Taiwan

Veteran Producer Sir Jinx is the Missing Link

[Editor's note: Weekly scribe Jeff Weiss's column, "Bizarre Ride," appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday. His archives are available here.] See also: Edward "Apple" Nelson Is a Legendary L.A. Drummer and 70-Year-Old Yoga Enthusiast Sir Jinx is the missing link. He is a vital nerve. Remove th ... More >>

Yes, Anita Ho Is the Name of a Real Movie

How many Asians in film can you name? Sure, there are some of the obvious ones, like Ang Lee or Jackie Chan. But most people probably can't list more than ten. To try and help spread the word of Asians in the film industry, Asians on Film had their first film festival this past weekend at J.E.T. St ... More >>

10 Best Eats In Arcadia: Neighborhood Grub Crawl

Some call it the "new Chinese Beverly Hills." For others, it's just the city where Din Tai Fung and the Los Angeles County Arboretum are located. But look closely and you'll see a lively food community in an otherwise very suburban neighborhood. Arcadia is the home of the recently relocated 626 Ni ... More >>

2012 San Gabriel Valley Food Trends

The end of the year marks a time to re-evaluate, a time to step back and try to figure out exactly what the heck it was all about. Take for example, the food trends of 2012 in the San Gabriel Valley. We got word out through social media, message boards and e-mail asking those familiar with goings on ... More >>

Your Holiday Presents Are Floating Off The Coast Of L.A.

Updated at the bottom: It's over, says the mayor. First posted at 9:02 a.m. Tuesday. The Los Angeles port strike has gone largely unnoticed by much of L.A, largely because it hasn't affected you much. But think about this: On the eighth day of the strike, with cargo ships waiting outside the large ... More >>

Consumer Reports Study Finds Pork Teeming With Bacteria

Oh, you dirty swine. A new and alarming Consumer Reports study found that pork chops and ground pork are teeming with nasty bacteria that cause food poisoning, CBS News reports. Urvashi Rangan, Consumer Reports' director of consumer safety and sustainability, told CBS, "We found potentially harmfu ... More >>

10 Political Things to Do in L.A. Before (and After) the Election

This year's election has the public voting for everyone from Roseanne Barr to Hello Kitty, with Mitt Romney's Binders of Women the projected costume-winner for Halloween. While the 2012 presidential election is the biggest reason people are hitting the polls, we all know that local campaigns can be ... More >>

10 Dishes From Happy Garden: Offal, Really Authentic Taiwanese Shutting Down Soon

Happy Garden is arguably the most authentic Taiwanese restaurant in the Los Angeles area. It's been around since 1995 and has always been operated by Jim Huang, who works the kitchen while his wife works the front end of the house. Though the menu has shifted throughout the years, the decor has rema ... More >>

Milk And Honey Cafe Opening Second Location In San Gabriel

Taiwanese café and dessert shop Milk and Honey is expanding with a new restaurant opening in San Gabriel today, Friday, Sept. 7. The eatery, which is based in Artesia, recently celebrated their one-year anniversary in August. "We want this to be a place for youths to come," manager Candace Wu tol ... More >>

7 Great Los Angeles Ethnic Markets

As significant as farmers markets are in reintroducing seasonality to our diet, it is the neighborhood market that regularly holds us down when times call for lingonberry syrup or injera bread. It may be too early to declare Los Angeles -- or anywhere for that matter -- post-racial, but in a city wi ... More >>

Eat This Now: Dragons' Whiskers Salad Specialty Vegetables at Cafe Fusion

It's a great time to eat at Café Fusion. May officially kicks off dragons' whiskers salad season at the eight-year-old Taiwanese restaurant, and it also marks the seasonal arrival of locally grown baby bamboo shoots, yam leaves and other produce you rarely see elsewhere. The restaurant attained ... More >>

Jenny Peng and the Golden Shrimp Tofu Dumpling

Flavor Garden's golden shrimp dumpling was so named for a reason no longer apparent at first glance. At ten to a plate for $6.99, they are plump with tofu, scallions, and fresh shrimp. Reference to ingots that dumplings have traditionally symbolized in Chinese culture notwithstanding, they appear li ... More >>

Sarah Vowell's Unfamiliar Fishes: New Book Explains Hawaii and How the U.S. Became an Empire

Writer/radio commentator Sarah Vowell comes to town to sit down with Jeff Garlin and talk about her latest book, a funny and lively history of America's acquisition of Hawaii. Here's our Q&A:

Jonathan Gold Reviews Shanghai No. 1 Seafood Village

Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup: Food Fight

Barbara HansenBeef noodle soup from Won Won Kitchen in Temple City.​The San Gabriel Valley is really souped up, that is, if you're thinking of Taiwanese beef noodle soup, which is everywhere. How do you know which version is the best, or at least really good? You check with people who come her ... More >>

Moshe Kai Cavalin, UCLA Child Prodigy, Wrote Bestseller in Spare Time; Thinks You Can, Too!

Is there nothing 13-year-old Moshe Kai Cavelin can't do? Kid graduated from East Los Angeles Community College in astrophysics with a 4.0 last year, at which point he transfered to UCLA for math. (His LinkedIn profile lists his expected graduation date as 2012. Uh, did we mention he has a LinkedIn ... More >>

Blogger Jailed Over Bad Beef Noodle Review

We've heard of restaurateurs having hissy fits over bad Yelp reviews and even kicking out newspaper reviewers, but jailing a blogger over a bad review? That would be insane... or would it? A Taiwanese blogger was recently sentenced to 30 days in detention, two years of probation and ordered her to ... More >>

Porn Flick in 3D, 'Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy,' Causes Stir in China (NSFW Video)

YouTubeSex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy​Update: You know it was only a matter of time before our friends at Next Media Animation would come up with their own Taiwanese-animation take on this story. Video after the jump. You think porn is controversial in L.A. lately what with all the debate over ... More >>

"They Are the Dogs of War!"

Singapore's City Harvest Church Controversy Comes to the Hollywood Hills

Singaporean Pop Star Sun Ho​Unbeknown to many Hollywood Hills residents, a major, developing controversy involving a wealthy Singapore minister and his widely influential mega-church has come to their posh neighborhood. Over the past few weeks, City Harvest Church pastor Kong Hee, a Christia ... More >>

Triangulating Boba: In Search of LA's Best Taro Milk Tea

Flickr/permanently scatterbrained​ In this Year of the Tiger 2010, there are perhaps as many boba shops filling the L.A. basin as there are intersections to hold them. I imagine container ships stacking up in San Pedro Bay bearing nothing but vacuum-sealed tapioca pearls from the food factorie ... More >>

Worlds Apart

Federal law gives gay citizens with foreign partners tough choices: Leave the U.S.A. Lose your love. Break the law

Gogi Gui and a Movie?

CGV Cinemas, Koreatown's new 3-D triplex, is no secret

Dumpling Station Food Truck Launches

Los Angeles has plenty of Thai food, but what about Tai food? Outside of the San Gabriel Valley, it can be hard to find Taiwanese dumplings. Hoping to bring these delicate balls of meat, vegetables, and dough to the masses, Helen Pan, 25, and Chris Aragon, 28, launched the Dumpling Station food truc ... More >>

Ross Lipman's Urban Decay

Film-restoration specialist brings his own works on city ruins to L.A. for the first time

American Tea Room Opens Full Service Tea Bar: Let them Eat Earl Grey Petits Fours

American Tea Room in Beverly Hills is a high end retailer of organic and non-organic teas, accessories and accoutrements, a spot where you can mosey on in after shopping (or window shopping) on Rodeo Drive, after grabbing a bite to eat with the posh 90210 crowd at Enoteca Drago across the street. Si ... More >>

The Green Village Preservation Society

Open to new members in Rowland Heights

SxSW Keynote Nate Silver: Opinions from the Obama-win Predicting Mastermind

We skipped lunch on Sunday to watch number crunching phenom Nate Silver share his perspective about the accuracy of measuring just about anything, and more specifically, his opinions on polling tactics post 2008 election. Having foregone morning coffee in order to hit the ground running (here's the ... More >>

This Is Not a Shrimp: Extreme Snacking, Japan Style

Green tea pie and lots of jelly

Max Maven Thinking in Person

Theater Reviews: The Drawer Boy, Hollywood Hellhouse, Max Maven

Also Jim Morrison's Swimming to the Moon and this week's pick, Innocent When You Dream.

What Would Jesus Do this Week?

The Passion of the Cash

Da Vinci Cannes the world

Spirits Rock Among Us

A studio visit with Marnie Weber

The Ladle From Shanghai

WeHo Voices

Maestro Gatti Takes the Fifth

At Home, He's a Tourist

Hong Kong's Stanley Kwan steps out of the shadows and into Beijing

Imperial Times

Why one Owens Valley is enough for all of us

Why Not to Write About a Supreme Master of the Universe

A day with the disciples of Ching Hai

Fogtown and Ze Boys

Post-adolescent anomie at the 45th annual San Francisco International Film Festival

Urban Naturalist: The $5.5 Billion Bird

Engineering 101

Building a better dumpling

Marine Land

Finally a great fish taco in Los Angeles

Good, Better, Wurst

You never sausage a thing in your life . . .

Baca's Debacle

Sheriff Lee Baca Relied Heavily on two Controversial Campaign Supporters to Set up His Asian Crime Task Force. Now Both Men Have Drawn FBI Scrutiny, and the New Sheriff's Reputation is on the Line

The Master Class

Foreign filmmakers invade the Egyptian.

War Without Borders

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

Around this time of year, we start to yearn for restaurants that put their smoke in the meat, not in the street . . .

A River Should Run Through It

Repairing downtown, riparianly