Amy Scattergood

The last great meal I had in Japan was not the takosembei, crackers made from pressed whole battered octopus that looked strikingly like William Morris wallpaper, or that glorious 1 a.m. bowl of dense, pork-oriented tsukemen, or even the shiokara made by a ponytailed sushi chef at a tiny bar......

Last weekend it was a question of how many tacos and how much Korean barbecue you could reasonably consume. This weekend? Cakes! But not just any cakes. This weekend is the second pop-up shop event from the folks at Cake Monkey, the pretty awesome North Hollywood bakery from pastry chef......

The route from the pastry kitchen at a fine-dining restaurant to an ice cream shop or bakery or maybe both is, you might say, strewn with gold and Valrhona dust. It's also a route that many of this town's best pastry chefs have taken, particularly lately: Sherry Yard, Karen Hatfield......

To everyone who crowded into the Hollywood Palladium parking lot yesterday to eat tacos -- plate after plate of mole tacos and sea urchin tacos and octopus tacos -- we salute you. LA Weekly's first annual Tacolandia festival, a happy celebration of one of the world's greatest dishes, was held......

As anybody will realize who's spent much time watching Anthony Bourdain's shows or witnessing the rise of "foodie" culture and the celebritization of chefs over the last decade, much has changed since a teenaged Wolfgang Puck went to work peeling potatoes in an Austrian hotel basement. Only a generation ago......

What do serial killers and ice cream sandwiches have in common? Maybe go watch Michael Shannon's wonderful film The Iceman, in which Chris Evans, minus the superhero outfit, drives an ice cream truck. And maybe also consider the fact that Showtime is celebrating Dexter's eighth season and its Emmy aspirations......

David Féau has been named consulting partner-chef at Le Ka, the downtown restaurant that opened last September. Féau was previously at the Royce in Pasadena, the fancy Langham Huntington Hotel restaurant that was reinvented earlier this spring as a steakhouse (a "wood-fired" steakhouse, no less) under chef Anthony Zappola, formerly......

PETA, or the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, recently announced its list of the 10 most vegan-friendly cities in America. And it should surprise no one that we came in pretty high, ranking third. Because we have lots of movie stars, and they're mostly all vegan these days,......

Welcome to summer in Los Angeles. Time to go to the beach, monitor your backyard fire and BBQ hazards -- and eat pancakes with us at Vibiana. LA Weekly's third annual Pancake Breakfast is returning this August 11, curated by your favorite pie and radio personality Evan Kleiman. You'll have......