Popeye's chicken sushi
Newton Circus Baked Chilean Sea Bass
Bubur Cha Cha (dessert)
Teh Tarik (pulled milk tea)
Wine Pairing
Call 310-552-9988 for reservations. Price is $75.
Sorry, but egg or no egg, I would never order this "cowgirl pancake" in a million years, it looks terrible.
Michael Cirino demonstrates How to Cook an Egg, molecular gastronomy style, in a groovy Italian "slow food" kitchen, whatever that is.
Bring the garden right to the table in this dining room table-cum-kitchen garden.
Wooly Pockets, made from recycled plastic bottles, are a bit pricey at $249 for this large size, but make it easy to garden anywhere, even on walls.
La Guera Tamalera, who makes terrific organic tamales with a special fluffy masa recipe, is hosting a tamale-making class next Saturday in Boyle Heights. The class is $58, but if you mention Eating LA, two tickets are $100, so go with a friend. You'll get an organic lunch and get to take home all the tamales you make.
When the first Fresh & Easy store opened, it seems like nearly everyone thought it would be some twee sort of giant Tudor House full of mushy peas and Bisto gravy mix. But of course, that would have been retail suicide, and the first shoppers in Glassell Park were much more interested in their tortilla prices than Marmite. A few early shoppers reported sightings of streaky bacon and British tea, and it seemed like there were more Indian food items than in many stores. But now Fresh & Easy apparently feels it's safe to unleash a few more British foods on us. Their baked beans apparently taste completely different, I'm told...but what is the actual purpose of Country Ploughman's Pickle? Have you seen more British products yet?
Pretty classy for a supermarket party...
Rachel Morrison's jello cheeseburger
A bunch of popular cooking bloggers, including several L.A. cooks and Paris-based David Leibovitz contribute to the new food website GoodBite. Photographer and chef Matt Armendariz, cookbook author Jeanne Kelley, White on Rice couple, Steamy Kitchen and Gluten Free Girl are among the bloggers contributing to the site, which includes lots of videos and recipes. It's a nicely-designed site, with forums and blogs as well as recipes and advice. I love the Asian-inspired recipes on Steamy Kitchen, so I think I'll bookmark this one for when I'm scrounging around the web for dinner ideas.
Amy Seidenwurm, who was featured in the L.A. Times story on Urban Beekeepers back in March, is cooking at Canelé restaurant in Atwater through the "friends cook" program on Tuesday, June 30.
Ghost ladies mysteriously turned the photo black and white.
mainstay and associate editor of Los Angeles Magazine Chris Nichols, who each year takes his birthday party one step farther into fabulousness. This year's 1880s Kentucky Derby theme at Glendale's historic Ard Eevin House was fastidiously carried out, down to eliminating all plastic and disposable partyware in favor of inexpensive glassware and cloth napkins. Chris's friends are the type who can actually lay their h
ands on a hoop skirt when needed, although the costumes this year were somewhat more challenging to assemble than last year's 1940 train theme.
Eat on the sunny bungalow patio, or take home a whole dinner
We got a few meals out of the chicken, as well as ratatouille with lavender, a lovely beet/apple salad and a sturdy wheatberry salad with dried fruit. I might not ordinarily drop $40 on takeout food, but we did get several meals out of it, and the food all has fresh, distinct flavors with top quality ingredients. A few days later, I stopped by to pick up a Scandinavian sandwich on the way to work. Again, $10 for lunch at the office is out of my budget, but this was a luxurious sandwich made with house-cured gravlax, pickled onions and super-fresh pumpernickel, so it earned its keep. And did I mention the decor? I think people are just going to show the place to their kitchen designers and say, "Make it look just like this." 
With shiny white marble counters and open kitchen (above) with hanging copper pots -- everything is fresh and pretty, just like the food. Use it as your pantry for emergency dinner parties (individual entrees range from Moroccan chicken to grilled salmon) or picnics, or just stop by for breakfast or lunch -- either way it's hard not to like the Larder. They could probably clone the place, drop it onto Hillhurst Ave. and make a killing.
Fox Searchlight is deploying several famous L.A. food trucks on Sunday to promote the new film 500 Days of Summer with 500 free treats at each location. Here's where to find them:
Great minds think alike, I guess...the L.A. Commons has announced that its first Trekking Los Angeles: Local Street Food Adventures in a Global City tour will hit on June 28 will hit Highland Park, the site of our recent Bike Bender. Here's the description:From 12pm-4pm we will tour Highland Park, providing tourgoers with opportunities to sample unique street foods from the regions of Mexico and Central America. Highlights will include a stop at the famous Blue Taco Truck and tasting cemitas (little sandwiches from the region of Puebla) at an old local haunt. The tour will include a guided walk around the neighborhood, complete with historical trivia (do you know which donut-maker originated in Highland Park?) peppered throughout and conclude with an introduction to Chicken Boy by Amy Inouye, tour guide, gallery owner and mom to Chicken Boy. The tour has an optional visit to the “smokin’” Highland Park car show, where art meets the street.WHEN: June 28, 2009
Where's Lynwood, you say? Well, it's kind of where the 105 freeway intersects the 110 and 710, so it's pretty easy to get to. What you may not know is that it is one of L.A.'s fastest-growing Hispanic communities with some great Mexican and Central American food destinations, including La Huasteca and La Casita in nearby Bell. This Saturday from 12 to 6, the Rosarito and Ensenada tourism boards are sponsoring El Sabor de Baja, the flavor of Baja, at Plaza Mexico, with food, Baja wine, music and artisanal products from Mexico. Read more about it at Street Gourmet LA's blog.
This shaker full of Party Tyme! "instant cocktail mixes" was a great garage sale find to add to my vintage cocktail shakers and accessories collection. Who ever thought it would be a good idea to mix mai tais and daiquiris out of artificially-flavored powders? Someone in the early 1960s, that's who. Plus, on the back of the shaker, it says it's endorsed by Arthur Godfrey, so it must be good, right? Was 1950s TV host Godfrey at all associated with cocktails?
I didn't get to go to any L.A. Commons events last summer, but they had a great selection of food and culture activities including a barbecue tour and Thai Town tour, introducing Angelenos to various cultures of the city. L.A. Commons is kicking off this year's Trekking LA 200: Global Feasts, Local Streets series with a party at Mercado La Paloma, Downtown home of Mo-Chica, Chichen Itza and more. 
Via numerous tweets which I've lost track of by now, all the bloggers are excited about the Nom Nom truck, rolling out this summer on the Westside and beyond. Please, bring it Eastward as well!
Mama's has takeout windows in front, but it doesn't seem like they're really used.
But it's perfectly feasible to eat in the restaurant, and get the dumplings fresh out of the steamer as they should be. MaMa's is known for handmade noodles, which most people probably get in beef soup. It's also known for MaMa, the smiling, non-English speaking owner who is apparently known for persuading her Chinese customers to order extra dishes, which seems like it would hardly be a problem, because then you would have leftovers. I don't feel like beef soup every time I go for Chinese food, so we got the chicken chow mein and what looked like xiao long bao on the wall poster. 
Chicken chow mein (above) might sound boring, but this dish was pretty much everything you would want in a noodle dish: great lengths of slightly chewy fettucine-like noodles with some tender chicken pieces and a few lashings of bok choy. A dash of black vinegar elevated the whole thing to an elegant example of the chow mein genre. Soup dumplings were also exemplary, with a slightly different flavor -- peanuts, I think -- added to the pork filling. There's also stinky tofu, which blankets the tiny dining room with its stench when someone orders it, and an array of cold appetizers. Watching a dad try to cajole his young daughter into trying tiny fishes by feeding her with chopsticks was definitely worth the slight discomforts of eating there.
Alembic's potent Vow of Silence cocktail: rye, Benedictine, creme de griotte and bitters. (photo by Jesse of Beer&Nosh)
We looked around the blossoming Hayes St. neighborhood at the adorable Frjtz, dedicated to Belgian fries and mussels (explain to me why we can't have this in L.A.?), made a note to try Suppenkuche, Sebo and Bar Jules on our next trip and had a knockout chocolatey iced coffee and some beans to take home from Blue Bottle.
Lunch was an impossibly rich sheep's milk cheese and almond sandwich (above) on flavorful bread and a piece of flaky, delicate quiche Lorraine at Tartine Bakery. It was impossible to fit in all the ice cream I wanted to try, so I deputized Kathy to taste the Ritual coffee/toffee at Bi-Rite Creamery -- a bit too heavy for my taste -- while I tried caramel with balsamic vinegar at Humphrey Slocombe, one of the best flavors I've ever had. 
Their chocolate tamarind and peanut butter curry also hit just the right note for my ice cream sweet spot, which lies somewhere between Pazzo Gelato's quality fabrication and Scoops' bizarre combos. We worked up cocktail appetites strolling around the Sutro Baths, then repaired to Haight St.'s Alembic for cocktails. Recommended by Golden State's Jason Bernstein as one of the top bars anywhere, Alembic specializes in carefully crafted cocktails made with craft liquors, a well curated beer list and a fascinating nose-to-tail menu which, unfortunately, we didn't get to taste. 
I tried a Vow of Silence and a variation on a Monte Carlo that the bartender invented for me, and we also tried a Promissory Note and some killer daiquiris and margaritas. At Alembic, we ran into Jesse from S.F. beer and food blog Beer & Nosh, taking pictures of the bone marrow dish.
We were basically sloshed and stuffed by then, but we also enjoyed tasting four different ceviches (above), 
including one with coconut milk, at Fresca, a mini-chain of nouveau Peruvian restaurants. Peru-mania seems to have already hit San Francisco, and looks to be taking off in L.A. too, between Mo-chica and the upcoming Osaka, if it ever gets finished. The next day, we drove down the coast to Santa Cruz, stopping to buy fresh artichokes, peas, strawberries and cherries as well as some local beers like this can of Siamese Twin Ale from Santa Cruz's Uncommon Brewers.
The woodsy-meets-industrial exterior of the new Berkeley Bowl West fits its warehouse neighborhood well.
The scene at popular Luka's in Oakland.
creamy Old Speckled Hen on nitrogen, and we also tried an Avery Collaboration not Litigation ale from Russian River Brewing, Dogfish Head IPA and Blue Star Hefweizen. We shared a garlicky and rich selection of mussels bouillabaisse style, chorizo and corn fritters, fried green tomato salad, crispy steelhead trout with foraged mushrooms and terrific Belgian fries with chipotle aioli. The next morning, we stopped by the brand-new Berkeley Bowl West. I used to live near the original Berkeley Bowl when it was still in a converted bowling alley, so I wanted to see the huge new branch of one of the world's great supermarkets. It's a beautiful airy space with a vast produce department and really good prices for lots of unusual products and unfortunately there's nothing really like it in L.A. I picked up strawberry rhubarb marmalade, well-priced farro, some of their house brand vinegars and a whole grain berry scone.
Excellent prices on local berries at the Berkeley Bowl
The perfect light lunch: grilled salmon salad from BLD
Don't miss the third annual No Cookie Left Behind Bake Sale on Sunday, June 14 at Scoops from 2-6 pm, as part of Share Our Strength's Great American Bake Sale. Share Our Strength is dedicated to the cause of ending world hunger, and the proceeds from GABS specifically go towards fighting childhood hunger in the United States.
Last Friday, we celebrated my son's 18th birthday at Pasadena's Heidar Baba. He chose the Persian restaurant because he had served their kebabs during his report on Iran at Pasadena City College across the street. Portions are Heidar Baba are huge, and the grilled meats are quite good. I can't run photos of fesenjon chicken, because it looks like brown mud, but although the pomegranate and nut flavors weren't quite bright enough the first day, the leftovers were excellent. Service was on the poky side, but Heidar Baba is still a solid choice for takeout or a pre-Bulgarini Gelato meal.
Bulgarini Gelato: Don't forget to ask about the unmarked flavors
school friends started driving me to El Tepeyac. It was surely not very authentic, but I hadn't realized that Senor Pico, which was and still is owned by Trader Vic's, was quite influential in popularizing the Cal-Mex food that so many restaurants serve today. And Senor Pico survives to this day in Bangkok and I think Dubai or somewhere. I can only imagine what the Thai version of Cal-Mex food might look like.
Another creator and popularizer of Cal-Mex food was Victor J. Bergeron, known as "Trader Vic," who in 1933 founded what would become his eponymous restaurant chain in Oakland, Calif. After several Trader Vic's outlets were up and running, Bergeron looked around for other possibilities. He later wrote that he'd had "a mad-on for Mexican food for a thousand years," but he found the real thing "primitive," "greasy, hot and not well prepared." Bergeron spent a couple weeks in Mexico and Texas looking for recipes that he could adapt to the tastes of mainstream Americans. He also popularized the margarita, a drink that likely was invented in bars in Mexico that catered to American tourists.
Bergeron opened a restaurant called "Senor Pico" in San Francisco in 1964 and another one in Los Angeles three years later. By 1973 the Senor Pico restaurants sold more tequila than any other restaurant in the world. The margarita became a foundation stone of the Cal-Mex culinary tradition and a fixture in restaurants and bars throughout the United States.
(menus from the LA Public Library)
Risotto with ginger, pork belly, pig ear terrine and cubed pork, topped with Chinese-style pork floss"It ain’t Jayburger but it’s a real improvement over Sean’s," she writes.
that were fully appointed with all the tools of the bartenders' trade. We tried mixing three cocktails each with regular small-cube ice (Santer calls it, with just a tiny sneer, "deli ice"), and with Neve's large-cubed special cocktail ice in cube and rectangular formats.
A proper mixing set-up was provided at each table
and super-crispy frites was served. Then it was back to mixing up martinis and daiquiris, which came out quite well, and a rather complicated explanation of mixing in stainless steel cocktail shakers with and without a glass. Our table concluded that stirred was indeed better than shaken in many cases. Neve ships its special Godzilla-sized old-fashioned ice cubes (at right) and tall, rectangular collins/hi-ball ice to bars and restaurants throughout the country.
