Andrew Simmons

As the awesomely-named Julie Jargon reports in The Wall Street Journal, a couple of Michigan Girl Scouts are making their cookie-slinging organization a bit queasy. With the sort of earnest, honest, single-minded conviction only young people can muster, high school sophomores Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva, once stellar vendors of......

When you write about food, you read a lot of press releases. Regardless of the level of journalistic integrity your gig requires and your willingness to write about what you're asked to write about, you'll receive enough p.r. emails to strain your wireless connection. Frequently, the emails read like movie......

The Place: La Barca Restaurant, 2414 S Vermont Avenue., Los Angeles, (323) 735-6567. The Hours: 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Sun.-Thu.; 10:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Fri.-Sat. The Deals: Three-dollar margaritas on Tuesday afternoons. The Digs: La Barca has an identity problem. A sit-down Mexican restaurant, it boasts ample, leather-coated booths. The lighting is......

"Don't fill up on bread," a few million parents have warned, seated around a trattoria table, a basket of steaming slices and a cup of olive oil at its center. Their children have never listened, and it's no wonder. Bread is a much better food than a band, not the......

If you are stickler for restaurant menu clarity, Tajrish in Marina Del Rey will make you want to hurl your baklava across the room. For instance, there are chunks of filet mignon, marinated and char-broiled. There are also chunks of filet mignon, skewered, marinated, and char-broiled. The latter would appear......

Back in March, when we wrote about the Monsters of Folk crème brûlée blog, we said that famous recording engineer, musician, wicked amateur poker player, and gourmand Steve Albini should have a food blog too. And now he does. And judging by the color on that skirt steak, he might have some chops......

The Place: The Mandrake Bar, 2692 S. La Cienega Boulevard., Los Angeles; 310-837-3297. The Hours: Tue.-Thu. 5:00 p.m.-Midnight, Fri.-Sat. 5:00 p.m.-1 a.m., Sun. 6 p.m.-Midnight The Digs: The Mandrake is not in Hollywood. The Mandrake is not filled with Ed Hardy shirts straining to conceal ballooning biceps. The Mandrake has......

Spot prawns are actually shrimp. They lack the branching gill structure present in the small, swimming decapods known as prawns. We know that because we looked it up. Regulars at the Hollywood Farmers Market (where we dodge fedora-crowned dye-jobs, strollers, and $500 Ganesh shirts en route to a week's supply......

The Place: Library Bar, 611 W. 6th St. (the entrance is on Hope St.), Los Angeles; 213-614-0053 The Hours: 3 p.m.-2 a.m. Mon.-Fri.; 7 p.m.-2 a.m. Sat.-Sun. The Digs: Unlike actual libraries, which tend to be silent and often sparsely populated, this one is dark and crowded, presided over by......