After six years of serious eating and four of serious blogging, I’ve been thoroughly convinced that dining chic will never be relevant to my life. One week of eating in Chicago banged a few more nails in that coffin (a relatively easy affair when the hammer is made of pork bones), but perhaps no place [...]
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 [...]
Floridians can get surly when it comes to Key Lime Pie. I don’t blame them when bakeries across California serve too-sweet lime pies colored green and label them “Key” on menus. I’ve never tried the real thing, but breakfasts at Lois the Pie Queen have got me thinking: Maybe the best key lime pie in [...]
This story is third in a series on Burmese food in San Francisco. When tourists come to San Francisco, they eat Chinese food in Chinatown. There’s nothing wrong with that. Chinatown is a cool place, and there’s good food there. However, it isn’t too bold to claim that the best Chinese food in the Bay [...]
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, [...]
Four glasses of wine into a perfectly warm Oahu evening, as I finished off my cousin’s barbecued flank steak and extra spicy caesar salad, his girlfriend regaled us with the paragon attributes of Kona peaberry coffee, a speech she learned from one of her employers. That employer is Alan Wong, a man with enough opinions [...]
During my freshman year at college, in the Berkeley student haunt known as “the Asian Ghetto,” Felix, proprietor of a Pan-Asian stir fry joint called The Satay House (R.I.P.), decided on an almost nightly basis to give chopsticks to all of my Asian friends and a fork to me. Every night, I would ask Felix [...]
My first and strongest impression of Mill Valley, CA can be found in television reruns. Captain B.J. Hunnicutt of the 4077th proudly hailed from the up-and-coming Marin County township, and for years he was my sole example by which to measure it. Thanks to M*A*S*H, my mental picture of Mill Valley teemed with laid-back, wise-cracking, [...]
I live for BBQ. I wake up for breakfast. Those who know me best will understand when I say that American breakfast is the backbone of my appetite. If done right, it’s cheap, satisfying and timeless. Two eggs over easy have nowhere to hide and everything to prove, especially when they’re on short order. Some [...]
Once, when my grandfather was visiting from Chicago, he asked teenage me if there was any good Greek food around. A Los Angeles native, I was rarely accused of a having a multiculturally ignorant palette, but this question confused me. Greek? You mean like Zeus and Socrates? What the hell is modern Greek food? It [...]
