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Deau Arpapornnopparat, chef-owner of Holy Basil Thai restaurants, makes his favorite snack: a salad of instant ramen-style noodles, ground pork (you can also use chicken), cabbage, herbs, onion, shallot and a tangy dressing of fish sauce caramel, lime juice and the seasoning packet from the noodles. He uses Thai brand Mama, but you can use
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The Trump administration has spent weeks threatening Chicago, trolling the Midwest colossus of 9 million with incendiary online posts. In the gut, even from far away, it has felt like early June in L.A. all over again. That’s because Chicago is just like us: big, urban, vibrant and brown. This summer I visited the city
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One could assemble a cow piece by piece at Glendale’s Sevan Meat Market. Precision-cut steaks sit in neat rows. Whole feet rest tippy-toed, perpetually frozen in pre-pirouette. Packs of brains live on the shelf below, flat and frozen. This is how I imagine my brain looks after a few hours of scrolling TikTok, and yet
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Chef Will Coleman combines two of his favorite dishes — a breakfast sandwich and cacio e pepe — for this simple recipe with bold flavors. He created it during his West Coast breakfast tour for a pop-up at Fried Egg I’m in Love in Portland, Ore., and it proved so popular that he put it
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Sometimes my living room feels like the Earth’s core, the walls seething with a relentless heat that penetrates my soul. This summer has been especially brutal. I have not consulted any actual weather data to make this conclusion, just the number of times a week I feel like all the droplets of sweat clinging to
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This recipe from chef Will Coleman’s “From Cart to Kitchen” cookbook is based on the P.F. Chang’s dish that he’d order almost weekly growing up, and also represents one of the first meals he cooked for his family when he began developing his culinary skills as a teenager. He recommends using whatever lean-ish protein you
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One bill aims to raise lagging reading skills among California children by mandating how schools teach this critical subject. Another seeks to overhaul cafeteria meals by eliminating highly processed foods. A third aims to protect students from being derailed by discrimination. These bills and others passed by the Legislature in the session’s final busy days
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Two things come to mind whenever I’m savoring the rectangular prawn toasts, fried to coppery crispness, at 88 Club in Beverly Hills: how brilliantly chef Mei Lin reconfigured the abiding Cantonese snack, and how its excellence amplifies what’s not as fully realized elsewhere on the menu. About our reviews Reviewers choose restaurants that reflect a
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As we were opening my restaurant Found Oyster, our general manager, Joe Laraja, was adamant that we use his mom JoAnne’s recipe for mignonette, because it was the most delicious one he’d ever had and the only thing JoAnne liked with oysters. We later came to find that JoAnne got the recipe from Island Creek
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Ari Kolender knows oysters. His two seafood restaurants — Found Oyster in East Hollywood and Queen’s Raw Bar & Grill in Eagle Rock — serve tens of thousands of oysters a week. Between them they’ve sold well over a million oysters, splayed in platters over ice, tucked into towers of seafood, served raw, grilled or
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Did you see the purple loaves of sourdough that were all over social media a few years ago? I missed them. In fact, I’m five years late to trying Karlo Evaristo’s heirloom blue corn masa sourdough bread, and I only discovered it by accident. Now, I can think of little else. During a recent dinner
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Sushi Zanmai Japan’s prolific sushi restaurateur known as the “Tuna King” has debuted his first restaurant in the United States, bringing his signature focus on tuna to the heart of L.A.’s Koreatown. Kiyoshi Kimura is a legendary and record-breaking figure at Tsukiji Fish Market — he paid 333.6 million yen, or roughly $3.1 million at
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Cook, stirring often, until the farro has absorbed the liquid. Continue cooking the farro, adding the stock a ladle- or cupful at a time and allowing the grains to absorb the stock each time before adding more, until the farrotto is creamy and the grains are tender and have burst open, 45 minutes to 1
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Put the corn cobs in a soup pot and any of the optional additions in a stockpot and add 3 quarts water. Bring the water to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to maintain a simmer and cook the cobs for about 1 hour, until the liquid has reduced by half and the
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It’s Week 1 of the NFL season — meaning many of us have already started grazing for the winter. Fans of losing football teams have been found to devour 16% more saturated fat the day after a big game than their normal daily amount. Fans of winning teams consume 9% less than usual … as
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There are countless reasons to dine and drink in the Valley. After canvassing the region for months, the Food team released guides with 65 of our favorite places to eat and 24 of the best bars and coffee shops, plus a spotlight on a neighborhood deli that’s fed generations of Italian residents and a sushi
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Shira Yevin was on her way to grab lunch from the Studio City Trader Joe’s, when she caught sight of a new restaurant on the block called Local Kitchens. “I was like, ‘That sounds good, sounds healthy,’” she said. “‘Let me see what it is.’” Excited at the prospect of not eating preprepared grocery store
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The Southern California grocery brand that has become synonymous with luxury and wellness is taking its first steps into New York City. Erewhon said it plans to open a tonic bar within an exclusive West Village members’ club later this fall. The tonic bar will serve members at Kith Ivy, a lifestyle and fitness club
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Cook the black-eyed peas: Strain the beans, discarding the soaking water, and put them in a large pot. Add enough water so that it covers the beans; the water should be 2 inches above the bean line. Bring the beans to a boil. Cook them at a hard boil for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat
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Guinness bread was the beginning of Café Cecilia. In a strange way, without it there wouldn’t be a café and I would have never learned how to cook. At a time when I was desperate to recover from depression, I decided I needed some time out from the music management company where I was working.
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In Max Rocha’s London restaurant, Café Cecilia, he blends the concept of fish stew with the ubiquity of smothered toast, resulting in one of his most popular dishes: crusty sourdough that’s slicked with garlicky aioli, cider-braised mussels and sweet roasted tomatoes. In his debut cookbook, “Café Cecilia,” Rocha shares his recipe for mussels and datterini
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Against all odds, Tyler Wells’ Altadena restaurant remains standing. Like roughly 10,000 homes and structures in the area, many of the surrounding businesses burned in January’s Eaton fire, changing the mountain town’s community and landscape forever. After the neighborhood’s destruction Wells thought his restaurant would never reopen, but on Saturday, Betsy — formerly called Bernee
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A young man wearing a bucket hat and a denim tuxedo monogrammed with the letters LV across every inch of fabric leans in to talk to his dinner date. A couple takes selfies between bites of a California roll, both using forks to stab at the maki. Four women, their faces buoyant with Botox, clink
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2 tablespoons olive oil 1 medium yellow onion, diced 4 garlic cloves, minced 2 ½ tablespoons chili powder 2 teaspoons ground cumin 2 teaspoons smoked paprika 1 teaspoon ground coriander 1 bay leaf 1 tablespoon tomato paste 2 tablespoons white wine 1 tablespoon fresh thyme 2 ½ teaspoons kosher salt, to taste ½ teaspoon black
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A new coffee giant could be brewing. The American beverage firm Keurig Dr. Pepper plans to buy JDE Peet’s, the European parent company of California’s gourmet coffee trailblazer, Peet’s Coffee, in an all-cash transaction worth about $18 billion. Keurig Dr. Pepper will be split into two independent companies, one of which will focus on coffee,
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A suero is a “water cocktail,” consisting of lime juice, ice and sparkling mineral water, all served in a tall glass with a salted rim. The same word is used for an IV of fluids in Mexico, and the two serve the same purpose: to keep you healthy and hydrated. Use whatever mineral water you
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Casey Elsass shares a recipe from his cookbook “What Can I Bring?” It’s bright, tangy and the perfect addition to any spread of starters. Here’s Elsass on his salt and vinegar salsa verde: Let me just get out in front of this before it becomes a scandal: This is not a salt-and-vinegar-flavored salsa, although that
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In his new cookbook “What Can I Bring?” Casey Elsass shares a recipe for fried halloumi caprese. Here’s Elsass on his salad: I’m going to ask, but not demand, that you wait for peak tomatoes. This salad is especially bare bones, so everything needs to be on point for it to sing. But when it’s
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The food scene in the Valley is massive — spread out across 260 square miles and sustaining roughly half the population of the city of Los Angeles. Eight Times Food writers spent weeks traversing its trafficked highways, long boulevards and hidden side streets in search of greatness. Our search yielded 65 dining destinations and 24
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“I’ll have what she’s having.” A memorable punch line, but not much of a menu strategy — unless you believe that best-selling qualifies as a cuisine. And yet I keep seeing the same dishes over and over, often on menus whose identities are defined mostly by popularity: goat cheese salad, a riff on Buffalo chicken
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When I want to feel closer to my late grandmother — and to my great-aunt, aunts and cousins — I drive to Burbank. I head directly to the cookie case at Monte Carlo Italian Deli, passing beneath the wooden puppets that line the walls, and scan the rows of sweets for pignoli. I wander the
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p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> Series Vanessa Anderson is the Grocery Goblin, on a mission to explore neighborhood grocery stores throughout Southern California. It hits me like a wall as the glass doors slide open: an unidentifiable scent — toasted, warm and slightly sweet. At international markets, smell, inextricably linked to our memories and emotions, is often a
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This simple starter of fried plantains quickly became the star of Adrian Forte’s menu at Sam Jordan’s modern Caribbean restaurant Lucia, which opened on Fairfax Avenue in the spring. The caramelized, crispy plantains are heightened with a pickled Scotch bonnet aioli that’s based on a recipe from Forte’s “Yawd” cookbook and served on the side.
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Everyone has a Valley standby, a place they go when they want to feel at home, with little fuss, a reliable menu and friendly faces. For me it’s Tiki No, a neon-lighted bar that serves up flaming Scorpion bowls in North Hollywood. We reached out to some of our favorite Valley residents, from local chefs
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On June 30 Justin Pichetrungsi posted news on his restaurant’s Instagram account that drew thousands of responses in shock, dismay and support: He would be closing his generational family business, Anajak Thai Cuisine, for nearly two months. What followed was a complete renovation that uncovered family relics and reimagined the space that helped raise Pichetrungsi,
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Aug. 18, 2025 3 AM PT “Hey, 1.8 million people can’t be wrong, right?” This is how Evan Lovett, the social-media pop historian of all things L.A., said we should frame our thinking about the dining culture of the San Fernando Valley, where he lives. And yep, he’s right. If half the population of Los
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HelloFresh agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle a consumer protection lawsuit brought by Santa Clara County. The lawsuit, filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court, alleged the meal-kit company had misled customers and made it difficult for them to cancel their subscriptions. As part of the settlement, which was approved last week, HelloFresh will
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On a recent Sunday afternoon, Tetsuya Nakao — the affable, upbeat 62-year-old Asanebo sushi chef with slicked silver hair — is filming one of his soon-to-be viral videos. Cheeky, occasionally unhinged and released nearly every day, they’ve garnered the Studio City legend a new fandom that’s changed Nakao’s life and his business, possibly forever. Nakao
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Casey Elsass grew up in New England and frequented a farm in rural New Hampshire for hayrides and what he calls the best apple cake he’s ever had. He shares a recipe for his easy apple cake in his new cookbook, “What Can I Bring?” “The batter is what you’d expect, with diced apples, sour
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Dan Tana, the restaurateur whose eponymous Santa Monica Boulevard eatery has for decades been a Hollywood hotspot — one with dishes named for celebrities who are liable to be there on any given night — died in Belgrade, Serbia, on Saturday. He was 90. Tana, born Dobrivoje Tanasijević, was a professional soccer player before opening
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If you can’t find Jeff Strauss in his Highland Park deli, Jeff’s Table, or inside his Studio City bar-restaurant, Oy Bar, you should probably check the parking lot of the latter. The ex-television writer — now chef and restaurateur — is channeling more of his creative energy into a new, weekend-only bar and tasting menu
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Yue Wa is one of the last remaining markets in Chinatown, a place where the neighborhood’s most vulnerable residents could find affordable groceries. For the past 18 years, customers chatted while they hand-picked their produce in front of the store, the small market providing a dwindling sense of community. By next month, Yue Wa will
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Tokyo Fried Chicken has closed its doors in downtown. And a buzzy Mexican rooftop lounge along with a legacy L.A. brewery in the area said they would do the same, the latest in a string of businesses abandoning the city’s core. Founded in 2013 in a Monterey Park shopping center before moving to a location
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Evan Funke’s eponymous Beverly Hills restaurant, where delicate handmade pastas are rolled out and shaped in front of guests, is temporarily closed following a Tuesday evening fire. According to a representative for the City of Beverly Hills, the small fire was contained primarily within the ventilation duct system, and the restaurant sustained minimal damage. In
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Uncle Ollie’s Penthouse, the new maximalist downtown L.A. bar that opened in April between Little Tokyo and Skid Row (a region some have dubbed “Skid Rokyo”), captures the visceral, dopamine-driven alchemy of the best kind of house party every Wednesday to Sunday night. It has wild, color-saturated decor, potent cocktails served in red Solo cups
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A vibrant social scene has burgeoned on Saturday nights along Route 66 in Glendora — a sleepy suburb in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains — at Glendora Continental, a nostalgic time capsule of the local Basque community for nearly half a century. But now the 45-year-old, family-run restaurant might be nearing its end.
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Figuring out what should go into your curbside waste bins is hardly straightforward. Consider your single-use coffee cup — the one holding the latte you’re going to drink as you drive to work. It’s paper, right? So it can be recycled? Los Angeles knows how to weather a crisis — or two or three. Angelenos
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Make a charred-tomatillo salsa the way Michelle and Andrew Muñoz of Moo’s Craft BBQ do.
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If you were dining out in Venice late last decade, you knew this place — in the thick of Abbot Kinney Boulevard’s luxury-cool retail density. MTN (pronounced “Mountain”) closed five years ago and, with a few pivotal modifications, has now returned as RVR (yes, pronounced “River”). Being at RVR doesn’t feel like experiencing déjà vu
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Mid East Eats — a popular falafel pop-up turned private dinner service — is now open as a fast-casual destination for homestyle Palestinian cuisine with an L.A. edge. It’s also the first legally permitted home kitchen in Watts. Sumer and Andrew Durkee’s nearly 700-square-foot home on Grape Street has a white banner stretched across the
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It has been a brutal stretch for L.A. restaurants. Since 2023, hundreds of notable spots have shuttered amid escalating costs for food and labor, and a weakening economy. More recently, the local scene has also been roiled by the January wildfires, which torched several restaurants, caused some to temporarily close and displaced workers. Then, this
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Not since Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis introduced Angelenos to the lamb neck shawarma at Bavel, have I heard this much of a buzz around a single lamb dish. My Chinese grandma is curious. My Orange County friends want to know. Have you had the lamb at M Joy? Is it the lamb equivalent of
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In the late 1990s, Paula Deen was an independent restaurateur whose family-operated restaurant had just received a glowing review from USA Today. Her life and career were permanently changed. Now, over 25 years later, the Georgia native has announced the closing of the Lady and Sons — the iconic restaurant that made her a star
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Turning the corner on 6th and Main Streets, an hours-long line of potential customers has been waiting to get a final dip and drink at Cole’s French Dip. It’s been this way since July 7, when owner Cedd Moses and his Pouring With Heart company announced the imminent closure of the historic restaurant and saloon.
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William “Bill” Elwell, the humorous and occasionally ornery owner of a legendary burger shack in the San Fernando Valley, has died at 98, prompting an outpouring of admiration and memories from burger aficionados and restaurateurs who were inspired by him. Elwell, who founded the Van Nuys burger stand Bill’s Burgers in 1965 and worked there
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Carlos Salgado wowed the world of Mexican food the moment he opened Taco María in 2013. His marriage of high-end with homestyle — sturgeon tacos, Flamin’ Hot chicharrones, handmade blue corn tortillas from kernels he imported from Mexico and milled himself — seemed better suited to Los Angeles or Mexico City than a hipster food
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Chef Sang Yoon opened an all-day bakery cafe in the historic Helms Bakery complex in Culver City. Yoon’s Helms Bakery is 14,000 square feet of baked goods (pies by the slice, cakes, cookies, sourdough loaves and more), snacks, coffee, soft drinks, packaged takeout items, a hot-dish lunch menu and sandwiches. This one — a recipe
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My most vivid food memories involve overcooked spaghetti in a wooden bowl, and my grandmother Phyllis. For decades, my grandmother’s wooden bowls sat stacked in the cabinet next to the refrigerator in her old, two-story home in Gardena. They followed her to her retirement home in Palm Desert, which she lovingly referred to as “toe-tag
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Beef ribs, says Andrew Muñoz, co-founder with wife Michelle Muñoz of Moo’s Craft Barbecue, are a Saturday special at their Lincoln Heights restaurant. “We can’t make enough of them,” he says. Those ribs are cooked in a smoker customized for the Moo’s team over California white oak. But the couple has developed this home-cook recipe
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Cut the noodles and assemble: When the mung bean jelly mixture is set, remove it from its container by placing a large plate or cutting board over the container and carefully flip. Grate noodles from the set jelly by using a noodle scraper or the largest holes of a box grater. Alternatively, you can cut
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Here is the challenge we set out for the chefs of some of our favorite restaurants: Come up with a recipe that demonstrates chef skills and creativity but is still simple enough for an average home cook to make. That’s not necessarily easy for chefs with regular access to specialty ingredients, a team of prep
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My dog Rufus’ wellness journey started with what I now consider an oxymoron: healthy kibble. Just weeks after I adopted him, Rufus stayed the weekend with his first babysitters, my friend Jamie and her then-partner, a famous country singer. When I came to retrieve my handful-sized little guy, said singer informed me that the so-called
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A Silver Lake poke destination is back after five years away. Ohana Superette, the casual, daytime-only poke shop from husband-and-wife team Eric and Miriam Park, recently returned with its own space and thoughtful, traditional poke. “I always try to do my version but not mess with it too much,” chef and co-owner Eric Park said,
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Warning: Your dog will not live forever. To try to maximize their health and happiness while you are fortunate to have them prancing along by your side, I share with you one of Rufus’ favorite recipes as a jumping-off point. You’ll land on what your dog likes, and what works for you. I prepare —
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Beloved Food Network star Anne Burrell died by suicide, according to the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner. On Thursday morning, the chief medical examiner listed the cause of death as “acute intoxication due to the combined effects of diphenhydramine, ethanol, cetirizine, and amphetamine.” The celebrity chef and host of “Worst Cooks in
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When I rescued Tatty Jane from the Pasadena Humane Society, she was a super skinny, long-legged little thing with the black and gray coloring and sweetness of a poodle and the long, spindly legs and energy of an Italian greyhound. At 16 pounds, she had sparse curly hair with a hilarious white tuft that hovered
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Add the toasted sesame seeds to a blender. Blend on high until blended into a powder, about 30 seconds, stopping and scraping down the sides and bottom corners to get any stuck seeds. Add the soy sauce, orange juice, garlic, water, sesame oil, rice vinegar, orange zest and pickle juice to the blender with the
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Was it a restaurant opening or a car show? On Monday, Cybertrucks and Teslas filed into the parking lot and lined around the block for the opening of the Tesla Diner: a two-story, retro-modern, steel-covered restaurant with two towering movie screens for customers to watch as they “supercharge” their cars. It marks the popular but
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The Cortez family piled out of their car and stretched their legs. Finally, after an hour and a half drive from their Long Beach home, they had made it to Little Tokyo — specifically, to One Piece Cafe. “I was just sitting in the car like, ‘I’m going to be at the One Piece Cafe,’”
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This recipe is my version of a stew or caldo from my dad’s home state of Durango, Mexico. My dad would make a modified version of this at our house where he substituted chile pasado with roasted chile poblano. This was something he would cook up after work for us, at home after my mom
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This is probably my mom’s favorite dish, and it was our favorite dish for her to make when my brother, my sister and I were kids. She passed away 30 years ago, in 1995, so it just just was calling to me. My mom was born in Lincoln Heights, but her dad is from Texas
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Slice the fish and assemble the crudo: Remove hamachi from refrigerator and rinse thoroughly under cold running water. Pat dry. Just before serving, cut the fish evenly into 1/4-inch slices. Place each of the fish slices onto a work surface and zest a lime with a rasp grater over each slice of fish. Spoon a
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Josh Kim and Sam Hong had successful careers in tech — but in 2022, they decided to start making burgers, bought a few portable griddles and did their first pop-up at Thank You Coffee in Chinatown. About a year and a half later, the pair earned a vendor spot at Smorgasburg, where they served 450
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The primary draw at Tun Lahmajo, a restaurant in Burbank lined with grainy woods to resemble a summer cabin, is right there in the name. A mottled, golden-edged lahmajo lands on nearly every table — or maybe three or four of them, for every person in a group. In Levantine Arabic, the dish is known
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It started in an East Hollywood parking lot: one small fryer, no permits, a few heat lamps and a tent constantly battered by wind. A trio of friends — all from L.A.’s Armenian community, and all high school dropouts — scraped together $900 in 2017 because they believed that their Nashville-style fried chicken stand was
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Renowned for its elegant izakaya-style dishes and tasting menu served counterside, Shibumi earned its first Michelin star in 2019. Now, nine years since the restaurant’s opening, it will close on July 19, chef-owner David Schlosser wrote in an Instagram post last week. “We embarked on a journey fueled by an outpouring of love, passion and
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The average wedding registry is filled with blenders, dishware and sets of fancy glasses and knives. Bride-to-be Liv Dansky didn’t need any more kitchen equipment. As a seasoned recipe developer, food writer and kitchen gear reviewer, her collection of appliances rivaled the most well-stocked test kitchens in the country. When it came time to marry
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From afar, it looks unassuming: rows of multicolored tents bustling with customers. But up close, it’s a cherished yet common scene that dominates summer dining in L.A. — street vendors slice juicy al pastor off a rotating spit, dicing it with a long knife and tossing the meat into a freshly pressed tortilla topped with
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On a Friday morning, Maria Sanchez stands next to a construction site. Steel beams are being hoisted into the dusty pink sky behind her. The trunk of her Hyundai Sonata is open. Inside is precious cargo — dozens of carne asada burritos, hand-wrapped in tinfoil. A construction manager approaches her. If he doesn’t like the
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Melody, the Virgil Village bungalow that constantly thrummed with diners who settled into its open-air living room and patio to try burgeoning food pop-ups, swill natural wine and jam to owner Eric Tucker’s genre-spanning DJ sets, is set to close permanently on July 12. Open for nearly a decade, Tucker wants Melody to be remembered
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When the oil is ready, add the cauliflower and cook, turning the florets as needed to color evenly and adjusting the heat if necessary to maintain the oil at 365 degrees, until the cauliflower is tender and deep golden-brown, 4 to 5 minutes. Using a wire skimmer, transfer to the towel-lined sheet pan to drain
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My 2 Cents, a soul food bistro that anchors a section of West Pico Boulevard that’s home to multiple Black-owned restaurants, is set to close permanently on July 31. Opened by chef Alisa Reynolds in 2013, the restaurant became a neighborhood favorite thanks to a Southern comfort menu that’s informed by Reynolds’ L.A. upbringing, including
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Susanna MacManus was teaching Spanish at Occidental College in 1997 when the family business came calling. She had grown up helping out at Cielito Lindo, sometimes falling asleep in the booths of the tiny restaurant while her mother, Ana Natalia Guerrero Robertson, and grandmother, founder Aurora Guerrero, prepped for another day at the Olvera Street
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Cole’s French Dip, the oldest restaurant and saloon in Los Angeles, is slated to close its doors Aug. 3. The last day of service for the landmark restaurant, which claims to have invented the French dip, will be Aug. 2. “The litany of reasons for closing are not unique to Cole’s alone; they are affecting
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I will never understand the allure of the fat French fry. Steak fries are contemptible. Wedges of bland starch with no crunch, like a mouthful of molded mashed potatoes. There is no amount of ketchup, ranch or aioli that can save thick fries from the lower depths of tuber hell. Just order a baked potato
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Perched along the Pacific Coast Highway with an oceanfront view, Gladstones Malibu has long served as a pit stop for residents and road trippers looking to refuel over mai tais and clam chowder. Now, following nearly six months of closure due to damage sustained in the Palisades fire, the iconic restaurant will reopen its outdoor
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There is always more to discover in California. When restaurant critic Bill Addison took on the challenge of writing a guide to the 101 best restaurants across the state, his intention was to compile the places that told the richest, broadest story of here right now. It’s an answer that’s meant to evolve. Expect more
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I love pickles. Dill pickles, kosher dill pickles, cornichons, full-sour pickles, half-sour pickles, quarter-sour pickles, quick pickles, gherkins, German senfgurken. Not bread and butter pickles. Those are not pickles. The flaccid, round slices with their fluorescent yellow tint and sickeningly sweet flavor are a disgrace to the pickle name. I’m the person sitting next to
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Noma’s René Redzepi and his international team of chefs, servers, foragers, fermentation geeks, programmers and more are coming to Los Angeles next year for a months-long residency — the restaurant’s first in the U.S. “We were supposed to be in L.A. this coming fall,” Redzepi said during a brief interview inside one of the greenhouses
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More than 115 million people watched a video of French pastry chef Cédric Grolet make fruit pies that resemble giant blueberries, peaches, oranges and raspberries. A peach dessert molded and spray-painted to look like a real peach drew 63.6 million views. Caramelized banana and peanut butter logs clumped together to mimic a bunch of bananas
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p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> Celia and Joe Ward-Wallace, owners of South LA Cafe, built a rapid response network in case a raid were to occur. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) As restaurants navigate what they can do in times of crisis, part of the frustration stems from reports of illegal tactics employed by ICE. Many videos
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This turkey sandwich is a bit spicy, pleasantly crunchy and bound together with a delicious cilantro variation of [my] roasted garlic sunflower seed dip: a dairy-less dip! Soaked sunflower seeds blend into the creamiest, smoothest dip, with a texture similar to a hummus but without the chickpeas or tahini. (Substitute agave for the honey, and
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Wednesday night’s Michelin Guide announcement was a historic one for Los Angeles: For the first time in the guide’s history, the global dining compendium awarded three stars — the highest rating possible — to an L.A. restaurant. In fact, it awarded three stars to two L.A. restaurants. Michelin’s California Guide is published each year, highlighting
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Make the filling: Combine the sugar with 2 tablespoons water in a medium saucepan (preferably with a light-colored bottom so you can see when the sugar colors) and stir with your finger to make a sandy mixture. Cook over medium heat, swirling the pan so the sugar cooks evenly and using a wet pastry brush
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At one of the city’s most anticipated new restaurants, diners feast on Wagyu-stuffed Jamaican patties and saltfish-and-fig croquettes while seated in sculptural, shell-like booths. A showstopping flower-like art installation crowns the bar at the center of the modern Afro-Caribbean restaurant. Jerk-spiced tomahawk steaks and sorrel-dusted plantains make their way out to the tables while a
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Despite being an obsessive baker since I was a little kid, until I was 31 I had never baked a pie from scratch. Meaning: I had never made pie dough. And pie dough scared me. Cutting butter into flour? What did that mean anyway? A tender (as opposed to tough) crust? Aren’t “tender” and “tough”
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This mixed-berry slab pie is made using a baking sheet rather than a traditional pie pan. It’s like a giant Pop-Tart. You can eat it like a traditional pie, on a plate with ice cream or whipped cream, or you can pick it up and eat it with your hands.
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A popular and groundbreaking wine bar from two of L.A.’s most celebrated restaurateurs is set to close this summer. On Saturday the Lucques Group’s Suzanne Goin and Caroline Styne announced they will shutter the Brentwood location of A.O.C. on Aug. 1, ending their run of 16 years in the space. Like many other restaurateurs of
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Late last week, before the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear targets, Shaheen Samadi sat inside the minimalist dining room of Azizam restaurant in Silver Lake, sipping ceylon tea with cardamom, a drink that reminds him of the tea he grew up drinking. Born in Connecticut to parents who immigrated to the United States after the
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Last weekend, a trio of restaurateurs and a small army of volunteers took over the patio of Boyle Heights’ X’tiosu, packing bags brimming with corn, squash, celery, potatoes, jalapeños, oranges, radishes and sopita ingredients such as boxes of dried pasta. The Oaxacan-Mediterranean restaurant’s staff churned out trays of salads, falafel, burritos, tabbouleh and Oaxacan hummus,
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Series Vanessa Anderson is the Grocery Goblin, on a mission to explore neighborhood grocery stores throughout Southern California. I cannot shake the sense that Los Angeles is a city of supreme spiritual significance. Perhaps I feel that way because of what I see out of my car window. The estimated 15,953 religious organizations in the
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It sounded like the alarm for a severe weather warning. At 8:19 p.m. on Monday evening, my phone blared with a public safety alert that a curfew was in place from 10 p.m. to 6 am. in downtown Los Angeles. It came just as I crested the hill on the south 110 Freeway that offers
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Make the cookie dough: Chop the dark chocolate into irregular ¼-inch to ½-inch chunks and set aside. To the cooled butter, add the brown sugar, granulated sugar, egg and vanilla extract. Whisk vigorously until well combined and thickened, about 1 minute. Add 1 cup (120 grams) all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon kosher salt and ½ teaspoon
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“Hi, I’m chef Jude. I’ll be taking care of you this evening.” A young man in pristine chef whites greets our table at Vin Folk, a petite, bucolic restaurant on the northern edge of downtown Hermosa Beach. He has an earring in each ear and a grin that reaches his eyes. I wonder if he
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On Monday evening some of the country’s most celebrated chefs, beverage professionals, restaurateurs and bakers filled Chicago’s Lyric Opera House for the 35th annual James Beard Foundation Restaurant and Chef Awards. The awards are considered some of the highest honors in hospitality, and this year, amid nationwide deportations and a mounting culture of fear, winners
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As the crucial summer harvest season gets underway in California’s vast agricultural regions, farmers and their workers say they feel whiplashed by a series of contradictory signals about how the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration might affect them. California grows more than one-third of the country’s vegetables and more than three-quarters of the nation’s
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Evelin Gomez works at the juice bar inside a Vallarta Supermarket in Carson, a place where Mexican culture functions as the business’s beating heart. In the last week, Gomez said, her customers and co-workers have been rattled by ICE immigration raids, while life at the same time continues inside: shoppers browsing dried chiles and pushing
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This effortless dessert brings the good vibes. Any dessert you set on fire is impressive. And its components remind me of my Black life — not a monolith. The origins of cherries jubilee go back to Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in the late 1800s, for which Auguste Escoffier, a famous French chef, prepared this dessert.
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What was intended to be a rallying event for the USC Peace Garden turned into a day of quiet mourning as student employees and the surrounding community came to accept that the beloved green space would be forced to close. Founded in 2022 by Camille Dieterle, a professor at the USC Chan Division of Occupational
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For me, it’s got to be Holbox, the best restaurant in the state of California as far as I’m concerned. For our restaurant critic, it’s these 101. In his most ambitious project to date, critic Bill Addison spent over a year traversing the state in search of the 101 restaurants that exemplify the best of
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Back in the 1980s, the norm-busting adman Jay Chiat liked to pose the question, “How big can we get before we get bad?” as his Los Angeles-based boutique agency attracted clients like Apple and Nike. It is all too easy, he figured, to do more and accomplish less. He might as well have been talking
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Most weekdays the foot traffic and the din of business are constant in Grand Central Market, a food hall and staple of downtown’s historic core since 1917. In a way, the market, with its oldest stalls ranging from Mexican to Chinese to Salvadoran cuisines, is an embodiment of the immigrant experience in Los Angeles. But
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Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol. Snoop Dogg went by Snoop Lion for a time, and briefly Snoopzilla. Shifting your brand as an artist can be a welcome, and sometimes predictable, step in a career that spans a lifetime. But what happens when a well-established, award-winning restaurant decides to rebrand itself as a
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Francisco has been working as a taquero for over a year, but he’s never felt as worried as he does now, in the shadow of a week of ongoing sweeps in Los Angeles by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We can’t go out to work as much on the streets now,” the 23-year-old said in
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Los Angeles can feel like a microcosm of the whole world, particularly when it comes to dining. At some point, though, the road will call. Maybe it’s a two-hour drive into the desert, or a short flight to the Bay Area, or a quiet coastal stretch where the marine layer doesn’t burn off until early
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The Mermaid hasn’t turned a profit since Saturday. The aquatic-themed Little Tokyo bar is typically open daily and a hub for regulars, community events and off-duty workers of the hospitality industry, all bathed in soft blue lighting meant to replicate the ocean’s waves. But the Mermaid is closing. Many restaurants and bars in downtown’s hot
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When Cinthia Soriao, Edgar Hernandez and Sesarin Hernandez set up their aguas frescas stand with an extra gallon of milk on Sunday morning, they never imagined they’d be using it to quell the burn of tear gas hours later. The trio sells hot dogs and aguas frescas off the historic LA Plaza de Cultura y
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I consumed six burgers in the last seven days. One was wrapped in yellow paper on a restaurant patio in Eagle Rock that felt like a friend’s backyard. Two were smash burgers with crunchy, lacy edges in a coffee shop in downtown El Segundo. I drove to Compton for double chili cheeseburgers. West to Santa
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Sun Nong Dan is a specialist in sullungtang, a gentle broth made by boiling beef bones for hours, even days, until the liquid turns a shimmering, pearlescent white that is pretty much the opposite of what French chefs are taught in cooking school. The soup is fatless and softly fragrant, not quite as rich as
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Luscious, fluffy and often garnished with cocoa powder or a few carefully placed coffee beans, the cream top has become L.A.’s favorite coffee add-on. Sometimes called sweet cream or just whipped cream, the topping has become a staple in third wave L.A. coffee culture and beyond, with local shops taking cues from global companies like
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A recipe for spaghetti al limone from chef Adam Leonti of Alba in Los Angeles features browned butter, lemon zest and juice and plenty of Parmesan.
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One of L.A.’s — and Korea’s — most popular Korean barbecue chains just returned to Koreatown after a year and a half of closure. Now Baekjeong is back in a new location, its tabletop grills charring galbi, thinly sliced brisket, beef belly, tripe, pork jowl and beyond, every inch of table space filled with banchan,
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One of L.A.’s most iconic Chinese American restaurants will close next month, ending nearly a half-century of Chinese chicken salads, dumplings and pan-fried noodles in West Hollywood’s Sunset Plaza. The first location of Chin Chin — a decades-long celebrity haunt — will close on the Sunset Strip on July 27. Other locations will remain open.
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As many of my close friends in Athens know, I have a borderline obsession with gigantes. My favorite taverna in Athens makes gigantes that I can only describe as “pillows of perfection,” which I usually eat within my first 48 hours of arriving. The beans are amazingly tender, and the sauce is warming and heavy
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“To do duck you have to be really disciplined, like cut out your social life,” says Chartchai Vongsanikul. “Period.” Vongsanikul, who goes by Chef Bob, is calling me on his semi-day off to talk about duck. He’s the chef at Roasted Duck by Pa Ord, a tiny restaurant in a strip mall in Thai Town
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This is a basic b— “recipe” that I did not innovate by any means, but I wanted to include it [in my cookbook “Fry Day”]. It’s easy, it’s delicious, it’s user friendly and adaptable. If you’re unable to find Greek feta, endeavor to use sheep’s milk or sheep-and-goat-milk feta. Typically sesame-crusted feta is paired with
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Guess who suddenly has a “TACO” allergy? President Yuge Taco Salad himself. In the annals of four-letter words and acronyms Donald Trump has long hitched his political fortunes on, the word “taco” may be easy to overlook. There’s MAGA, most famously. DOGE, courtesy of Elon Musk. Huge (pronounced yuge, of course). Wall, as in the
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VALLEY CENTER, Calif. — Norman Kachuck stood on a loamy ridge overlooking his inheritance. Avocado trees blanketed the hillsides of ACA Groves in three directions, just a portion of a 372-acre spread studded with 16,000 specimens, many of them dense with branches weighed down by that quintessential California fruit. The serene San Diego County property felt far
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In their soul, everyone has a historic restaurant they miss dearly in Los Angeles. Some fell victim to the mounting challenges that restaurants face in L.A.: gentrification, rising retail rental costs, and a prolonged financial fallout following pandemic closures, Hollywood industry strikes and the devastating January wildfires. Despite their untimely end, the city’s most iconic
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One of L.A.’s most iconic sandwich shops closed last week after health inspectors cited a vermin infestation among other infractions, but representatives for Bay Cities Italian Deli & Bakery — home of the famed Godmother sandwich — say that no rodents were found, contrary to multiple reports. A representative for the Los Angeles County Department
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It was like a scene from a movie about an asteroid hurtling through the universe on a collision course with Earth. Many of the shelves at the Rite Aid in El Segundo were bare. Row after row empty. The air was thick with an eerie silence as I made my way to the ice cream
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On a recent drizzly morning, Couplet Coffee owner Gefen Skolnick stepped into her rainbow-hued cafe at the edge of Echo Park and Westlake, stopping by tables to greet visitors who were sipping on drinks like bananas-and-cream matcha. Some of them had discovered the shop through social media posts, while others were passersby drawn in by
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When Tony Barragan worked at his family’s Echo Park Mexican restaurant in the 1970s, he regularly heard longtime customers tell newcomers about the story of his father. How Ramon Barragan came to Los Angeles as a 16-year-old immigrant. How he went from dishwasher to head chef at a restaurant run by someone from his small
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Teahouses built for spending extended time in, open until the wee hours of the night, are popping up all over the city. Some are elusive, hidden in plain sight or only accessible via a mysterious membership. Others have gone viral on TikTok and have cover charges and waitlists to attend. Some reference East Asian tea
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Are cookies and chips the new cigarettes? And soda, breakfast cereals and ice cream the new opioids? In his new book, “Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine: The New Science of Achieving a Healthy Weight” (Flatiron Books), former FDA Commissioner David A. Kessler argues that ultraprocessed foods — meaning “irresistible, highly processed, highly palatable, energy-dense, high-glycemic foods,”
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If you want to find Curtis Stone, a winding, twisting drive through the Santa Monica Mountains should get you there. The Melbourne-born celebrity chef and TV personality behind Gwen in Hollywood and the Pie Room by Curtis Stone (in the Beverly Hills space that was his now-shuttered fine dining restaurant Maude) might be filming a
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Variations: The Mei Wei Jia salt-baked chicken seasoning packets can be found at 99 Ranch market. A friend, Joe Zee, shared his grandmother’s simple ginger-scallion condiment, which can be served alongside the chicken. Combine 1/2 cup grated ginger with 1/2 cup chopped green onions, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and 1/4 teaspoon white pepper in a
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On Wednesday Michelin, the company behind the influential global dining guide, teased 13 new restaurants that will appear in the 2025 California Guide to the state’s top restaurants, with three of them in the L.A. area. According to a representative for the company, the full list will be unveiled June 25. Each year teams of
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The signage is pink, the rooms are pink, and the rose-patterned carpet is pink. But none are as quintessentially pink — or recognizable — as the long, hand-peeled ribbons of custom-dyed white chocolate atop the pink Champagne cake at the Madonna Inn. The Central Coast’s quirkiest landmark is famous for its 110 candy-colored guest rooms
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After a three-day pause in operations due to a lack of permitting, a new barbecue venture from comedians Anthony Anderson and Cedric the Entertainer is set to reopen Friday afternoon. AC Barbeque is located in a corner of the Westfield Century City mall’s dining hall and held its grand opening May 7 but shut down
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During the Gold Rush of the mid-1850s, Etienne Guittard, a French chocolatier, sailed to California like many others, hoping to strike it rich. However, he soon realized his fortunes lay not in the mines but in selling the chocolates he brought with him from his uncle’s Tournus factory to trade for mining supplies. In 1868,
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At bistro Pasjoli, chef Dave Beran crammed a duck carcass into a gleaming, bell-shaped, medieval-looking contraption, and table-side dining in Los Angeles was never the same. When Beran opened the restaurant in Santa Monica in the fall of 2019, he ushered in a new wave of French dining in L.A. He reimagined French classics like
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Picture-perfect and pink, Madonna Inn’s signature cocktail matches the famous San Luis Obispo hotel in every regard. The Pink Cloud is the most ordered drink at the inn’s Silver Bar, where patrons sit on swiveling wood and pink-leather stools or colorful high-backed chairs to sip this strawberries-and-cream concoction topped with pink sugar (available in the
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In Chinatown’s newest restaurant, mapo tofu inspires steak tartare, pillowy gnudi are made with tofu (not ricotta) and medallions of table-side-sauced lamb saddle evoke Sichuan’s cumin-spiced lamb skewers. Firstborn fills the long-empty former Pok Pok space in Mandarin Plaza with subtle Chinese touches, including jade-green tiles and a window to the kitchen reminiscent of what
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Langer’s Delicatessen may be the most consistent restaurant in Los Angeles. It’s so consistent that my order hasn’t deviated in 35 years. The No. 1 with an extra side of Russian dressing for dipping. “You used to suck on the pickles before your teeth came in,” says my father during a recent lunch. The tufted
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Make the curry: In a large, heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the mustard seeds and cook until they begin to pop and sputter, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the fried garlic and ginger and stir until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the onions, pandan or curry leaves, and
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In Sri Lanka, this everyday quick bread is usually laced with thinly sliced curry leaves, fresh green chiles and red onions, but Ghazaly’s milder, kid-friendly version drops the chile from the mix. Enjoy this roti alongside the Coconut Chickpea Curry, or with spicy onion sambal, coconut sambal and/or dal (lentil) curry for an authentic Sri
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In November, chef Joshua Gil nearly died. In February, he opened his new restaurant. “I’m a very stubborn a—,” Gil quipped recently. “I like telling people, ‘I’m Mexican. I don’t know how to give up.’” The prolific chef started pioneering pop-up dinner series Supper Liberation Front in 2009, and went on to open and close
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On June 13 one of the city’s most celebrated, eclectic restaurants will close after nearly a decade of accolades, frog legs and cocktails tinged with fresh fruits and vegetables. Here’s Looking at You, the genre-bending Koreatown restaurant from restaurateur Lien Ta and late chef Jonathan Whitener, is ending its run six months after the closure
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There’s no shortage of delicious things to eat in East Hollywood: herbaceous lamb kebabs at Saffy’s; garlicky prawns at Kuya Lord; the entire spicy-sweet-salty pantheon of Thai Town. But until recently, there was nowhere to try kottu roti, lamprais or string hoppers. That is, until Kurrypinch came along. Located in the former home of a
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The shopping centers of the San Gabriel Valley often act as points of reference that are more reliable than specific cross streets or even addresses. If someone mentions the strip mall with the Wushiland boba shop, the 99 Ranch Market and the dumpling restaurant with two names upstairs, for many, an image of the San
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Carl Kheir Doumani, a mid-century Los Angeles developer-turned-wine-country icon, died April 22 in his sleep at his home in the Napa Valley, according to his family. The former owner of Stags’ Leap Winery, once at the center of a wine-country legal battle called the Apostrophe War, was 92. Doumani moved to the Napa Valley in
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A new pizzeria from entertainment multihyphenate Issa Rae and her business partners is set to debut this weekend, bringing funk-inspired pizza to their popular cafe. By day, the downtown space will continue as Hilltop Coffee + Kitchen. At night, starting May 3, it flips to Downtown Dough, a pizza joint that specializes in a kind
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Los Angeles is nearly four months removed from the wildfires that destroyed more than 18,000 homes and structures in January, but much of the damage remains — both emotional and material. One L.A. shop is hoping to provide comfort to those who’ve lost their homes, even if it provides only a semblance of normalcy, by
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Starbucks and thousands of its baristas are locked in a labor standoff. More than two years after negotiations began, the union representing workers at more than 550 stores has yet to reach a contract with Starbucks. Starbucks Workers United announced last week that worker delegates had voted to reject the coffee chain’s latest proposal that
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Pies piled with cloud-like whipped cream, cookies chewy and buttery, loaf cakes and cheesecakes bursting with ripe seasonal fruit: Walking into Fat + Flour is like entering a dessert dream world. It hasn’t always been a dream world for founder Nicole Rucker: Her lauded bakery and cafe started as a means of survival after she
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If you’re a breakfast burrito fan, there’s no better pocket of Los Angeles to reside in than Pasadena. There are formidable breakfast burritos to be devoured all over Greater Los Angeles and Orange County. Your favorite will always be the best, and I will contradict myself in about eight minutes when I tell you to
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The spacious kitchen of a rented house just off Melrose Avenue in Beverly Grove is in full 420 mode. The stovetop is dotted with Le Creuset cookware. A peppercorn-studded prime rib rests on the counter next to an apothecary jar full of weed. And two videographers and a boom mic operator capture the action as
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After 30 minutes, place the balls of dough on the two parchment-lined sheet pans, six well-spaced cookies on each sheet. Bake them for 10 minutes on the two center racks of your oven, rotate the pans, and bake for an additional 5 to 6 minutes, until the cookies are lightly browned at the edges and
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These brownies are made with white chocolate — an uncommon move in brownie recipes, and I’m not sure why, because, wow, are they delicious. This recipe yields a cake that bakes into a variety of textures in one pan: chewy edge, extremely chewy corner, fudgelike center. The brownie is the only cake that’s allowed to
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Sustainability is an incredibly complicated topic. Yet seafood sustainability is the surprisingly rare exception in which a really complex problem has a uniquely simple option — and it’s in the hands of the consumer. To put it plainly, there are three things you can do to help change our ocean’s food systems: Diversify the seafood
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In this perfect party appetizer, the sweet funk of scallops is complemented by the savoriness of the corn tostada and the sour, spicy punch from the yuzu-apple vinaigrette. I love the texture of this dish — the dressing just barely saturates the tostada as you pour it over, and you bite into varying levels of
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We’ve got an exciting lineup of cookbook authors, memoirists and food personalities appearing at this year’s Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on the campus of the University of Southern California April 26 and 27. Join us for live interviews, cooking demos and guest appearances at the L.A. Times Food x Now Serving booth. Here’s
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Le Hut Dinette What happens when one of the country’s rising-star barbecue chefs launches a diner? At Santa Ana’s new Le Hut Dinette, the latest project from San Juan Capistrano’s Heritage Barbecue, seven-day pastrami slides into gooey melty sandwiches and brisket goes into piles of chili cheese fries. “I’ve always been a really big fan
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What priceless items would you grab when fleeing disaster? It’s a sobering question that thousands of Angelenos were forced to answer when wildfires erupted across the region in January. That experience made us curious about our own emotional attachment to cookbooks and the titles that have had the most impact on our cooking. Our Food
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Ari Kolender, chef and co-owner of two of L.A.’s most popular seafood restaurants, didn’t grow up in a household that cooked a lot of fish or shellfish because his grandfather kept kosher. But in high school he crabbed from friends’ dinghies and worked at a storied restaurant called Hyman’s on Market Street in Charleston, S.C.,
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This is a visually stunning and delicious dish, and if you’ve got some Espelette butter in the fridge, the whole recipe takes less than 10 minutes to prepare. Note: Scallops cook quickly in a carbon steel or stainless steel skillet. If you want to use cast iron instead, preheat the skillet for a good 10
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This carrot cake contains all the usual ingredients that make carrot cake distinct — carrots, cinnamon, walnuts — but with a bit (or more than a bit) more of everything! The cream cheese frosting is mostly cream cheese with just enough butter to make it fluffy. I add orange zest and juice, because my mom
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My mom remarried when I was in my 30s. Already on my path as a food professional, I decided to make her wedding cake. Or wedding cakes. I didn’t want to risk a tiered extravaganza caving in on itself or looking like a leaning tower. So I decided to bake half a dozen 9-inch round
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Egusi is a type of melon that is commonly used in West African cuisine. The seeds are edible and are often ground into a paste or powder and used as a base for soups, stews and sauces. They have a similar flavor profile to pumpkin seeds and develop a rich and nutty taste when roasted.
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“This is not a restaurant,” says Daniele Uditi, addressing a crowd of 32 diners in a spacious warehouse in West Adams on a recent Sunday evening. “It might look like it, but it’s not.” Uditi wants to set the record straight, as soon as you sit down for a meal at Le Le Dinner Club.
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This hibiscus margarita in Carolina Pardilla’s “Margarita Time” cookbook is from winner of the Tales of the Cocktail Pioneer Award, and author of “Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails,” bartender Shannon Mustipher, who wanted to create a hibiscus cocktail as a nod to her hometown of Charleston, S.C. There, the flowers grow along the coast and are
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This is my go-to salad for any dinner party, not only because it’s refreshing, but also because it utilizes an important ingredient. Sorghum is a cereal grain that is crucial to food security in Ghana because it’s a versatile crop that can withstand different climates and harsh weather conditions, like drought or a dry season.
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No one really knows exactly what they want when they walk into a cheese shop. But this never deterred visitors from Say Cheese, a gourmet shop in Silver Lake where customers have come to expect high-quality samples of cheeses like Vacherin Fribourgeois and Roquefort Papillon from the hands of charming owner Glenn Harrell. The days
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With a bird-flu-induced egg shortage that has caused prices to skyrocket — and consumers, for lack of a better word, to scramble — the term “egg hunting” takes on new meaning this Easter. But will the dearth really have an impact on the pastel-hued spring holiday? According to the internet, where baskets of dyed Yukon
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88 Club At 88 Club, planks of artful shrimp toast, piles of chewy mung bean jelly noodles and clay pots of mapo tofu spin on well-lighted marble lazy Susans. This is Mei Lin’s take on Chinese banquet dining, and it marks a big return for the “Top Chef” and “Tournament of Champions” winner. After closing
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Several Saturdays ago, my mom and I walked into our local L.A. cheese shop, which we visit weekly. This store, Say Cheese, in Silver Lake, is owned by Glenn Harrell. Glenn and I have been friends for a long time. His shop is where I get my favorite Cabot cheddar, and Glenn has introduced me
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New cookbooks are a bright spot in spring, and this year’s crop is a bumper one. One emerging theme is: Go easy on yourself. Among this season’s favorite books, Los Angeles writers and chefs especially — including Nicole Rucker of Fat + Flour, Ari Kolender of Found Oyster and Queen St. Raw Bar & Grill,
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One of L.A.’s most groundbreaking Korean restaurants is closing in the Arts District, but it isn’t the intended end of Yangban. The celebrated restaurant — currently ranked No. 35 on the L.A. Times 101 Best Restaurants list — temporarily shut its doors in December for renovations, with the plan to reopen in spring. On Wednesday
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Spring’s parade of cookbooks are bringing a lot of joy into our kitchens. We read, cooked and baked our way through dozens of them, finding respite in some newfound culinary wisdom. Ace L.A. baker Nicole Rucker of Fat + Flour gave us recipes from her new book for London Fog brownies and her signature vegan
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The powerful flavors in this tartare — often an appetizer at Queen St. Bar & Grill — come together in something like an exercise in restrained extremism. Mackerel is sometimes considered a “fishy” fish, but here it is balanced with equally loud flavors like horseradish, capers and dill. Even people who typically don’t like mackerel
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While attempting to catch a breeze in Isabel and Helen’s “Take Flight” art installation with interconnected windmills during the first (scorching) weekend of Coachella, a mysterious purple structure caught my eye. As I approached it, I noticed the yellow Takis logo in the corner. Figuring that the enclosed space was at the very least shaded
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Winning the Masters means choosing the menu for the champions dinner the following year. Ben Hogan came up with the idea in 1952, but not until 1986 did champions begin honoring their heritage by choosing traditional dishes from their home countries or regions. Bernhard Langer, a West German in a green jacket, thought hard and
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“We are freaking out,” says Billie Sayavong. He and his wife, Nokmaniphone, operate Nok’s Kitchen, one of the few restaurants in Southern California devoted to cuisine from Laos. The Westminster restaurant has been featured repeatedly on this paper’s 101 Best Restaurants List. In just the last week, shortly after President Trump announced new tariffs, Billie
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“Hey, where did you get that?” “Whoa, how much was that?” “Is it any good? Can I have a bite?” I couldn’t walk more than three feet at Wednesday’s Dodger game without someone stopping me to ask about my Slugger. I was almost as popular as the Ohtani bobbleheads that evening. Almost. If you’ve visited
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I walked into Hal’s Bar and Grill for the first time during the summer of 1989, a year after its opening, having just moved to Los Angeles from New York City. The unmistakable sound of Miles Davis played softly throughout the high-ceilinged space. I was told about the restaurant by my dad, Howard Johnson, who
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The threat of tariffs has been keeping Lou Amdur up at night. As the owner of Lou Wine Shop, a small neighborhood retail establishment tucked into a strip mall in Los Feliz, his is the place where neighbors, groceries in hand, stop by before arriving home to pick up a bottle for the evening meal.
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There’s a delicate art to brewing the Thai tea at ChaTraMue, the Thailand-based tea shop that’s been around since 1945. It starts with Thai tea leaves sourced from a farm in Chiang Rai. The leaves are placed in a long white filter over a gleaming silver pitcher, then another pitcher of hot water is poured
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A Greek institution on May 4 will serve its last flame-kissed grilled lamb, its final pillowy potatoes, its saganaki swan song. After 77 years, the family-owned restaurant Papa Cristo’s is closing, with its building listed for sale. What began as a Greek market in 1948 expanded to a full-fledged restaurant and community staple over decades.
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To make brown butter: Add butter to a pan over medium heat and listen for the water to stop evaporating. Once it’s quiet, pay attention to the pan and start checking the color, occasionally stirring and scraping the pan to release the browned milk solids that are gathering. If you don’t agitate them, they’ll burn
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For decades, a raucous restaurant-cum-music venue along Fairfax Avenue has been a top destination for Angelenos seeking a taste of Chinese American cuisine. This spring, that restaurant is set to close, possibly to be demolished along with the rest of its strip mall — but its owners are planning to save Genghis Cohen and its
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On Wednesday morning the James Beard Foundation announced the chefs, beverage programs, restaurants and bars nominated for its 2025 culinary awards — vastly scaling back the number of Los Angeles-area names previously in the running. In January the James Beard Foundation recognized nearly 20 L.A.-area restaurants, chefs and others as semifinalists. As of this morning,
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After a swell of community support that ultimately couldn’t save Le Petit Four, the sunny French-Californian bistro in West Hollywood closed after 44 years of business. A celebrity-favorite fixture in the Sunset Plaza shopping center, the restaurant is the latest in a wave of closures along the Sunset Strip. As the neighborhood contends with a
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Norm Langer backs the city of Los Angeles’ recent work toward combating crime in MacArthur Park, and although closing his Langer’s Deli isn’t off the table, he says he’s decided to stick around for a little while. Seven months ago, Langer told The Times he was considering shuttering his historic 77-year-old establishment due to drug
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The restaurant is situated in a Santa Ana industrial complex surrounded by sprawling concrete buildings, in the sort of center where you’d expect to find a post office, a cleaners and maybe a chain restaurant that pushes build-your-own poke bowls. You walk through the front door of Darkroom and it’s as if you’ve leapt into
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It’s not just residents and local bands emptying out of Los Angeles and trekking to Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival this year. Some of the region’s best restaurants and chefs are joining them too. Fans will fly in from all over the globe for the three-day festival that’s set to take over Indio’s Empire
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The Tesla diner slated to open in Hollywood will be run by Eric Greenspan, a longtime Los Angeles chef, a Tesla investor announced this week. Greenspan will be the chef de cuisine at the new diner set to open on Santa Monica Boulevard, which will feature a drive-in movie theater and 75 V4 Supercharger stalls,
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A secret strategy to pay much less for an In-N-Out burger is no more. The ordering hack, used by some customers to pay just a fraction of the price for one of the popular restaurant chain’s secret burgers, has been deleted after corporate officers appear to have caught on to the work-around. A popular burger
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For me it’s the poppies. They’re not the first harbinger of spring, but they’re certainly the most dazzling. My wife and I usually make annual sojourns to the Carrizo Plain (avoiding the Instagram hordes in the Antelope Valley) to wander among the poppies and lupine and goosefoots and owl’s clover and coastal tidy tips in
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Series Vanessa Anderson is the Grocery Goblin, on a mission to explore neighborhood grocery stores throughout Southern California. If the Valley were an ocean, and it often feels as vast as one, then its sunken treasure is surely found in the bulk sections of its Russian grocery stores. There, in place of dried cherries and
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