Amy Scattergood

The folks at Bravo tried to keep up the tension, putting the final three chefs through some awkward silences before the judges table. But when Rick Bayless won, was it really much of a surprise? I'd have been more surprised if he'd packed his mocajete and gone home. So it......

The Happy Rise of Cookbook Sales: Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio Hits Bestseller ListIt’s not only Julia Child’s books that have been topping the charts: This week, Michael Ruhlman’s new book hits the New York Times bestseller list. Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, which came out this......

Farmer Bill Coleman of Coleman Family Farm in Carpenteria has a market stall that partly resembles an arboretum, partly a secret garden on display. This morning at the Wednesday Santa Monica farmers market, where Coleman parks his truck and his greenery and his family almost every single week, the tables......

If you're a fan of Top Chef, you will be staying at home tonight, breathlessly munching on dishes you've perhaps cooked from one of Rick Bayless's books. Or Huber Keller's or Michael Chiarello's. Or maybe Tom Colicchio's or even Padma Lakshmi's (yes, two of them), if you're watching not only......

Thanks for playing the most recent installment of our burger guessing game. After two that were fairly easy (Umami Burger; Rustic Canyon), the last burger was a bit more obscure. Still, though, somebody got it less than half an hour after the post went up. (@LAOCfoodie: congratulations, you're 3 for......

New York's Magnolia Bakery is opening a Los Angeles store this fall, according to The Nation's Restaurant News. The bakery, which was started in Greenwich Village in 1996, now has three locations in New York City. (Some people credit Magnolia, which was featured in Sex and the City and The......

Zester Daily, a new Los Angeles food and wine website, launched last week. The site is owned and managed by former Los Angeles Times staffer Corie Brown, who was most recently the wine writer for the paper's food section. Brown also contributes to the site, along with a group of......

The list of things for which we have to thank Gordon Ramsay is long. Profanity in the kitchen, David Beckham at restaurant openings, and of course, the recurrent spectacle of Hell's Kitchen. Now, according to a new report out from researchers at Oxford University, the British chef can take credit......

If you're surfing the web in the next few days, you might want to check in with the food website eGullet, which is doing a forum on the world's best cookbooks. Why? Because lists are inherently fun reading, and also because eGullet numbers among its members many of the noted......

Food television keeps getting stranger and stranger. This month the Food Network will premier a cooking show by former Olympic ice skater Brian Boitano. "What Would Brian Boitano Make?" debuts Sunday August 23. In the show, the US gold medal winner at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympic Games "demonstrates his......