F***, Chuck, Marry: Volume Eight

(not your step moms guide on how to ride the d)

Only two things happened last week. The D Line in Los Angeles opened, and I got married in CDMX. One of these things involved a brass band, a ribbon cutting, and several elected officials. The other involved a DJ smoking sigs in the chuppah, an open bar, and a dance floor that did not close until 2 a.m. I'll let you guess which one I am legally bound to now.

Same oath as always: I love every restaurant I'm about to mention. I'm not here to cancel; I'm here to catalog the ways dining in Los Angeles makes us feral, sentimental, and occasionally horny. If a spot lands in Chuck, that's an amicable unfollow. If it lands in F***, I am thinking about it on the ride home with my wedding ring on. If it lands in Marry, well, I already did the literal marrying part last Saturday. Everything from here on out is just metaphor.

If you read my last piece, you already know that the D Line now connects eleven stops, three of them brand new, from Union Station to the eastern edge of Beverly Hills. That listicle was the love letter to the city. This is the confession.

Today's three didn't make the main ten. Not because I love them less. Because I love them differently. These are the picks that live in a different emotional register, the off-hours, the after-parties, the text that arrives at 11:59 like clockwork. The kind of places you save for the ride home, when the train has emptied out and whatever happens next is between you, your higher power, and a vow of silence we have all collectively agreed to honor.

Let's get into it.

F***: DGM Soju Bar (Wilshire / Vermont)

The D Line opening the week of my wedding, gives the same energy as Tinder gaining popularity your freshman year of college. Both arrived with the same red-flag marketing, new access, new horizons, new ways to meet both your future and demise. Both turned out to be infrastructure for the worst (absolutely best) version of yourself.

You know the guy. The one in your intro to philosophy class. The one you used to need courage just to walk up to. Now he is a swipe away. And so is DGM.

DGM Soju Bar is in Koreatown, and Koreatown is now twelve minutes away from where I live for $1.75. There is no logistical reason not to go. The D Line has, helpfully, removed every single piece of friction that used to keep me from her.

DGM is the kind of place where you walk in for one bottle and walk out understanding why your mother used to look concerned. The people are hot, denim that costs more than the meal, a boy in a leather jacket who plays bass in someone's brother's band. The food and drinks are accessible; corn cheese, kimchi pancakes, fried chicken, dried squid, eight-dollar soju that arrives faster than you can decide whether you wanted it. The tables are pouring over with friend groups in the kind of ease you only find in a room where everyone is wearing the same amount of effort. Bottles outnumber glasses. Plates get pushed to the middle. The two girls at the next table are splitting one bottle and ordering a second they have not yet thought through. You arrived planning to do the same.

Pre-D Line, DGM required courage. It required a plan, a designated driver, and the kind of friend who knew where the after-hours noodle place was. Post-D Line, DGM is the guy in intro to philosophy. All of that effort used to be how you stopped yourself. The D Line did not give you access. It took away the excuse for stopping.

And the relief, is that I just got married. The choice has been made. The vows have been said. The legal paperwork has been signed. The thank-you cards are almost in the mail. (The thank-you cards are not in the mail.) And the same week I was making the choice, the city handed me a piece of infrastructure specifically engineered to undermine it.

I am going to do something about it. The train made me consider it, then reconsider it, then made the decision for me. The train, like Tinder in 2013, is access without a chaperone, and access without a chaperone is the most dangerous, delicious thing you can hand a woman who has just made a permanent decision.

DGM is the bar. The bar is the swipe. The swipe is the version of me who is technically retired and absolutely showing up anyway, in a too-short skirt, on a Tuesday, with the wedding ring catching the dim light.

DGM, I'll see you when the train doors open. Save me a seat. Don't ask about the ring.

Chuck: All'Antico Vinaio (Wilshire / Fairfax)

All'Antico Vinaio is the kind of meaningless sex that became so umph-less it eventually got removed from the roster. Not with a fight, not with a falling out, just a quiet, mutual ghosting prompted by the dawning realization that you were both showing up out of habit and neither of you remembered why.

You know the one. He had an accent. You met him under very specific conditions, rolling hills, last night of camp, the kind of European dusk that makes any man look like the second act of a romance novel. He was perfect there, against that exact backdrop, in that exact light. Then he moved to your city. He was convenient now — five minutes away, just a walk up the block. The first time was thrilling in the I can't believe vacation boy is HERE kind of way; the second time was good in a this is good kind of way; by the third time you were eating dinner under the glare of a Fairfax sidewalk, realizing that the lighting — and the fact that you two barely spoke the same language — had been doing ninety percent of the work. You deleted his contact during a 2 a.m. phone cleanout, and you felt, for the first time in months, lighter.

All'Antico Vinaio is, structurally, the same import. I came back. I came back again. And somewhere around the third visit, I bit into the pistachio spread, pistachio spread, the thing that should ruin you on contact, and it was so saltless, so committed to being beige in flavor that I forgot, mid-bite, how excited I had been the time he first mentioned his mother wanted to invite me over for family pasta night. A potentially cool mother-in-law, it turns out, is not worth another zestless night with her son. The line was the dopamine; the schiacciata was incidental.

Newly married, I am newly clear about what counts as a meal and what counts as a chore. The roster has been culled. The contact has been deleted. The 2 a.m. lightness has arrived.

Chucked, with my schiacciata in a wrapper, and a real lesson about confusing the chase for the love.

Marry: La Paella (Wilshire / La Cienega)

I have to be careful here, because anything I write about Marry from this point forward will be read through the lens of having just done it. The actual marrying. So let me try not to project. Let me just describe.

La Paella has been on San Vicente Boulevard since 1988. It is a family-run Spanish restaurant in what is, on paper, the most boring strip mall in West Hollywood. There is no door person. There is no waitlist. There is no Instagram strategy. There is a host who has been there for what appears to be twenty years and who calls you mi amor in a way that does not feel transactional. There is paella, and there is sangria, and there is a wine list that has not been updated since the early 2000s and does not need to be.

I have been coming to La Paella just shy of a decade. I have been here on first dates that became second dates and on second dates that did not become anything. I have been here for birthdays. I have been here for breakups, eating mejillones with the friend who ended up being my husband's emergency contact. I have been here for the kind of weeknight dinner that has no occasion at all, just the realization that I want to be in a room with red walls and a flamenco recording from 1994 and not have to negotiate with anyone about the music.

I am a noticer of small things. The way the bread arrives at La Paella without you having to ask. The way the flan tastes the same in 2026 as it did in 2018. The way he reaches for my hand without looking, the way he hums under his breath when he is cooking, the fact that he saves every soy sauce packet that has ever entered the house.

What makes La Paella Marry is that it does not require you to perform. The food is not engineered for content; it is engineered for being eaten. The room is not lit for photos; it is lit for talking. You order the paella valenciana for two. Forty minutes later, it arrives. You eat it slowly because no one is rushing you. The host comes by halfway through to ask if it is good. It is good. It has always been good. You order the flan even though you are full.

There is a thing that happens when you actually marry someone. You stop auditioning rooms for a future version of yourself. You start choosing where the actual present version of you wants to eat. The frivolous ones drop off the list on their own. The keepers reveal themselves as keepers. La Paella has been a keeper since I was twenty-three. I just needed a wedding to realize that the staying power was the point.

I have come to believe, slowly and mostly by being wrong about it for years, that the special occasion is not the anniversary or the milestone or the moment the bottle in the cellar becomes worthy of being opened. The special occasion is the ordinary night you decide deserves a real meal. La Paella has been my ordinary night for a decade. The version that does not need you at your best because it has already met you on a bad day and decided to stay. The version where you order the flan because there is no reason not to. This is the version of love I just signed up for, in fact. Not the fireworks. Not the wedding-day soundtrack. Not the curated grid. The everyday ones.

I would walk past every new restaurant on the D Line to get here. I do, actually. Most weeks.

Final Thoughts

DGM Soju Bar, the K-town fling whose hand is slowly moving down my skirt in the Uber ride home. All'Antico Vinaio, the man who just lost his heavy-rotation roster spot. La Paella, the table that was already mine.

Marriage is not, it turns out, a personality transplant. I still want to be reckless in K-town. I still roll my eyes at Florence-via-Fairfax. I still want La Paella on a Tuesday for no reason. The vows did not rewire my taste. They just clarified it. They put the question of who I am at the table to bed, and now I can pay better attention to the food.

The D Line did the same thing for the city. For decades, Los Angeles has been pretending it could be itself without a real subway. We negotiated around the absence of a train the way you negotiate around a partner who never quite commits — building elaborate workarounds, calling them character, eventually mistaking the dysfunction for personality. And then last week, a train. The whole shape of the city snapped into focus.

Los Angeles, congratulations on finally committing. Husband, congratulations on the rest of it.

Until next time: eat boldly, ride freely, and marry the restaurant that calls you mi amor — and means it. Marry the husband who, mercifully, does the same.