Ruth Reichl

New Online Dining Club: Truffl

It's arguable whether we've fully arrived at Web 3.0, but there has been a progression in the recent history of online companies trying to bring us food and drink -- whether as a product or through an event. Foodzie morphed from an online marketplace to shop for small-batch products into the web equ ... More >>

Q & A With Soul of a Banquet's Wayne Wang: Cecilia Chiang Why the Best Chinese Food in the World is in the SGV

Back in 2011, when it seemed like the entire Bay Area was seized with Chez Panisse 40th anniversary fever, Hong Kong-born, San Francisco-based filmmaker Wayne Wang (Chan Is Missing, Joy Luck Club, Smoke) asked Chez Panisse's founder, Alice Waters, if there was a role he could play. Waters suggested ... More >>

Le Ka, Voila!

Remi Lauvand's new downtown spot has much to recommend it -- but tries to do just a bit too much

Top Chef Masters Recap: "Do You Want to be Comforted, or do You Want to be Thrilled?"

It was a battle of the coasts in last night's Top Chef Masters finale, pitting New York's Kerry Heffernan against San Francisco's golden boy Chris Cosentino. But it wasn't just that. It was also a battle of culinary ideologies, considering these two chefs' approach to food couldn't be more differen ... More >>

Top Chef Masters Recap: Blanc-ing Out

Paging P. Diddy. There was a white party and no one invited you. OK, it wasn't that kind of white party. Instead, on last night's episode of Top Chef Masters, the final four contestants were charged with catering a Dîner en Blanc, which is kind of like the James Bond of meals, that is, if 007 had ... More >>

An Elegy for Nora Ephron: Pancakes, Bakery Dreams The Strawberry Ambrosia Fraud

Every writer has two or three go-to sources, people who are famous enough for readers to recognize their name, witty enough so they can hold forth on anything and everything and are kind enough to always take your call. Nora Ephron was one of those for me. Whenever I'd phone, our conversation woul ... More >>

Q & A With Jeremy Fox: Paper or Plastik, Pre-Fabs, His New L.A. Restaurant Life Post-Ubuntu

The last place you'd probably expect to find a chef with a Michelin star under his belt would be West L.A.'s Paper or Plastik, a neighborhood café that has been a favorite of locals for years but was never known as a place to host nationally-acclaimed chefs. But that's exactly where former Ubuntu ... More >>

High Bonnet: Medlars, Literature & Idwal Jones

You're only two pages in when Jean-Marie Gallois, the hero of Idwal Jones' 1945 novel High Bonnet: A Novel of Epicurean Adventures, is seduced away from a life at sea and into a life spent behind the stoves. Blame it on the peddler traversing the Toulon wharf with a basket of medlars on his head. "T ... More >>

Pete Wells Named New York Times Restaurant Critic

Pete Wells​The New York Times just confirmed that Pete Wells will be that paper's next restaurant critic, ending two months of rampant speculation about who would get that coveted chair at the table. The previous critic, Sam Sifton, stepped down in September after two years at the position. Th ... More >>

LA Weekly Flickr Pool Reader Photo of the Day: Inside Lukshon's Open Kitchen

LA Weekly Flickr pool/djjewelzthe Lukshon kitchen​ This LA Weekly Flickr pool photo comes to you from photographer djjewelz, a lovely shot of a woman in silhouette watching the spinning inner engines of Lukshon, Sang Yoon's newest Culver City restaurant. Say what you will about open kitchens, ... More >>

Sam Sifton Steps Down As New York Times Restaurant Critic

New York Timesthe anonymous (?) restaurant critic​After two years as restaurant critic for The New York Times, Sam Sifton is getting a new table. As he tweeted this morning, "I'm stepping down as restaurant critic to be the national editor of The Times. #checkplease." Sifton, who replaced Fr ... More >>

Jonathan Gold Reviews Moko

Q & A With Lucky Peach's Peter Meehan: Drinking Fernet With David Chang The Food Journal As Dartboard

​As you may have heard, Lucky Peach, the quarterly food journal put together by David Chang (Momofuku), Peter Meehan and the folks at Zero Point Zero Production (No Reservations) and published by McSweeney's, debuted yesterday. Ramen. Anthony Bourdain. Ruth Reichl. Harold McGee. More than enou ... More >>

Top Chef Masters: How Did Local Favorites John Sedlar and Mary Sue Milliken Do?

bravotv.comChefs John Sedlar and Mary Sue Milliken pulling some culinary nunchuck-ery in the Quickfire challenge.​We forced ourselves to stay awake for the Top Chef Masters 11 p.m. premiere last night (thankfully, it will air at 10 p.m. going forward). Still, we couldn't wait to see how L.A. c ... More >>

Q & A With Eric Ripert, Part 2: Celebrity Chefs, Spago's Spies The Identity of Ruth Bourdain

A. ScattergoodEric Ripert at the Chateau Marmont​ In the first part of our interview with Eric Ripert, the French chef who is chef-partner at New York City's Le Bernardin, the author of four cookbooks, the host of his own PBS show, Friend Of Tony, and (lest we forget) recipient of French's Leg ... More >>

Two Cheers for Anonymity

Red Medicine panicked in outing Times' Virbila, but did no lasting harm

[Updated] Unmasked LA Times Critic Virbila Responds to Red Medicine Fracas

Update: Yesterday, December 23rd, shortly after we posted Virbila's response, her photo and the explanation of why she was booted from the restaurant were removed from Red Medicine's Tumblr site. From Red Medicine's site.​Since we broke the story yesterday that Los Angeles Times restaurant c ... More >>

Q & A With Barbara Fairchild: Her New Website, Twitter The Sometimes Questionable Expertise of the Web

Barbara Fairchild​Barbara Fairchild has had a busy year, which is something of a vast understatement. She's in the process of leaving Bon Appétit, the magazine she'd been with for 32 years, has just come out with another cookbook, is developing a website and has just joined Twitter. We call ... More >>

Q & A With Joan Nathan, Part 2: Kosher Wines, "Newish Jewish" How Tom Colicchio (Literally) Saved Her Life

Joan Nathan​In the first part of our conversation with Joan Nathan, we drove around the hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, (via speakerphone) of this award-winning cookbook writer and authority on all things Jewish cuisine, as she explained who loves matzo in France (apparently everybody), ... More >>

Yes, Georgio's!

New York's Robins Takes a Turn at Studio City Cucina

Via Eater: Anthony Bourdian (Imagined) on Dancing With The Stars

This is beyond hilarious. From Eater, a post imagining an alternate universe in which Anthony Bourdain goes on Dancing With The Stars, which apparently premiered (again) last night. "During the show Anthony Bourdain's wife tweeted that a few years ago he was asked join the show (both Rocco DiSpirito ... 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 >>

L.A. Times Food Section Moves To Thursdays

Starting February 4th, The Los Angeles Times Food section will be published on Thursdays instead of Wednesdays. Food section editor Russ Parsons says that the move, which he announced yesterday, is the result of "losing some press capacity." The Times is shutting down their Orange County printing op ... More >>

Q & A With Thomas Keller, Part 2: The Best Meal He Ever Cooked, The Importance of Fernand Point Lightbulb Moments

Deborah JonesChef Thomas Keller​Thomas Keller's Los Angeles Bouchon Bistro, which opens a week from tonight, will serve the same menu, more or less, as his other two Bouchons, in Yountville and Las Vegas. But Keller says that even though the menu has stayed pretty much the same, the space has ... More >>

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