Newsletter: Counter: Mission of Burma and more kitchen callings

What turns a love of cooking (or eating) into a vocation? Since answering that could take not a few newsletters — and stories and reviews and cookbooks and maybe novels — consider that a rhetorical question. But it’s also one to consider the next time you’re at the new Burmese restaurant in Silver Lake that Jonathan Gold reviews this week, as well as a somewhat older restaurant in Santa Monica that’s changing guards.

It’s also relevant to many of our other stories this week, as well as most of them, really. Cooks reinvent themselves perpetually, bringing new things to the plate — Texas barbecue, myriad styles of charcuterie, different ways of reinterpreting wine cocktails — in an effort to keep both themselves and us fed, both creatively and actually.

– Amy Scattergood

Mission of Burma, redux

In which Mr. Gold considers Daw Yee Myanmar Corner, the second location of one of his favorite Burmese restaurants. The new place in Silver Lake, also from chef Delyn Chow, has a smaller menu, and the original’s “low-tide funkiness” has been toned down somewhat; even so, it’s a terrific take on Burmese comfort food.

Chef Delyn Chow, left, keeps an eye on things at Daw Yee Myanmar Corner in Silver Lake.

(Ivan Kashinsky / For The Times )

The return of Miles Thompson

After Allumette closed, chef Miles Thompson left not only that building but this town, taking with him the wildly creative cooking that had made his restaurant so popular with both diners and many of the publications that named it to their best-of lists. Now he’s back, helming the kitchen at Michael’s restaurant in Santa Monica, where, over the last almost four decades, some of this town’s best chefs helped to pioneer California cuisine.

Chef Miles Thompson, photographed at Allumette in Echo Park, has taken over as chef at Michael’s in Santa Monica.

(Don Kelsen / Los Angeles Times )

More fun with sausages

Food writer Esther Tseng lists five more interesting sausage iterations than what you might have had for breakfast: kielbasa, weisswurst, chorizo, Linguica, morcilla … one could go on of course, but instead we check out what this town’s talented chefs and butchers have going on.

Beyond sangria

Local bartenders extend the wine cocktail program beyond all those wine coolers you used to drink in college (OK, some of us). Test Kitchen Director Noelle Carter talks to the folks behind the bars of the Cannibal, Faith & Flower and Paper or Plastik — and gets some recipes.

Paper or Plastik’s Port Wine sangria.

(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times )

BBQ in a Huntington Park strip mall

Food writer Gabriel Carbajal checks out Ray’s BBQ, a Central Texas-style barbecue joint in Huntington Park. There he finds laudable brisket (also in the form of slices on Salvadorian-style tortillas), ribs and something called a Mac Link Burrito. Right. (Go read about it, then maybe go find some for dinner.)

The Taste is coming: Our annual Labor Day food weekend, Sept. 2-4, will be here before you know it; here’s how to get tickets.

Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants, the authoritative annual guide to local dining, is online for subscribers.

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