“It rose out of nowhere,” says Junya Watanabe. The thrill of things is amplified by their unlikeliness. It is always likely that great restaurants will dot the drop-dead gorgeous coastlines, that Michelin-star kitchens will bloom in the shadows of skyscrapers. But when mom-and-pops create a bustling dining culture in the city’s unsexy middle, behind some car dealerships and paint stores, in a part of town not designed for restaurants, where parking is so scarce it’s nearly a mythological construct, turning entire strip malls into food courts of nuanced and authentic cuisines of various Asian cultures—That’s a thrill.
That’s Convoy District,
