I’ve known a few people who have attended the University of California at San Diego, a large public university condemned to the city of La Jolla, and each of these friends has harbored certain resentment toward this fate. La Jolla is a beautiful city, the kind of beautiful that has come to represent the city [...]

As it turns out, Heaven on Seven is not the only restaurant in Chicago’s Downtown Loop to nest in the upper floors of an office building. During my visit to the Loop I spotted at least one other in-office restaurant serving those who’d just as soon take the elevator for a meal or a pint [...]

I love diners with a love that transcends the quality of food, to the point where personality and convenience can be enough to make or break a meal before the food ever hits the table. I’m a big fan of Norm’s in L.A. at two in the morning. I’m a big fan of Denny’s when [...]

Long Island City’s M. Wells, the Quebec-American diner that stole the heartbeats of pretty much every food enthusiast in New York when it opened in 2010, did so by offering a playful, gourmet spin on diner fare that’s as accessible as it is intrepid. This is especially true for M. Wells’ brunch menu: dishes tend [...]

While Girlfriend and I weren’t out touring Boston at the end of April, we rested our heads in nearby Somerville. The neighborhoods of this town, bordering three major universities and cradling the last stretch of the Red Line out of Boston, have been through more than one wave of history – including the familiar story [...]

I grew up in a doughnut town. As soon as I was capable of grasping a tiger tail, I relished trips to our local doughnut shop. Not just because the mixed aroma of weak coffee, fried dough and sugar was the next best thing to freshly baked chocolate chip cookies for a kid, but also [...]

This is the best god damned muffin I’ve ever eaten. I didn’t know it was acceptable to use those words until my first visit to Blue Sky Bakery, a modest hallway of a bake shop just a few steps from where I lay my head in Park Slope. A muffin and coffee from Blue Sky [...]

I grew up knowing that I was on the very edge of Los Angeles. My proof was Colima Road, a stretch of smoggy two-way lanes dominated by Mandarin and Korean print, save the occassional taco truck and L.A.’s easternmost branch of Tommy’s. As the years have gone by, this and other satellites of Southern California’s [...]

Picture a classic Thanksgiving dinner, when an extended family gathers around a mythically long table. Each seat is filled, and each person can look ahead to see a feast atop tablecloth and a close relative or friend. It’s a scene of domesticity and community, something reserved for sit-coms and too-perfect households, rife with interpersonal drama, [...]

I’ve written here about my formative obsession with American breakfast cereal, and though I’ve since grown into more mature tastes, there’s still one time of the year when I drop everything for the sake of my inner child. It helps that when Halloween invades the promotional aisles of supermarkets throughout the nation, General Mills tips [...]