I’m in Lotusland now, one of the judges on "Top Chef Masters." Photo Alex Gottfryd

        I disappeared from my usual table rounds last week and wasn’t allowed to say why until Wednesday, when Bravo announced the judges for “Top Chef Masters” – its new series produced with Magical Elves and Top Chef’s matinee idol Tom Colicchio as consulting producer. To be aired, I don’t know when. True, the press release left off a crucial “e” on my name. Drat that spell check! Nothing like a missing “e” to deflate a puffed-up ego.

London Observer’s Jay Rayner

        Pulling our strings in the culinary smackdown role of gorgeous female moderator is Kelly Choi, creator and host of NYC TV’s “Eat Out New York.” I never expect anyone that beautiful to also be funny, irreverent and raucous. It’s a virtual old-home week. Oseland’s a New York import too, sassy, unswervingly opinionated and a great expert on authentic ethnic food in grubby shopping malls. Choi strides the world in five-inch heels like a comic book heroine, all sass and perfect skin, Vargas-girl lips, Vogue model svelte. And she eats. I’ve watched her. But it seems to go directly to her brain – nothing sticks to her hips. I am definitely in the valley of the masters. As for the master chefs: they compete in deviously wicked challenges. I’m sworn not to reveal more.

        I couldn’t wait to get a taste of Lotusland culture at Cha Cha Chicken in one of those painted fast food huts designed to lure L.A. carbots as they lurch by. Splashes of pastel paint, folksy graphics, paper flowers, and wonderfully lurid oil cloths on every table are so full of promise here, a favorite of Steven’s son Nico, who lives in Santa Monica. 

 
Drifting local: Fabulous jerk chicken. Funky graphics. Photo: Steven Richter

        Nico never orders anything here but the jerk chicken enchilada plate so Steven has to have that too. It’s great to see two grown men so happy. With two very sweet mango-lemonades, we dropped $35 dollars plus tip, cash only.

1906 Ocean Avenue, Santa Monica. 310 581 1684.

        I’m not the only one in my crowd pinching pennies these days. It’s the latest craze and clearly a real threat to the economy. I do feel a little guilty when my guy and I share a pizza and pasta and a salad and sneak out the door for $50. Am I unpatriotic? At least we still go out eight nights a week, as the Road Food Warrior puts it. Now a self-appointed restaurant critic, I have to un-pinch pennies too, and often eat top-of-the-line, hoping my personal recession ends before my retirement account gives out. Which is how I got to Hanci Turkish Cuisine.

         Prowling on eater a couple of weeks ago I found a complaint from Hanci chef-owner Yakup Karates that he had yet to be reviewed by any critic. I’m a fan of Turkish food and am always looking for a spot I can love the way I love Beyoglu on Third Avenue at 81^st Street.

 
Proud Turkish chef Yakup Karates yearns for attention. Photo: Steven Richter

        It may be wise to stick to meze here, mostly $5 to $6 a plate. Shepherd’s salad with feta, eggplant cooked in a spicy tomato sauce (soslu patlican), the zesty mince of tomatoes, green peppers and onions (ezme) we love that our friends are tasting for the first time, and rolled stuffed grape leaves – all of it fresh and full of flavor. We’re daubing bits of the puffy bread that comes warm from the oven with everything, occasionally dipping a chunk into marvelous cacik, thick yogurt with minced cucumber, garlic and dill. Even an order of leeks and carrots shimmering in olive oil, so often overcooked and abused elsewhere, have unexpected character. The menu promises “light” crisp-fried calamari – these rings and tentacles could be flash frozen, I suppose – but they taste freshly fried and are an excuse to indulge in a tangy garlicky sauce alongside. The only letdown in our starters is a quartet of soggy and listless fried feta-stuffed phyllo rolls. 

Stuffed cabbage above,  a generous mixed grill to share below.  Photo: Steven Richter

        The enthusiastic young woman serving us, Karates’ daughter I assume, watches us eat, gauging the response. “You like everything?” she asks, removing empty plates. I don’t let her clear the cacik, thinking I don’t get to eat yogurt this rich too often. Perhaps less fussy eaters will be content with various over-cooked kebabs on the $21 mixed grill platter we four are sharing. It almost doesn’t matter that the baby lamb chops are overcooked as well, they come from such an undistinguished lamb. We said “rare, please” but the server forgot or the kitchen didn’t care. And lamb and rice studded cabbage seems listless and watery to me, though my companions disagree.

Steamed fish with bean curd is a hit even with bean-curd denyers. Photo: Steven Richter

        The quest for a really wonderful Chinese restaurant in Manhattan never ceases.  And tonight we want one that’s cheap.  A sophisticated new friend, Taiwan-born Gloria, likes Famous Sichuan on Pell in Chinatown. She promises to join us later. We’ve settled into what looks like an assembly line Chinatown eatery, brightly lit with obligatory chinoiserie. It’s discouragingly empty and I can’t blame the fierce cold since the joint across the street is jammed. We’ve ordered by the time Gloria arrives – carefully avoiding $24 specialties for many $4.50 appetizers or $10 vegetables, sharing spicy dan dan noodles, marvelous peppery stir-fried minced chicken and scallion pancake – surprisingly well-done for a Sichuan kitchen – and Shanghai soupy buns – unsurprisingly awful. We consult her on noodle choice and she consults with the owner on vegetables.

        Carefully sautéed snow pea leaves, an odd but pleasant beige vegetable called loofah, more noodles and sensational steamed, sliced fish with bean curd that has even the bean curd-deniers raving – makes up for tea-smoked duck that tastes like last week’s leftovers.

The kitchen’s heart isn’t into minced chicken to wrap in lettuce leaves. Photo: Steven Richter