Almost time for the Big Ten to take a bite out of California — and for us to snack there

LOS ANGELES — I’d been considering the humble beef dip when I heard about the fire that took out a downtown freeway, and then ended up at a venerable seafood shack hard by the Pacific.

Fish tacos, sand and encampments on the sidewalk?

It was just another L.A. story, I suppose, where one moment’s intention can veer into something else in a hurry depending on the choices of millions of strangers. That’ll happen in a city of nearly four million, but then Los Angeles doesn’t hold the spot in our psyche because of the number of inhabitants within its borders.

Its scale stretches wherever screens exist, and that digital influence is no doubt what attracted the Big Ten, along with the 14 million or so folks who surround the city limits in Southern California.

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As markets go, it’s about as far from Iowa City, Iowa, or State College, Pennsylvania, as you can get, and while the conference has laid claim to its share of vast and varied big cities — Chicago, Minneapolis, Washington, even New York if we’re counting Rutgers, and why not? — L.A is still something different, starting with its distance from the Big Ten’s footprint.

Last week, I traveled from Detroit to State College by way of Pittsburgh, and inhaled one of college football’s iconic scenes as Michigan took down Penn State. Then I packed up and flew to L.A. for the Detroit Lions' game against the Chargers.

A scheduling quirk — and the rules of nonsensical airfares — kept me in the Golden State an extra day, and since it’s technically now part of the Big Ten, I sensed a duty to investigate where future college football travelers might want to grab a bite to eat.

Impossible is the task to capture the city’s infinite food scene in this space. So how about this: If you randomly trace your finger around a globe and stop, you can bet that point's cuisine experts has practitioners somewhere between the Pacific Ocean coastline and the Inland Empire desert.

A sampling: Handmade Chinese noodles in the San Gabriel Valley, borscht in Glendale, pupusas in University Park, bulgogi in Koreatown, birria tacos in Inglewood, fish tacos in East L.A. ... even gyros outside LAX, under a couple of tailgate-style tents, where a vendor carves glistening lamb slices and folds them into pitas for customers waiting on red plastic stools.

I spotted that scene under a freeway in a gravel yard not too far from the end of runway 6L and would’ve stopped to sample it if not for a friend’s crab-fried rice that awaited in Redondo Beach. Street food is everywhere, and so are restaurants, housing offerings from every crevice of the planet.

Some communities serve food as good as their homeland’s or, they will tell you, occasionally better, because the imported blends with the indigenous and the alchemy creates something like, say, seared Hamachi with Oaxacan chocolate, a mashup from Japan by way of Mexico.

Roy Choi famously put Korean flavors in a taco, and the experimentation is everywhere still. But even if you just want the thing to remain the thing, it’s here: I had friends from Tokyo who lived in San Francisco but drove to L.A. just to eat sushi, because it reminded them of home.

So, when you take in a Michigan game at USC (sometime in 2025), or a Michigan State game at UCLA (in 2026), consider the whole of Southern California as your menu, and a map of the world as your guide. And if you want a burger, I give you Hinano Café, a 60-year-old bar in Venice.

This may not be the best burger in the world, or even in Venice, but it’s under $10, draped in American cheese, soft of bun, expertly adorned in sauce, lettuce, pickle and onion, and the fine bartenders will cut it in half unsolicited if you order it with a friend, as I did Monday night.

I was at Hinano’s because of the fire that closed part Interstate 10 just south of downtown L.A., rerouting a central vein in the busiest commuter city in the country. Traffic out here is heavy, but it moves, and it should rarely get in the way of a craving.

There are exceptions. Like time, and the lack of it.

The extra hour of commute kept me from the beef dip I’d thought about since I was in the Keystone State, though it’s not just the beef or the dip that makes Philippes’ so alluring. It’s the sawdust on the floor, and uniforms of the servers behind the counter. It’s old L.A. — Raymond Chandler old, Veronica Lake old, or even older than that.

Philippe’s roasts its bottom rounds for what seems like half a day, then uses the jus from the cooking as its dip. The place claims to have invented the sandwich back in 1918 — that’s surely a draw for some. But history aside, what matters is the beef, and the roll, and how many times you asked to get it dipped.

Twice for me. Add a squirt of their spicy mustard and you’re set. After the sandwich, and perhaps a slice of custard pie, it’s worth a stroll in the neighborhood — Chinatown — or down to the central train station.

That tidy slice of Americana eluded me on this trip. Serendipity has its fans though, and when my friend, Preston Long, suggested Hinano’s, an all-comers bar in Venice with the deliciously affordable burger, and that it was next to a pier on the Pacific, and across from a seafood joint that had been there since the year after World War II?

Sure, I told him. I’ll see you there.

Long was born in Ypsilanti. Grew up around Ann Arbor. Joined the Navy. Went to U-M. Played a second of college basketball, picked up a guitar — and not necessarily in that order.

He introduced me to crushed red lentil soup and Lafayette Coney. I snuck him down to the basement of the old Free Press building, where we’d shoot hoops on a wonky rim tucked among the museum'd press ruins.

I met him through a mutual friend in the late 80s in Ann Arbor, where he played gigs with his band Wig. I was cooking at a couple of diners and writing on the side, and when we weren’t talking food or music, we were talking sports.

“My immediate family didn’t care a whit about sports,” he said, “but my uncle, who worked the line at Hydramatic in Willow Run, lived in Ann Arbor and took me to my first games at Tiger, Olympia, Crisler, Yost, and Michigan stadiums. My grandmother worked at U-M and could get student prices on tickets — $7 for football and like $3.50 for (basketball) in the 70s, so I went to a lot of Wolverine games in junior high and high school.”

He has loved the Wolverines since, and though he’s indifferent to the Big Ten expansion in his adopted (for now) hometown — “younger fans might find it exotic to play Oregon or Washington or whoever, but I don’t care” — he cares about history, and understands that while the L.A. vibe doesn’t mesh with the Big Ten vibe on the surface, everyone loves a fish taco.

So, before we met at Hinano’s, we met across the street at the Venice Whaler, a two-story, open-air renovated shack with handmade tortillas and crispy fried cod — a favorite of the Beach Boys back in the day.

Long still picks at his guitar when he’s not teaching — his day job in L.A. — and when he can, he hits the road. He played in Detroit in late July. Just his guitar and his voice and a mic and a chair. And when he rolls into a town in the Midwest with his band Young James Long, well, he’s young again.

Or at least not as old.

Los Angeles isn’t so old either, and I think beyond the distance, beyond the proximity of USC and UCLA to surf and desert, that the newness of California is what makes the Big Ten expansion there feel so discombobulating.

And yet, it’s real, and nearly here, and since USC and UCLA are now an adopted part of the rust belt, you might as well come on out and bring an appetite. You never know where old friends will take you, or the talents of some of the best cooks anywhere in the world.

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Big Ten's California expansion prompts a hungry hunt for dinner