This is the only pink sauce I’m interested in eating

Here are my weekly recommendations on where to eat — and what to order — right now.

Tableside chopped shrimp Louie for 2 at Dear Jane’s

Dear Jane’s is the type of place I imagine my grandparents frequenting when they were chic, boat-toting, martini-guzzling, cigarette-smoking revelers in the ’60s. I could see them mooring their boat, slipping on their evening wear and then pulling aside the heavy red curtain at the bar for a few tipples before settling into one of the tables that look out onto the moonlit marina for dinner.

Hans and Patti Röckenwagner and Josiah Citrin’s new seafood-focused restaurant is steps from the water of Basin C in Marina Del Rey. Like its sibling restaurant, Dear John’s steakhouse in Culver City, the atmosphere is celebratory, even midweek. Select items on the menu are prepared tableside. At Dear John’s, it’s the Caesar salad. At Dear Jane’s, it’s a chopped shrimp Louie for two.

The ingredients are pre-assembled, with tiny, sweet cherry tomatoes, slivers of avocado, plump poached shrimp and quarters of medium-boiled eggs with bright orange yolks. The dressing components are artfully swooshed around a bowl before your eyes, gradually transforming into a pale pink sauce. It’s Thousand Island adjacent, but with a more-is-more approach, tasting of citrus, sriracha, mayonnaise, fresh herbs and maybe even anchovy or fish sauce.

“We kept tasting the dressing and thought it was missing something,” chef Ken Takayama said during a recent visit.

Turns out what was missing was diced, pickled jalapeños. They add an extra burst of salivary gland-inducing vinegar that’s hard to place but much appreciated.

The dressing is poured over a bowl of salad large enough for four. It’s served with a small metal gravy boat of extra dressing intended for the salad. But I couldn’t help dunking the Röckenwagner cracker bread that accompanied the tuna tartare, or the hot boule of sourdough too.

This is the only pink sauce I’m interested in eating. If they bottle it, I’ll be first in line.

Stuffed cheese n’ zaatar mannaish from Zaatar N’ More

The stuffed cheese and za’atar mannaish from Zaatar N’ More in Northridge.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

Zaatar N’ More Bakery in Northridge masquerades as a pizza restaurant on its website. “Come N’ Grab Your Slice” reads one tagline. “Fancy a Pizza Party” says another. Along with “Love at First Slice.” Though there are a handful of pizzas on the menu, Zaatar N’ More is far from a pizza restaurant. It’s a Lebanese bakery making excellent manakish, lahmajoun, khachapuri and muhalabia.

If you’re unfamiliar, manakish, sometimes spelled manaeesh or mannaish (as it is on the Zaatar N’ More menu), is a flatbread. I grew up eating — and still enjoy — the za’atar and oil-slicked manakish from Old Sasoon Bakery in Pasadena for breakfast and many afternoon snacks.

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At Zaatar N’ More, there are more than a dozen varieties, including cheese and basturma and even Nutella, but your first order should be the stuffed cheese n’ zaatar.

The flatbread is light and puffy, with crisp, tiny bubbles around the edges. The top is smeared with a thick layer of za’atar, a sandy herb and seed paste that bristles with tart sumac, thyme and sesame seeds. The middle is lumpy in parts with hot, melted cheese underneath. I broke open the box in the car, while the pieces were almost too hot to handle. With burning fingertips, I pulled away one of the slices and watched the cheese stretch the length of my arm. Surely, the bottom would collapse. But it held.

This is the cheese-stuffed pizza of my dreams, and soon to be yours too.

Oxtails and jerk chicken from Gusina Saraba

The oxtails lunch with plantains, rice, beans and sauteed kale from Gusina Saraba at Mercado la Paloma in downtown L.A.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

I’ve been on a bit of a jerk kick lately, with the excellent jerk chicken sandwich and fish fry from Rubie, the jerk Italian beef sandwich at Bernie’s Soul Kitchen and now, the oxtails and jerk chicken from Winston Miranda at his Gusina Saraba restaurant inside the Mercado la Paloma in downtown L.A.

What Miranda started as a food truck in the mid-2000s is now a full restaurant with his jerk chicken, oxtails, curry chicken, panades, salbutes and garnachas offered daily.

Miranda’s oxtails is a dish that started, like the inspiration for all his cooking, with his great-grandmother in Belize.

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“She was the head cook that cooked everything for our family, and she would actually cook something out of nothing,” he said recently. “Every lunch, we would come home, and we would have something that she just created.”

Miranda’s oxtails slip easily from the bone, melting into the rice and beans underneath. He marinates his meat for at least a day in his own jerk seasoning, then braises it low and slow with garlic for five or more hours. The meat hums with allspice and cumin, and the accompanying lima beans add a mild sweetness.

“I put fresh lima beans two hours into the cooking,” he said. “It’s just stuff that I learned from trial and error after cooking so long.”

The jerk chicken lunch with plantains, rice, beans and squash from Gusina Saraba at the Mercado la Paloma in downtown L.A.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

Miranda uses that same seasoning for his jerk chicken, which he washes in lemon and vinegar, then marinates in the jerk spice blend for a couple hours. He grills, then bakes the chicken and serves it smothered in a jerk-spiced barbecue sauce redolent of ginger, scallion, allspice, habanero and Scotch bonnet peppers.

The chicken, like the oxtails, is served over basmati rice cooked in coconut milk and beans (which also feature the jerk seasoning) and fried plantains.

“That’s the No. 1 thing I have to explain to customers, that all the meals come with rice, beans and plantains,” he said. “That’s all Caribbean restaurants.”

More Caribbean-inspired restaurants, please.