Garrett Snyder

5 Best Places to Eat in the Downtown Arts District

This week's L.A. Weekly profiles the one of the city's hottest neighborhoods: the downtown arts district. Check out the other stories in our series: *Tyler Stonebreaker: Curator of the Downtown Arts District. *6 Developments That Will Change the Downtown Arts District's Future*How the Arts District ... More >>

L.A. Weekly's 99 Essential Restaurants 2013

10 Best Dishes in L.A. for Homesick New Yorkers

It's easy to start nodding off when people drag out the old "New York vs. Los Angeles" debate; it's a tired one, and largely a comparison of Big Apples to orange groves, anyway. But after Bon Appetit listed its 20 most important restaurants in America and New York outshone L.A. by a factor of six, i ... More >>

Free One-Year Anniversary Crullers at Plan Check Today

In celebration of its one-year anniversary, Plan Check will offer all of its diners orders of sugar-coated crullers on the house today. Each order comes in a set of three served with whipped cream and fresh fruit. For larger parties, enough will be brought out to include everyone in the festivities.

All We Want For Christmas: A Wish List From The LA Weekly Food Team

It's that time of year, when material and consumer lust the joy of giving is upon us. There are a million food-related gift guides out there, many of them touting all that's new and exciting in the world of cooking gadgets and indulgent eating. But I thought, rather that scour the web for gift ideas ... More >>

10 Best Cheap Eats in Los Angeles

As you may have noticed, this year's Best Of issue dropped on your doorstep, metaphorically if not actually, yesterday. There are hundreds (yes, hundreds) of listings, of spas and hikes and cocktails and grottos (yes, grottos), so many that you might get lost -- so many that we thought we'd pull ou ... More >>

Comments: American Pie

Grill Around the World in 8 Ways: Celebrating July 4th like an Angeleno

A proper Fourth of July feast probably begins at the grill. And in contemporary Los Angeles, this all-American meal is as likely to be comprised of yakitori and carne asada as hot dogs and hamburgers: Americans have been mixing and matching food traditions from our collective immigrant background si ... More >>

Alan Quigg On How Reddit Forced CHP Take Note of the I-5 Road Rage Video

Jerry Patterson says three men in a Volkswagon Jetta tailed him for two miles after he accidentally cut them off on the I-5. When both cars were stopped in traffic, things turned violent. The two-on-one brawl left Patterson limp, lying on the side of the freeway as his assailants sped away. Foota ... More >>

Boys Who Like Girls: Three Theories on Why Men Are Into This Show

On Sunday nights, #Girls started blowing up my Twitter feed, alongside #MadMen and #GameofThrones. The show was highly-anticipated and critically-acclaimed, and has clearly built a rabid following. What's surprising, though, is that a lot of these fans are men. Straight men, at that, who are usually ... More >>

Top 3 Weekend Food Events: Vegan Beer Festival, Foie Gras Battle Michael McCarty's Farmer's Market Tour

L.A. Vegan Beer Festival Sample beers from more than a dozen breweries, including Anchor, Epic, Fireman's Brew, Golden Road Brewing, Green Flash, Hangar 24, Karl Strauss and Smog City at this vegan-friendly event hosted by Tony's Darts Away, blogger Quarry Girl and The Roxy. Vendors and trucks inclu ... More >>

Car Talk

L.A. Weekly Food: New Hires and Big (Exciting!) Changes

Let's start by stating the obvious: There have been big changes to the L.A. Weekly's food section recently. And there are even more on the way. After our longtime critic Jonathan Gold departed for the L.A. Times, we've been nibbling on this and that: a reflection on cookbooks from Roy Choi, a piece ... More >>

China Debuts $44 Bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon

Maybe we've watched Blue Velvet too many times, but to us there's something uniquely American about Pabst Blue Ribbon. Sure, it's been widely acknowledged from Williamsburg to Echo Park as the beer du jour of the hipster masses, but really, who doesn't appreciate a blue-collar beer once in a while, ... More >>

Funkiest Dish West of the 405: Moo Moo Thai's Yen Ta Fo

Did your new year's resolution involve sampling strange cuisine from across the city? If you're the type who scours the San Gabriel Valley like a Sichuan-studded Star Map or can quickly rattle off every birrieria in the barrio then probably not. But if you're perpetually stuck in a quaint Westside f ... More >>

Hey, Where'd You Get That Heroin Burrito?

If you keep up with the LAPD police blotter, or perhaps are just are a civic-minded Mexican food enthusiast, you may have heard about the Los Angeles County deputy who was recently charged with trying to smuggle a bean and cheese burrito filled with heroin into the Airport Courthouse. Yes, you read ... More >>

10 Food Predictions for 2012

​2011 was quite a year in the Los Angeles dining scene. If you had told us a year ago that we'd be eagerly wolfing down plates of alligator schnitzel, polenta sushi, and corned beef tongue sandwiches from a Michael Voltaggio shop with the word "sack" in its title, we wouldn't have believed you ... More >>

DIY Food Mashups: Lempira Pupusas Krua Siri Papaya Salad

G. SnyderThe Pupusa-Papaya Connection​ The origins of this week's food mash-up trace back to a particularly reflective pupusa run a few weeks ago. To be clear, we love the pupusa in all it's crisp-edged, cheese-oozing glory, and given the ubiquitous status of the Salvadorian staple these days ... More >>

DIY Food Mashups: Falafel Arax Spicy BBQ Thai

G. SnyderLaap Thawt Lenbi Sandwich​ The rules of D.I.Y. Food Mashups are simple: Pair two dishes from two distinct restaurants located less than a half mile apart and then sample the subsequent mishmash of cuisines, for better or worse. In a crowded strip mall in East Hollywood, literally ... More >>

Grill This Now: Pete's Louisiana Style Hot Links

G. SnyderPete's Hot Links​ Phillip's BBQ, Woody's BBQ, Dr. Hogly Wogly's, Robin's Woodfire BBQ, and Spring Street Smokehouse; what do all these L.A. barbecue joints have in common? They all serve hot links imported from the same iron-gated takeout window just west of Crenshaw: a tiny, Cajun-st ... More >>

Alameda Swap Meet: The Joy of Cowboy Hats, Huitlacoche Cow Heads

G. SnyderYup, that's a whole cow head​ To describe the soon-to-be-unincorporated City of Vernon, located a few exits southeast of downtown, as an industrial wasteland might serve as an understatement. Most of the landscape is a collection of sprawling warehouses, massive scrapyards and factori ... More >>