Crave: Los Angeles Street Food Finds a Home in the Shuk

The pulled brisket sandwich lands on the counter with a quiet thud, the toasted rye slightly compressed by the weight of adobo braised meat that spills over the edges. A coil of tobacco onion crowns it, a slick of sesame mayonnaise pools at the base, and the Asian slaw snaps against the richness in cold, bright relief. Behind the counter, Chef Todd Aarons is plating a kimchi hot dog with the unhurried precision of a man who once ran a farm to table kitchen under Judy Rodgers. Outside the window, Machane Yehuda market is shifting into its nighttime shape: steel shutters pulling down over fish stalls, neon signs flickering on, a bass line starting somewhere up the alley. Inside Crave, the room is already full.

Todd Aarons calls what happens here slow fast food, and the phrase is as honest a description of Crave's menu as anything on the wall. The cooking is quick, counter driven, and built for the shuk crowd, but nothing is phoned in. Aarons trained at Zuni Cafe in San Francisco under Judy Rodgers, then at Savoy in New York, ran Mosaica in New Jersey, and opened the kosher fine dining kitchen at Tierra Sur at Herzog Wine Cellars in Oxnard, California before coming to Jerusalem. That resume shows up in the details: the brisket is adobo braised for hours until it shreds under a fork, the ribeye known as the King Crave is sliced to order and sold by the hundred gram, and the slaws carry real acid and crunch rather than the tired mayonnaise slurry most burger joints default to.