Son of a Gun Reels In 1.5 Stars; Gold on Eighth Street Soondae

1) Mid-City: It's hard to believe that back in 2008 when SIV reviewed Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo's Animal, she only bestowed one single star on the restaurant. Now, here we are, close to three years later, and SIV casts her taste on Jon and Vinny's newly opened Son of a Gun, upping the rating by just half a star, so that would be one and a half stars total. Sher describes Son of a Gun's menu as "...beach shack food, tasty and inexpensive, dosed with hot sauce or vinegar, messy to eat, not meant to be anything more." For the most part the menu "all sounds basic and appealing," and the restaurant itself "has a friendly, congenial atmosphere, so much so that guests feel like they've been invited to a private club where everybody is eager to eat." Despite the fact that "Shook and Dotolo aren't overly ambitious with the menu...still not everything works." Specifically, "[v]inegar is used over-enthusiastically in a couple of other dishes..." Son of a Gun has been packed since the get-go, expect "an everyday seafood restaurant at everyday prices." [LAT]

2) K-Town: Today it's all about soondae or Korean blood sausage found at Eighth Street Soondae "one of the oldest and most respected of L.A.'s soondae parlors... a restaurant where the blood sausage is treated less as a racy snack than as a necessity of civilized life." Per The Goldster, here's what to order: "First, there are the panchan, of course, the inevitable small dishes of pickled daikon and kimchi and oiled bean sprouts that precede a Korean meal...Then you've probably ordered one of the combination plates — a big pile of blood sausage, sliced into crunchy rounds, plus generous piles of boiled pork intestines, about a hundred times milder than you fear they might be, along with some pigs' ear and some liver. There's soup with this, a communal pot of soondae guk with the requisite organy treats, and you'll want to crank up the volume a bit with salt and chile paste. You'll also end up ordering a plate of soondae boekkum for the table, not because you're hungry for bean paste but because it sizzles so prettily when the waitress brings it to the next table." [LAW]

The Elsewhere: The Find tries Chimu, Caroline on Crack visits Fig, Eat:LA hits Osteria Mamma, Eating LA picks Tinga, Gastronomy dines at Hatfield's, kevinEats at Providence, Refined Palate revisits Vin Bar/Valentino, and Sinosoul talks about KTCHN105.