Main Dish Recipes

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 >>

Jonathan Gold Reviews Ink.Sack

A Recipe from the Chef: Pitfire Pizza's Heirloom Tomato Pizza

A. FrougHeirloom Tomato Pizza at Pitfire Pizza​ In parts one and two of our interview with Pitfire Pizza's owners Paul Hibler and David Sanfield, we learned about the design and recipe decision-making that allowed a 14 year-old restaurant chain to become a $10 million pizza behemoth. They make ... More >>

Jonathan Gold Reviews Starry Kitchen

Top Thai Chef Comes to L.A. A Recipe for Duck Larb

Barbara Hansenchef McDang​Royalty just left Los Angeles. Now it's coming again. The royal personage arriving this week is chef McDang (real name ML Sirichalerm Svasti) of the Thai royal family. Not content to rest on regal laurels, McDang has become a culinary celebrity in Thailand, appearing ... More >>

A Recipe From the Chefs: Salt's Cure's Pulled Pork Sandwich

A. FrougPulled pork sandwich at Salt's Cure​ In our two part interview with Salt's Cure's Chris Phelps and Zak Walters, we learned that the two chefs will drive all the way to Napa Valley to buy the pigs for their West Hollywood restaurant. These aren't the kind of challenges you expect when y ... More >>

National Fried Chicken Day: KFC Wine Pairings

Barely digested burgers still working their way through our lower GI tracts and Sousa marches still ringing in our ears, the post-Fourth of July haze makes way for another national holiday honoring our liberty, our independence and our love of fried foods. Today is National Fried Chicken Day. Like ... More >>

Cookbook Review: Saveur's Got The New Comfort Food Down

​Yes, we know we are supposed to be at the farmers market cooing over those Blenheim apricots meant to be slowly savored and imagining the simple tomato-basil salads that will satisfy us after just a few bites with their intense summer flavors. But even this time of year, some nights all we re ... More >>

Jimenez Family Farm: For "Thrifty" Lamb Necks And Whole Rabbits How To Cook Them

JgarbeePre-Roast Pet Rabbit Guilt​The Jimenez Family Farm motto, "everything under the sun," is more than apt for this Santa Ynez-based family business that offers up an assortment of produce (check out the gorgeous blueberries and boysenberries this time of year), salsas and preserves, and ho ... More >>

Cookbook Review: The Glorious Pasta of Italy, Including This Fettuccine Recipe

​Sure, we probably don't need another pasta cookbook. But The Glorious Pasta of Italy by Domenica Marchetti is pretty hard to pass up -- and we have a lot of Italian cookbooks in our library. Marchetti grew up in New Jersey on handmade ravioli (her mother is from Abruzzo). And so she spends ... More >>

Jonathan Gold Reviews Umami Burger

Cookbook Review: Truly Mexican A Pipián Verde (Green Pumpkin Seed Sauce) Recipe

​Mexico City-born (now New York City based) chef Roberto Santibañez's latest cookbook. Truly Mexican: Essential Recipes and Techniques for Authentic Mexican Cooking with JJ Goode is truly exactly what the subtitle describes -- something that is not as common in the cookbook world as it should ... More >>

Casserollin' With The Chuckwagon Cowboy

Plenty of cooking show hosts talk about their mothers, but Ron Locke does so with a preacher's conviction, earnestly evoking her presence in his journey to the kitchen (and YouTube) almost constantly as he cooks. Known to his YouTube fans as The Chuckwagon Cowboy, Locke hails from rootin', tootin ... More >>

Cookbook Review: Sara Foster's Southern Kitchen Granny Foster's Fried Chicken Recipe

​There's something about summer that automatically revs up our food craving for fried okra, succotash, crispy slaws, picnic-worthy fried chicken and yeah, even those mayo-drenched Southern potato salads and pimiento cheese sandwiches. Or maybe it was flipping through Sara Foster's Southern Kit ... More >>

Jonathan Gold Reviews Noodle Boy

In Season Recipes: Pasta with Morels Cherry Frangipane Galette

Pascal from Flickr Morels​ When we think of morels, we think of Fricassée de volaille de Bresse aux Morilles. We grew up just ten miles north of Paul Bocuse's restaurant, near the Pont de Collonges, a place that is world renowned for Bresse chicken in cream sauce with morels. Bocuse is the gr ... More >>

Jonathan Gold Reviews Mezze

First Bite: At Mezze, Middle East and America Getting Along After All

F. FriesemaJonagold apples​ The Middle Eastern moment in Los Angeles restaurants may be in full swing, having gone from the occasional hit of charmoula or side of Israeli couscous to entire high-end menus, from kebab dives to palaces of cuisine. A new hotel restaurant, a fancy lunch place or a ... More >>

Cookbook Review: My Father's Daughter, or Gwyneth Paltrow's Cookbook is Good, In Spite of Herself

​Depending on whether you read Gwyneth Paltrow's GOOP newsletter because you appreciate her recommendations or because you have a sadomasochistic curiosity to see how That Other Half lives, you either will love her cookbook, My Father's Daughter, or you will loathe its existence. Even Paltrow ... More >>

Make Haste, Make Stew: A Recipe For Pork Stew with Olives, Green Beans and Herbes de Provence

Jeanne Kelleypork stew​ Make haste. Make stew? Summer is around the corner and very soon we'll be avoiding the stove, cooking everything from steaks to pizzas on the barbecue, and concocting cold salads for hot nights. Three-months-plus of nightly grilled and chilled entrees is not a bad thin ... More >>

Cookbook Review: Heavy Metal Mosh Potatoes An Alice Cooper-Worthy Snack Recipe

​There are those cookbooks -- an awful lot of them in recent Food Network years, it seems -- that you pick up and immediately set back down. Then you scout for something of substance to pick up by, say, Diana Kennedy or Harold McGee, to pretend that momentary Rachel Ray EVOO moment never happe ... More >>

A Recipe From The Chef: Austin Szu's Coconut Curry with Chicken and Pork Belly

Austin SzuCoconut Curry​ When he was 16 years old, Austin Szu realized that his calling was culinary. After receiving his BA in Business Administration from UC Riverside, he went on to attend culinary school in Pasadena. Along the way, Szu did stints on the 2004 World Pastry Team Championship ... More >>

Jonathan Gold Samples New York's Best Eateries During Beard Weekend

Jonathan Gold Reviews Noodle Guy

Jonathan Gold Reviews Lukshon

Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: Cake Police, the Perfect Bowl of Soup Culinary ESP

​Award-winning writer, native Angeleno and USC creative writing teacher Aimee Bender's second novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, opens with 9-year-old central protagonist, Rose Edelstein, taking a bite of birthday cake that her mother has made from scratch and tasting... bottomless ... More >>

Q & A With Gilberto Cetina: Chichen Itza, His New Cookbook, The Scoville Scale The Happiness of Chowhound Guys

Facebook/Gilberto CetinaGilberto Cetina​Anyone who loves cochinita pibil, the Yucatecan dish of pork roasted in banana leaves, knows the well-traveled route to Chichen Itza in the Mercado La Paloma near USC just south of downtown, which also houses Ricardo Zarate's Mo-Chica. Chef-owner Gilbert ... More >>

A Recipe From the Chef: Gilberto Cetina's Tikin-Xic

A. ScattergoodTikin-Xic at Chichen Itza​ If you read our interview with Chichen Itza chef-owner Gilberto Cetina, you will have been reminded that the chef, besides running one of L.A.'s favorite restaurants and writing a soon-to-be-published cookbook on Yucatecan cuisine, makes a mean bottle o ... More >>

A Recipe From the Burger King: Adam Fleischman's Pasta Rags with Marsala Sauce

A. ArmstrongAdam Fleischman's pasta with Marsala sauce​ As readers learned in the second part of Squid Ink's recent interview with Umami Burger's Adam Fleischman, the burger king (can we call him that?) likes to maintain a sense of adaptability in his projects. That adventure and experimen ... More >>

Mexican Cooking, from a Korean Point of View A Chicken Pozole Recipe

Amazon​So why is a Korean food expert writing about Mexican cooking? It makes sense when you find out that Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee's parents had a Mexican grocery in the San Fernando Valley. Working there, she learned many a dish from the women who came in to shop, and she later immersed herself ... More >>

Jonathan Gold Reviews Son of a Gun

First Bite: Son of a Gun, or What Would You Want To Change Anyway?

F. FriesemaJonagold apples​ Whatever the current style in Los Angeles restaurants ends up being named, all of it -- from the small-plate thing to the fixation on local, organic produce; the off-center proteins to the international palette of flavors; and the resistance to even modest customer ... More >>

What To Eat During HBO's Mildred Pierce A Fried Chicken Recipe

Andrew Schwartz/HBOOn the set of Mildred Pierce​ If you watched last Sunday's installment of HBO's 5-part mini-series Mildred Pierce and you are human, you will have been drawn into this heart-wrenching melodrama about an ambitious single mother with superior culinary skills and you will have ... More >>

Jonathan Gold Reviews Beijing Duck House in San Gabriel

Celestino Drago Teaches Kids to Cook FREE EATalian Kids Meals A Recipe

J. RitzChef Drago demonstrates a different kind of guitar. ​The bar for field trips and group lunches has been set very high for a class of third graders at Larchmont Charter West school in West Hollywood. As one of the many events sponsored by the Club EATalian campaign, the class was treate ... More >>

Habanero (or Scotch Bonnet) Heaven at Flavors of Belize

Food Marathon​The hot sauce didn't make it to the table until a third of our whole fried snapper had been stripped down to its bones. Attracted by a laudatory L.A. Times article, we were dining at Flavors of Belize, a retooled cafe wedged into the Relax Inn on La Brea near San Vicente. One of ... More >>

Jonathan Gold Reviews Playa

John Sedlar continues to reinvent the tortilla

A Recipe from the Chef: Yvonne and Nancy Boules' Cafe Dahab Koshari

K. RobbinsCafe Dahab's koshari​ When we sat down to interview Yvonne and Nancy Boules, the mother-daughter team behind Café Dahab, one dish kept coming up over and over - koshari. "[If] you put the koshari plate among kabob and other things," Yvonne told us, "It will be the first to go." A h ... More >>

Photo How-To: Making Pork Rillette with Chef Steven Mary A Recipe

In this second installment of our pictorial how-to series (in the first, we made kimchi with chef EJ Jeong of Cham Korean Bistro in Pasadena), we visit chef Steven Mary of Pinot Bistro, who teaches us to make the studio City's restaurant's recipe for rillette. Rillette isn't as scary as it sounds ... More >>

L.A.'s Best Cocktails

Our 55 favorites and where to find them

Bicycle & Gogi: Where to Find Korean BBQ, The Perfect Smoker, Instant Ramen Spam

D. GonzalezA Smoking Hot Plate: Combination #1 at Bicycle and Gogi​ 100 pounds of meat. A nationwide search for the perfect smoker. And six months of methodological trial and error. That is what it took Jesse Kim to merge his two favorite foods -- Texas-style barbecue and Korean marinated m ... More >>

A Recipe From The Chef (And Winemaker): Rolando Herrera's Syrah Marinated Rack Of Lamb

flickr user another pint pleaseEven Lambs Love A Good Syrah​Judging by our two-part interview, Mi Sueño owner-winemaker Rolando Herrera is the sort of guy who can talk about baseball and winemaking dreams one minute, the hard-ass work he put in as a teenager just to survive the next -- and m ... More >>

Esaan: A New Place to Eat Thai Food Downtown

B. HansenPad Thai salad at Esaan​ If you're standing at the bus stop at 5th and Hope in downtown L.A. and you suddenly get the impression you're in Thailand, not waiting for the 720 to Santa Monica, you're not delusional. Someone has just opened the door to Esaan, a Taste of Thai, allow ... More >>

A Recipe From the Chef: Eric Ripert's Roasted Chicken with Za'atar Stuffing

WileyEric Ripert's roasted chicken with za'atar stuffing​ After we sat down at the Chateau Marmont for a 2-part interview with Eric Ripert, we asked the Le Bernardin chef for a recipe from his new book, Avec Eric. Sure, they're all good, but which one should we go home and make now -- and publ ... More >>

A Recipe From the Chef: Jason Travi's Burrata Fritters

A. ScattergoodJason Travi's burrata fritters at Firefly​ When we stopped by Firefly's kitchens to talk to Jason Travi last week, the chef talked about what he's been up to lately, the relative joys of recycling restaurant fryer oil in his old Mercedes, and Spago's dress code (or lack thereof). ... More >>

Taste-testing Charlton Heston's Tuna Cheese Puff. Plus: other delicacies from Dining With David Wade

​Each Monday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets around Los Angeles. Dining With David Wade Author: David Wade Date: 1968 Publisher: None listed; apparently, it's David Wade. Di ... More >>

Q & A With Whist Chef Tony DiSalvo: Homemade Meatballs, Sicilian Roots Tales Of A Private Chef

ViceroyWhist's Executive Chef Tony DiSalvo​From W Hollywood's Delphine to The Montage's Scarpetta to The Four Seasons' Culina, transforming L.A.'s hotel restaurants from forgettable to five-star is seemingly becoming routine. Now Tony DiSalvo (Gramercy Tavern, Jean Georges, Jack's) is making h ... More >>

A Recipe From the Chef: Madhur Jaffrey's Salmon in Bengali Mustard Sauce

KnopfMadhur Jaffrey's salmon in Bengali mustard sauce​ If you read the many, many year-end best cookbooks of 2010 lists, you will doubtless be very familiar with Madhur Jaffrey's latest book, At Home With Madhur Jaffrey: Simple, Delectable Dishes from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. ... More >>

The Brothers Launch a Cookbook Their Filet Mignon Crispy Tacos Recipe

B. HansenMatt and Jeff Nichols, with their new book​Brothers Matt and Jeff Nichols weren't in the kitchen, and their popular restaurant, Brothers at Mattei's Tavern in Los Olivos, was closed on a recent Sunday afternoon. Then why was it full of people eating great food and drinking local wines ... More >>

10 Things You May Not Know About Korean Food a Recipe

B. Hansenpork with kimchi at Yongsusan​ Did you know that L.A.-style galbi is famous in South Korea? If the answer is no, then bone up (what better term) on this and other little known facts about Korean cuisine with a 10-point guide that will make you sound like an expert. 1. L.A.-style g ... More >>