled pasta with crumbly cotija cheese, zesty finger limes, and house made tajin.

Like other chefs working in the realm of fusion, before opening Amiga Amore, Duran Zecca asked herself, “Is it going to be gimmicky?” It was hard not to associate fusion with the ramen burger and the sushi burrito. But buoyed by success, Duran Zecca is leaning into fusion with a new brunch option that includes an eggs and bacon breakfast sandwich on a housemade basil concha, a breakfast burrito with eggs, tater tots, pico de gallo and Italian cannellini beans, and a classic Italian panzerotti stuffed pizza with potato, chorizo and tomatillo salsa.

Chefs these days are cooking their own personal narratives, which are surprisingly relatable. What has surprised the Zeccas most after opening Amiga Amore is how many of their customers relate to the Italian-Mexican experience. “There are so many people that come in, and say, 'We're just like you … your restaurant is like our story and we love to eat here because you feed us both.'"

Taco/Social

Tacos at Taco Social

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Steve Stroud

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Of all the restaurants we’ve featured, , Taco/Social is one of the newest on the list (it opened on Oct. 10) and the most corporate. The website copy defines the food as “inventive, freeform tacos [that] break all the rules. Inspired by flavors from around the world, we use fresh ingredients to serve up tacos that are as unique as they are delicious.”

The beach-themed Eagle Rock restaurant with big open-air windows and extra loud music feels like you’ve stepped into a Hollister or Abercrombie and Fitch. A full bar serves up margaritas or whatever you want, and there are two big-screen TVs for the sports fans.

Embracing Wolfgang Puck and P.F. Chang’s approach to fusion, it takes it to the next level by including a wide range of cuisines beyond French, American, and pan-Asian cooking, reflecting the people of Los Angeles who speak at least 185 different languages.

There’s a long list of those flour tortilla “freeform tacos” — post-fusion in overdrive — ranging from Vietnamese Banh Mi tacos, to Mexican barbacoa, to American cheeseburger, Indian tikka masala, and even a take on the Greek chicken pita.

Tacos from around the world include crispy cauliflower taco and K-BBQ taco made with braised beef

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“We’ve taken signature dishes from cultures across the world and altered them to rest inside a tortilla,” says executive Chef Jonathan Paiz. “What other taco spot can take you on a culinary journey that spans from New Orleans to Vietnam? Los Angeles is a melting pot of people from all across the world and we wanted to embody that aspect into distinct, delicious tacos.”

Sadly though, the flavors are muted. The Greek Life taco, inspired by Paiz’s Greek ancestry, is filled with juicy chicken, tzatziki, pico de gallo, pickled red onion and surprisingly crispy french fries, but lacks a sufficient amount of spice, perhaps not surprising from a restaurant that is trying to cover too many cuisines at once.

Taco/Social is the ultimate fusion family restaurant. Sure it’s gimmicky, but it has something for everybody, including the opportunity for a tired parent to enjoy a cocktail with dinner.

Saucy Chick Goat Mafia

After rave reviews and a loyal following at the beloved Smorgasburg food fest in DTLA, pop-ups Saucy Chick and Goat Mafia have joined forces, soft opening a new restaurant deep in Pasadena this week called, what else, but Saucy Chick Goat Mafia.

Juan Garcia of Goat Mafia and Saucy Chick owner’s Rhea Patel Michel and husband Marcel Rene Michel — who opened their pop-up after being furloughed from their jobs during the pandemic — did not hesitate when the opportunity arrived to combine Indian-Mexican rotisserie chicken with traditional Mexican goat birria to create something new.

Mom’s Beans, Smoked Chicken Wings with featured flavors Jeera, Pibil, Ambli, Charred Haldi Cauliflower, Jeera Rice, Fenugreek Esquites, Birria Taco, Pibil Rotisserie Taco, Saucy Chick Goat Mafia

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The casual flavor-packed restaurant serves unique dishes like the birria de chivo bowl with Garcia’s signature century-old family goat birria recipe and Saucy Chick’s Indian jeera rice, hearty mayocoba beans, and hand-pressed corn tortillas.

The hand-brined 24-hour marinated rotisserie chicken is served with a selection of sauces like the Mexican-leaning creamy pibil with achiote, garlic, citrus, and oregano or the pungent jeera sauce made from caramelized onions, garlic, ginger, and packed with cumin. There are also plenty of sides to choose from, such as a truly unique “kachumber salad” combining cucumber, mustard seed, coconut, peanuts, lime, and mint, as well as an array of refreshing agua frescas with an Indian twist, like the ginger jamaica.

Rotisserie chicken, taco and burritos galore at newest location of Saucy Chick Goat Mafia

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The chefs come from immigrant families and encountered fusion early on in their lives. “Growing up, we would eat grilled cheese with a garlic chutney paste and masala egg omelets,” said Patel Michel. Garcia’s first mind-blowing encounter with fusion was Pizza Loca’s asada pizza — a rare treat as his Mexican-American immigrant family rarely ordered take-out.

Fusion is the future and a no-brainer for the owners of Saucy Chick Goat Mafia. “There is creativity and strength in diversity. As cultures converge and weave into intricate tapestries, food serves as a medium for storytellers and an opportunity for marginalized voices to have a platform,” said Patel Michel.

Other new-ish fusion spots to consider

• Asian-fusion restaurant Poltergeist tucked inside Silver Lake’s Button Mash
• DTLA’s Korean influenced Yangban
• Inglewood’s Afro-Latin fusion Two Hommés
• Mexico City inspired ramen-birria at pop-up Birriera El Viejon.

NEW YORK — In Brian Sanchez's slice of Astoria, the FIFA World Cup doesn't begin with the first match. It starts weeks earlier, with the arrival of a sticker album — and a mission.

It's a deceptively simple one: Fill the book with all the stickers representing World Cup teams, players, venues and other tournament details. But these stickers are sold in blind packs, similar to baseball or Pokémon cards, which adds to the fun and the headaches.

Sanchez, 20, has tried to complete the task before but never succeeded. This year, he planned to skip it altogether, but it was hard to ignore the chatter and excitement among his friends and family — both at home and abroad — who were all participating.

"Honestly it comes down to a little bit of FOMO," he said.

The hunt for stickers, produced by the Italian company Panini, is a decades-old World Cup tradition that's especially popular in Latin America and Europe. In the U.S., interest has been building steadily over the years, but this summer, the buzz is bigger than ever.

Jason Howarth, senior vice president of marketing and athlete relations at Panini America, said retailers reported being sold out of sticker packets within a week of the release in late April — unseen in previous World Cup cycles.

"There's a different energy coming out of it," he said. "Right now, it's outpacing where we were in 2022 by three to five times."

The surging demand comes as collectors face their toughest challenge yet. This year, they need to track down 980 distinct stickers to put the album to bed — 310 more than at the 2022 World Cup and a record number for the company. It's a reflection of the upcoming tournament's historic scale, which is expanding from 32 teams to 48 across three countries.

This edition will also be the second to last men's World Cup sticker album produced by Panini — ending a partnership that stretches back over five decades. Last month, FIFA announced that starting in 2031, U.S.-based Fanatics will be the official supplier of FIFA soccer cards, trading cards and stickers.

On a recent afternoon in Central Park, Sanchez met up with other collectors. Hunched over stacks of stickers, some two dozen people inspected the offerings with laser focus.

With only four stickers missing, Sanchez was already looking forward to earning bragging rights as the first person in his family across the finish line this year.

" I'm feeling pretty accomplished," he said. "I've been trying to get a win, and this is gonna be a huge win for me."

An expensive, labor-intensive but rewarding hobby

A single pack of seven stickers — available online, at corner stores or drugstore chains like Walgreens and CVS — now cost $2, compared to four years ago when five stickers retailed for around $1. That means simply buying enough packs to accumulate 980 stickers would total $280.

Given the costs, finishing the book is rarely a solitary pursuit, and aficionados often meet up to spread the wealth, according to Crista Latvis, 26, who organized the recent sticker swap in Central Park.

"You can't just buy your way into it," she said. "Otherwise,  it's super expensive and you've got to be very lucky."

For many, these gatherings are part of the pastime's draw.

"It's great to meet other people who are also doing it and also excited for the World Cup, especially since it's here," Latvis said.

Sebastian Clavijo, who attended Latvis' swap, said he spent tens of thousands of dollars on his quest this year. Clavijo, 32, has been collecting Panini stickers since he was 4. This year, his goal is to complete the book only with pieces featuring red and purple borders — an even rarer get.

" I just like soccer and I love collecting," he said. "That's my hobby, you know?"

In 2022, Panini introduced stickers with different colored borders that vary in rarity. That element has been an especially big hit with the trading card community and contributed to the hobby's appeal in the U.S., according to Howarth from Panini America.

Panini popularity has grown along with soccer

Demand has always existed in New York, Texas, Florida, among other big states, but it's also emerging nationwide, in places like Phoenix and the Northwest, according to Howarth.

" As soccer has grown, so has Panini," he said.

Howarth believes part of this year's popularity stems from the expanded World Cup format. Teams that have never qualified for the tournament — and therefore never been sticker-fied by Panini — are finally getting their moment.

For some, completing the sticker album is driven by nostalgia for their childhood, family or home country.

Linda Lino never heard of the hobby until she was 18, and her grandmother gave her a Panini sticker book. That was in 2014. Lino has completed every World Cup edition since, in part in memory of her late grandmother.

"It started with my grandma and then it became like a whole family thing," Lino said. "I love the community that it brings together."

That's especially true with her father, who never had the chance to collect stickers when he was a kid in Peru, Lino said. Now, the two are making up for lost time.

"My dad is so excited," she said. "He's like 'I want to help you. I want to put the stickers together.'"

Clemente Lisi, a sports journalist who has written about the Panini sticker phenomenon, said the sticker album serves as a time capsule for the World Cup. With the tournament's return to the U.S. after 32 years, he expects it will produce more first-time collectors looking for a way to remember this summer.

"This may be the only tangible thing from a World Cup unless you go to a game," he said.

Lisi, who also runs Planet Soccer on Substack, anticipates that the U.S. company Fanatics will further cater to the market at home.

" It'll even become more American and more baked into our culture," he said.

Sanchez, the college student from Astoria, dabbles in collecting other items, like vinyls and trading cards. But what he appreciates most about the Panini sticker scene is its supportive and rarely competitive nature.

" The community around the World Cup stickers is something like I've never seen before," he said. "The community is just so nice."

After countless hours of trading and visiting multiple convenience stores, Sanchez found his 980th and final sticker at the swap in Central Park. It was of the Iraqi team. He let out a gasp, followed by a smile that spanned ear to ear. "Let's goooo!"

With a mountain of duplicates left, Sanchez wasn't ready to move on just yet. His next step was to help his mother finish her album.

" I'm going to take a break," he said. "I'm going to celebrate today and then get back to it."

Topline:

The backstory: Once a year, dozens of sound artists converge on the hill with views of the harbor below to perform their audio art, which can range from serene to “beautifully weird.”

What to expect: This year includes a performer bending a bar of tin with his bare hands to get it to emit what’s called a "tin cry" and synthesizer-based soundscapes that take inspiration from both the ocean and the industrial space below.

When to go: Soundpedro is free and lasts from 7-10 p.m. Saturday.

More info at the Soundpedro website.

You may know about Union Station as an L.A. landmark or as a transportation hub — but how much do you know about its rich architectural history?

To foster that interest and knowledge, Metro created a series of public tours of the station this spring.

“There's so much that you might just walk by without really having the opportunity to delve deeply into,” said Zipporah Lax Yamamoto, deputy executive officer of Metro’s art program. “[The tours are] a really wonderful opportunity to be able to spend time with the station, learn more about the historic landmark, which belongs to all of us.”

Union Station in Los Angeles

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Myung J. Chun

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Architectural style

It’s called Union Station because when it opened in 1939, it connected the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific railroads with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railway.

While it was designed by father-and-son team Donald and John Parkinson, the architects who gave us L.A. City Hall, its style is very different. Union Station’s interior and exterior mixes art deco, Spanish colonial and other styles into a hybrid dubbed Mission Moderne.

As you begin the tour, entering from Alameda Street, tour guides ask you to look up at the decorative elements in the high ceilings. The beams and geometric patterns may look like wood — but they’re actually just painted to look that way.

A community destroyed by development

Along the way, the tour gives background on pieces created more than 30 years ago. These include "City of Dreams/River of History" by artists May Sun and Richard Wyatt in 1995. Sun’s piece uses remnants of the Chinese American homes torn down to build the station, a reference to the high price that community paid for this building’s construction.

Detail from "City of Dreams/River of History," created by artists May Sun and Richard Wyatt at Union Station.

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“It was an enormous price. Chinatown ceased to exist in this area. … The families that lived here during that time are still around and maintain archives of that time period and the original Chinatown here, and we've worked with those families to have those objects on display,” Lax Yamamoto said.

Meanwhile, Wyatt’s large-scale mural includes the face of a Chinese man, along with nine other people of different races, ethnicities and ages; a nod to the diversity of the city since its founding in the late 1700s.

There are also stops to see new art installed for the World Cup.

A mural by Richard Wyatt at Union Station

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There are three tours left in the series but the RSVPs have reached their maximum; however, Lax Yamamoto said Metro will decide whether to continue them based on what people have thought about the tours.

Meanwhile, Union Station is set to swell with people in the next couple of months as L.A. hosts World Cup games. The station is the site of an official FIFA-sponsored Fan Zone from June 25-28.

When I first came to the states many years ago, if I’d mentioned Arsenal, people would have thought I was referring to the U.S. military or something. But all that has changed. You can now watch U.K. premier league games in sports bars, most kids play soccer, and Ted Lasso is must-watch TV.

To which I say — welcome. We English are proud of the fact that soccer began with us more than 150 years ago. And every World Cup, we think, surely this will be the year that the trophy returns home — the year that we’ll win!

Queen Elizabeth II awarding the Jules Rimet World Cup Trophy to Bobby Moore after England won the 1966 World Cup final at Wembley.

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I mean it did happen … once… back in 1966. It’s such a long time ago the game was televised in black and white and shillings were still being used. My mother was nine months pregnant with my brother, and got so excited jumping up and down she went into labor and had him the next day. World Cup Willie they called him. Actually his name is David, but never mind.

Since then, every four years everyone in the U.K. watches the games with bated breath. And then something stupid will happen, and we’ll lose, like that time in 1998 when David Beckham (who played for England before he came to L.A. Galaxy) lost his temper and was sent off, and we’ll sit there, gloomy and despondent. I know because I was there in my friend’s living room in London, gloomy and despondent, thinking just once, just once, maybe could we please have a win?

David Beckham's infamous 1998 red card in the England vs. Argentina game.

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The last World Cup, I went to Ye Olde Kings Head in Santa Monica to watch England play. At 7 a.m. it was full of people already on their third pint of beer. And when the team got through to the next round, the gentle men of England ran outside the pub, whipped off their shirts and started weaving through traffic, singing football chants and acting like hooligans. I really couldn’t decide if I was embarrassed or if it felt like home.

Anyway, this time, since I’m now an American citizen, it’s in my contract that I need to support Team USA. I’m a dual citizen, though, so I’ll also be cheering for England. If by any chance Team USA and England play each other, my two selves will be watching, with a cup of tea in one hand, and a cold brewski in the other, and the polarities will explode, or something. But what will probably happen is that both teams will be eclipsed by Brazil or France playing the beautiful game… beautifully. Cheers.