Medfly Confusion at the Farmers’ Markets

You’ve seen the quarantine signs, the netting draped over fruits and vegetables-that-are-really-fruits, such as tomatoes and avocados, and the fans propelling streams of air over some produce displays. What does it all mean? First of all, there is nothing wrong with the fruit that growers bring into Los Angeles, so don’t stop buying. The problem [...]

John Rabe’s Cookbook Quest

I’m an habitué of used bookstores. Cliff’s in Pasadena, the late Acres of Books in Long Beach, Brand Bookstore in Glendale. I buy books at these stores and usually read them, and am always looking for cookbooks, as our kitchen bookshelf attests.

For years, I’d seen the two-volume “The Gourmet Cookbook” for sale at these bookstores, usually several copies, and never bought one. But the day they announced the demise of Gourmet magazine last year, they all disappeared, and I kicked myself. (The magazine now lives on online.)

Another Foodie Mob Scene

Because food-truck mania is at a fever pitch, it was only a matter of time until someone organized an event around the trucks, and that’s what happened last weekend. Thousands of foodies swarmed the first LA Street Food Fest on Saturday, February 13, but unfortunately, many left disappointed. While the concept was good, the organization [...]

One Stomach at a Time

So often our social issues seem huge and overwhelming, and we retreat behind the assumption that it’s just too big a problem to tackle. Not so our friend Jennie Cook, a caterer and former restaurateur who was introduced to the group Root Down L.A. by cookbook author and EAT: LA contributor Amelia Saltsman. We all [...]

Top Chef Voltaggio

If you had asked the typical Pasadenans who have frequented the Huntington Hotel dining room at any point in the last 100 years if the hotel’s chef would someday be a tattooed, bad-boy national TV star who makes things like lemongrass-scallion froth, they would have popped you on the head with their Wall Street Journals. [...]

Don’t Feed the Homeless?

We had to pass along this blog report from Donna Myrow, publisher of the nonprofit, teen-written newspaper L.A. Youth, detailing a recent outing at Farmers Market, where security guards would not let her give her uneaten food to a homeless person — even when she invited the hungry person in question to sit at her table. [...]

A Misguided War on Cookies

Our own Jenn Garbee also writes for the new national food site ZesterDaily.com, and she’s just posted a fine rant responding to the new ban on bake sales by New York City public schools. Yes, it’s New York, not L.A., but this foolishness is catching on, and what New York does others will mimic. LAUSD, [...]

Exile on Breed Street: LAPD Shuts Down Street Food

I’m just back from meeting my college girl at the Breed Street food fair, an ad-hoc, parking-lot, street-food fiesta that’s been getting a lot of attention in the last several months. I’m sorry to report that the attention seems to have done it harm, for just after we dug into our deep-fried quesadillas from Nina’s [...]

In Praise of the Established

I tell you, being a member of the food media can get wearying. There’s a constant pressure to report on the new, the upcoming, the happening. And apparently no one got the memo about the Great Recession and its 12.2% unemployment rate, because new places are opening across L.A. at the rate of about one [...]

A Bizarre Night at Bazaar

In the second half of the 1980s, when America’s yuppie-driven restaurant craze hit its zenith, I went to every single hot new L.A. restaurant on behalf of my employer, L.A. Style, a quintessential ’80s style magazine. I often think back with longing to those days, when the magazine paid for me and three friends to [...]