French Food and Cooking

Jacques Pépin Gives a Cooking Demo: A Comedy Routine, With Knives

Recently Jacques Pépin, the acclaimed French chef, veteran of PBS cooking shows, friend of Julia, author of many brilliant cookbooks, dean of special programs at the French Culinary Institute in New York City and general culinary living legend, took the stage at Cal State Northridge's Valley Perfor ... More >>

10 Great Cookbooks for Summer

Sure, you may have a dozen newly opened gastropubs within Yelp distance from where you live. Or food trucks. Or, arguably best of all, neighborhood taquerias. But in summer, when L.A. farmers markets are loaded with gorgeous produce, sometimes it's more fun to cook your own dinner. Just to prove you ... More >>

Happy 100th Birthday Julia Child: A Citywide Pasadena Cocktail Party Julia Costume Contests

Today Julia Child would have turned 100 years old, a centennial that has generated a country-wide celebration. All over America, in newspaper food sections and bookstores, in restaurants and on the radio, we're toasting Child's birthday. (Check out Google's homepage! Take the PBS Julia Quiz!) And in ... More >>

Julia Child's Centennial Celebration

Books: Dearie, The Remarkable Life of Julia Child Happy 100th Birthday Julia!

To kick off Julia Child's nationwide 100th birthday festivities that begin today (her actual birthday is August 15th), we're taking a look at several books released in honor of the Pasadena native. A boeuf Bourguignon centennial book party, in essence (Happy, happy birthday!). We've seen several g ... More >>

Top 4 Weekend Food Events: Royal/T's Farewell Pop-Up, Wirsthaus 1-Year Anniversary, Ode to Julia Child Dinner Chinatown Summer Nights

Royal/T's Farewell Pop-Up with Cordero Negro Culver City's Royal/T shuts its doors for good after next weekend, but not before going out with a bang. Chef Sandra Cordero, who apprenticed under Neal Fraser and Michael Cimarusti, will serve a special two-night dinner featuring traditional tapas like m ... More >>

Bon Appetit!: The Delicious Life of Julia Child: A Children's Book Celebrates the Life of Julia Child

Julia Child would have turned 100 this August, a centennial that will be celebrated by many venues across the country, including Vroman's bookstore in Pasadena. (Child was a Pasadena native.) The anniversary is also the occasion of the publication of a terrific new children's book by Jessie Hartland ... More >>

Coming This Summer: Julia's Cats: Julia Child's Life in The Company of Cats

Anticipation in the nonfiction food book world depends on your taste in dining companions, past and present: Julia Child, Yottam Ottolenghi, Diana Kennedy, perhaps. And this summer, it will also depend on how you feel about cats. Julia's Cats: Julia Child's Life in The Company of Cats by Patricia ... More >>

Jeremiah Tower's Cookbook Collection

JeremiahTower.comJeremiah Tower on the beach​Cookbook collectors, get moving. Speed is necessary if you're going to snag a choice book from the collection that celebrity chef Jeremiah Tower has sold to Omnivore Books on Food in San Francisco. "They've gone fairly quickly," says rare book exp ... More >>

Lucques' 9th Annual Cassoulet Night Is Coming: Make Reservations Now

If you're not doing anything really important for dinner on Sun., March 4 -- and maybe even if you are -- you now have someplace to be. Every year for one night, Lucques co-owners Suzanne Goin and Caroline Styne host a cassoulet night in place of one of their customary Sunday Suppers. This year will ... More >>

Q & A With Marco Pierre White: Escoffier, Television, Packaged Soup The French Foreign Legion

marcopierrewhite.orgMarco Pierre White in Afghanistan ​ It's probably safe to say that Marco Pierre White, the English chef who famously earned three Michelin stars at the age of 33 -- at the time the youngest chef ever to do so -- and just as famously gave them up six years later when he reti ... More >>

Happy 99th Birthday, Julia Child: Her Top 5 Cooking & Non-Cooking Moments

T. Nguyen​Everyone has a Julia Child story. Nancy Silverton has one. Martha Rose Shulman has one. Mary Sue Milliken has one. We have one. We bet you do, too. Today is Julia Child's birthday -- it would have been her 99th -- and it's hard not to appreciate this wonderful woman for all she did ... More >>

Farid Zadi: The Couscous Coach

Kevin ScanlonFarid Zadi​ Farid Zadi likes to tell the story of how, when he was 14, he got a job as a dishwasher at a local castle to make some extra money. That would be a real castle, not one where the waitstaff dress like courtesans to bring you faux-medieval chicken legs while you watch fa ... More >>

Farid Zadi: The Couscous Coach

Ou Est Le Cassoulet a L.A.?

Or, for a good bean stew, call ...

Ask Mr. Gold: Ou Est Le Cassoulet À L.A.?

Anne FishbeinMr. Gold, with dim sum menu​Dear Mr. Gold: My wife had a great cassoulet in Paris several years ago. Is there a place in Southern California that has a real French cassoulet? I know this is the time of year they make it. --Jim Nakano, Glendora Dear Mr. Nakano: The Donut Man! It g ... More >>

Cooking With the Critic

And Marion Cunningham, Alice Waters, Rick Bayless et al.

Ask Mr. Gold: Cooking With the Critic, Or The Top 10 Most Battered Cookbooks in Jonathan Gold's Kitchen

Anne FishbeinMr. Gold, with dim sum menu​Dear Mr. Gold: Do you always eat out? Do you ever eat at home? Do you have any cookbooks that you use a great deal? Just curious. −Maggs, Mar Vista Dear Maggs: Actually, I cook kind of a lot. A weird amount. I'm the guy who cooks red beans and rice ... More >>

Q & A With Martha Rose Shulman: The New Book, Letters to Julia Faux Meat

Michele van VlietMartha Rose Shulman​Martha Rose Shulman has been a food fixture in this town and beyond for many years, teaching cooking classes at Venice Cooking School, working on the cookbooks of some of L.A.'s favorite chefs -- she co-authored Mark Peel's recent New Classic Family Dinners ... More >>

Maison Akira: Tour de Fusion

A blast from our Franco-Japanese past

Ask Mr. Gold: Tour de Fusion, or Maison Akira, a Blast From our Franco-Japanese Past

Anne FishbeinMr. Gold, with dim sum menu​Dear Mr. Gold: Are there still restaurants serving French-Japanese food in Los Angeles, along the lines of the defunct Grill Lyon, C'est Fan Fan or Cafe Blanc. Besides the Chayas, of course. And I know about Chinois. --Kevin Dear Kevin: It wasn't so l ... More >>

Q & A With Hideo Yamashiro: Fusion Cuisine, Travels to Spain The Price of Tomatoes

Naomi IwamotoYamashiro with a glass of wine​Hideo Yamashiro, one of the first chefs to blend French and Japanese cuisine in Los Angeles, has been at his Westside bistro, Orris, for almost six years now. Japanese chefs working their way up the hierarchical ladder is more common than not, wit ... More >>

Delphine: Bouillabaisse and Vine

... at the W Hollywood

2010 James Beard Finalists Announed: Suzanne Goin, Matt Molina, Michael Cimarusti, Jonathan Gold, Patric Kuh Nominated

James Beard​Twitter is at it again. The 2010 James Beard Award Finalists were announced this morning via the foundation's Twitter account. L.A's Suzanne Goin, of Lucques, AOC Wine Bar, Hungry Cat and Tavern was nominated for Outstanding Chef, while Matt Molina of Mozza and Michael Cimarusti of ... More >>

Q & A With Remi Lauvand: Berkshire Pigs, Michel Richard with a Cigar & the Santa Barbara Food World

Fran CollinChef Remi Lauvand​Chef Rémi Lauvand does not have a pop up restaurant, but he's been popping up a lot in the last few years. Before he came to rest at his current home, Café Pierre in Manhattan Beach, Lauvand popped up in BreadBar last fall as part of the Hatchi series. Before tha ... More >>

A Q & A With LOU Chef D.J. Olsen: Cooking For Wine People, Trading Music For Food & The Secret Cult of the Midwest

To get to LOU wine bar, you must drive slightly further east on Melrose than you might expect, past the food corridor of the as-yet-reopened Hatfield's and the happy complex that is Mozza and the technically masterful food of Providence, to a nondescript strip mall off of Vine. You must spot the mal ... More >>

A Recipe From the Chef: Walter Manzke's Cassoulet

Cassoulet is a great winter bistro dish, a homey baked casserole from the south of France that is absolutely nothing like the bland casseroles of most American childhoods. (Unless you happen to have French relatives or have won the food lottery and grown up nextdoor to Paula Wolfert.) Walter Manzke ... More >>

Cassoulet Nights at Bistro LQ: The Southwest of France, on Beverly

If you're the sort of person whose idea of a fun time is curling up with a mug of Armagnac and a sauce-spattered vintage edition of Paula Wolfert's 1983 classic The Cooking of Southwest France, then you might want to make reservations at Bistro LQ next Tuesday or Wednesday night. Both nights chef La ... More >>

Julie and Julia and Julia: Julia Child Prud'homme, Bridge Instructor

In a twisty version of cinéma vérité, Julia Child's grandniece, Julia Child Prud'homme, appears in the new movie, "Julie & Julia," as a bridge instructor so boring that everyone's favorite home chef ditched the class in favor of cooking school. I recently visited with Prud'homme in her Hollywood ... More >>

Kindle This: Mastering the Art of French Cooking Tops Bestseller List

Amazon.comJulia Child a best-seller​For those bemoaning the lost art of reading (here's David Ulin's fine piece in the Los Angeles Times) or the lost art of cooking (Michael Pollan in the New York Times), there is good news on both counts: Julia Child's classic cookbook "Mastering the Art of F ... More >>

A Chef's Take on Julie & Julia, by Susan Feniger

Scan courtesy Susan FenigerEveryone's in the kitchen with Julia​A Chef's Take on Julie & Julia, by Susan Feniger, chef-co-owner of Ciudad, Border Grill and Street: I'd like to say something right up front: I'm not a film critic, I'm not a writer, and I generally don't like movies about cooki ... More >>

Julie & Julia: In Praise of Half of Meryl Streep's Top-Chef Biopic

Nora Ephron captures the earthly delights found in Julia Child’s cookbook and autobiography

"Julie & Julia" Food Stylist Susan Spungen Explains the Secret to a Perfect Cheese Pull

In one particular scene from director Nora Ephron's new film "Julie & Julia," starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, a discarded failure of an aspic gurgles up from the garbage disposal in Julie Powell's small borough kitchen. It is the first major failure in her attempt to cook and blog her way throu ... More >>

Ludo Bites at Breadbar

Ludovic Lefebvre Brings Post-Molecular Gastronomy to Third Street

1961 WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR

When Julia Met Chicken

Larousse Gastronomique: The Necessary 8-lb. Book In Your Cookbook Library

It is the Summer of Julia, when teenage girls will soon be lining up along the hot concrete sidewalks of Wilshire Boulevard to watch Meryl Streep flip omelets and deconstruct ducks onscreen.

Mastering the Art of Julia: Mary Sue Milliken Hears a Thump

Sony PicturesChild in time: Streep as Julia This summer, Meryl Streep will appear as the food world's warbly-voiced icon Julia Child in Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia. The movie is based on Child's autobiography and Julie Powell's Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, in which ... More >>

The 10 Best Dishes of 2008

Hot dogs and hominy, blowfish and a fine cup of joe

Full of Beans: Vermont Serves Up Cassoulet

Chef Laurent Quenioux shows off a seasonal, soulful rendition

A Proper Brasserie: Alain Giraud's Anisette

So old, it's new

The Parisian Room: Alain Giraud's Anisette Brasserie

A glass of Sancerre, a half-dozen oysters, and a French chef who's found home

Straight to the Duck Heart

Jonathan Gold’s Top 10 dishes of 2006

Hare Today…

ant eggs tomorrow

America Childless

Julia Child, 1912–2004

A Few Good Eggs

Splitsville

As the tables turn

Where to Eat Now

The Braise of Winter

One-pots from some of the city’s choicest kitchens

The Reluctant Café

Picholine makes up in quality what it lacks in tables