Cops investigate the best eats on their beats

Cops investigate the best eats on their beats
Gabriel Rendon and Raymonn Rocha, detectives with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department's East L.A. station, can be seen having their lunch at Teresita's restaurant in East L.A. usually twice a week.
Photo Credit: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times

By Elina Shatkin

March 20, 2008

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Kojak has his lollipop. Agent Cooper has his cherry pie. Chief Wiggum has his pink doughnut.

They make piquant character details, but these iconic foodstuffs hardly mirror the cravings of Los Angeles law enforcement officers. Amid the culinary smorgasbord of L.A., the equally diverse police officer palate runs the gamut from savory to sweet, spanning nearly every cuisine and culture. Who knows better than a cop the ins and outs of a neighborhood? The best taco stand, the $5 lunch deal that's actually worth eating, the culinary gem hiding in a humble strip mall? Just don't mention doughnuts.

"Contrary to popular belief, we don't live on doughnuts," says Sgt. Chris Cognac, a 16-year South Bay police veteran. "Partially it's because they're really bad for you, but there's the stigma of it as well."

In addition to his full-time job as a police officer, Cognac, who calls himself "the foodiest of food cops," hosts a half-hour Food Network show aptly titled "The Hungry Detective." Using deductive skills and gut instinct (no pun intended), he spends 48 hours in a new city tracking down five off-the-beaten-path restaurants. Often, he'll use his "cop network" for intel. "Go anywhere in America, ask the cops where to eat and they'll tell you the best places," Cognac says, "the ones where the cooks aren't drug addicts and [the restaurants] aren't crooked."

For the show's Las Vegas episode, Cognac dove into a fried Twinkie at Mermaid's, a hot dog stand he discovered eight years ago when he and his partner had to pick up a child molestation suspect from a Vegas county jail and return him to Los Angeles. "It's a total dive, but the hot dogs are Nathan's dogs and they're a buck! And we never would've gone there if the [Vegas] cops hadn't told me about it."

Cognac himself has discovered more than a few hidden gems on the job. One night about 15 years ago, he answered a disturbance call at a Middle Eastern restaurant: two men arguing whether the meat was halal (prepared in accordance with Islamic law). "So they call the white guy," Cognac recalls wryly. He couldn't resolve their dispute, but he began a love affair with Al-Watan, a legendary Pakistani restaurant where long, fragrant skewers of meat and freshly baked rounds of nan are pulled from the tandoori oven and brought directly to the table.

Al-Watan is easy to miss. Sitting on a nondescript block of Inglewood Boulevard, the restaurant hides behind a beige facade and inconspicuous sign that give no hint of its mirrored, well-scrubbed interior. As any foodie can tell you, you can't judge a book by its cover.

Gabriel Rendon and Raymonn Rocha, detectives with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department's East L.A. station, favor Teresita's, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it Mexican restaurant that's beloved by locals for its authentic Zacatecas-style food. Rocha likes the enchiladas (a house specialty) or the ensalada de nopales, a salad of marinated cactus slivers and sun-dried tomatoes that's drizzled with crema and served with nachos. Rendon prefers the soups, either the cocido or the albondigas, "except in an occasional moment of weakness when I order the chicken molé," he says.

Like most of us, Rendon is watching his weight. In fact, the stereotype of the lardy police officer is being whittled away along with the department's collective waistline. These days, most new recruits are gym rats who eat lean and work hard to stay in shape. "That's the difference between old and new school. Deputies now are more conscious of eating healthy food. Many of them only eat energy bars and water during their shifts," says Cesar Romero, a deputy with the sheriff's STAR Unit, a drug-, gang- and violence-prevention unit targeted to elementary and middle-school students.

Contrast that with the tales of gluttony told by Tony Manfree, a 27-year veteran of the Sheriff's Department who retired in August: "My old partners and I used to have prime rib eating contests," says Manfree. "I think the record was eight slabs. And the guys in the department, we'd all go to Chroni's to see who could eat the most hot dogs. The record on hot dogs was maybe a dozen."

These days, he frequents Tequila's, a Mexican restaurant and bar near what will eventually be the final stop on the Gold Line Eastside extension. From the outside it looks like a seedy bar, but inside, owner and chef Rudy Lopez -- who looks quite a bit younger than his 72 years -- dishes out tacos, paella, enchiladas, pork stewed with green chiles and Puerto Nuevo-style lobster tacos grilled with butter and a hint of garlic. Lopez estimates that 60% of his business depends on law enforcement and county personnel, who often hold office celebrations there. In fact, T Quilea's will host Rocha's upcoming retirement party.

After the generational divide, how and where cops eat tend to split along lines of rank and office duty. Detectives have plenty of leeway as to when and where they eat. Patrol officers, on the other hand, generally can't leave their beat, and they rarely have enough time for a sit-down meal. "Mostly we park our cars and eat on the hood," says John Hatfield, a 33-year-old deputy with the West Hollywood sheriff's station. "Two bites into your meal you might get a call from a deputy requesting assistance. You don't even think about how fast you can pack up or what you've got left to eat. You just go."

"We sometimes have to race out on calls, so we become taco stand connoisseurs," Cognac says. "If you want to know the best taco stands, ask a cop who works the night shift." Cognac's a fan of the carne asada at Acosta Taco, a divey stand on an even divier stretch of Imperial Highway. Unlike other taco stands nearby, Acosta often draws a late-night crowd.

Later, in Rosy's Bakery & Cuban Cafe chatting about the finer points of mojo de ajo, Cognac gets a radio call for a 415. He drops his medianoche racing out the door to answer a call about a group of Lennox 13 gang members using a two-by-four with a nail stuck through it to beat a man senseless. Later, he's looking through the window of a pupuseria when a "baby not breathing" call comes in. When that happens, "everybody drops what they're doing. We're all dads," Cognac explains. True to his word, four cruisers and a firetruck respond, but by then the baby is breathing -- and crying -- with gusto. Cradling her child and surrounded by shaken family members, the mother cries with gratitude and relief.

When he has the luxury of choosing where to eat and if it's before 9 p.m. (the closing time for most restaurants in his area), Cognac has his pick of cuisines. He points out restaurants of almost every imaginable ethnicity: Tongan, Hawaiian, African, Vietnamese, Salvadoran, Mexican, Cuban, Pakistani, Turkish, Italian, Chinese, Peruvian. "You could name any place on Earth and I could get you there in five minutes," Cognac says. "About the only thing you can't get down here are kosher delis."

More than anything else, food is a cultural ambassador that gives Cognac another way into the myriad communities he serves, enabling him to visit them as a customer, not as a cop.

"Most people stay within their comfort zone," he says, "like if they can't read the sign on the door, they won't go in. As police officers, we're required to go out of our comfort zones and into other peoples' societies. A lot of times we'll go in because of the job -- then we realize there's a lot of great stuff here."

elina.shatkin@latimes.com