Andrew Simmons

Last Wednesday, in the wake of an expiring two-year moratorium, City Council signed off on an amendment prohibiting new fast-food joints in certain parts of the city. The zoning ban focuses on neighborhoods in South Los Angeles, where approximately 71% of all restaurants are of a corporate-owned, quick-service ilk, 30%......

The Los Angeles Unified School District is so poor it is entertaining the notion of accepting corporate sponsors on school campuses. There's no chance of the Malboro Man's visage being emblazoned on a soccer field or Smirnoff ads blanketing cafeteria walls, but the board will decide tomorrow, Tuesday, December 14th,......

"Oh, the fish must be fresh today," said Cori. Cori and I had just met. We were sitting in chairs facing the counter of Family Fish Market in a Carson strip-mall. The owner, a middle-aged Korean man sporting a shirt bearing the store's logo, was literally inside the case, spraying......

The Atlantic just dropped its year-end top ten calling out the biggest "food stories" of 2010. Let's run down the roster. We have meat-worship, "frankenfish," school lunch reform, New York City's crusades against soda and Four Loko, the tainted egg recall, food trucks, foraging, the food safety bill, Michelle Obama,......

We'd like to read a Brothers Grimm tale about the hapless, hungry boar who tried to steal sausage from the German sausage-maker. According to a Metro UK piece, last week, a 200-pound wild pig charged through the door and careened across the counter of a popular butcher shop in Hohr-Grenzhausen......

In her November 22 Newsweek article "The Dinner Divide," Lisa Miller dissects the latest Barneys ad campaign, writing that "food is no longer trendy or fashionable," but instead simply "fashion." As evidence, she cites one ad for an $80,000 diamond pendant garnished with octopus tentacles. Miller received the store's catalogue......

Can you tell what's in season by what's under your car's wheels? First, you see the vehicle in front of you slow down. Then, you stop and start, stop and start. Forty-five minutes later, you coast past and see a pile of oranges that have tumbled from the back of......

The December issue of Bon Appétit shares its list of America's ten best "celebration restaurants." For the requisite Los Angeles area inclusion, the magazine's restaurant dude Andrew Knowlton presents CUT, Wolfgang Puck's sumptuous steakhouse at the Beverly Wilshire, a "spot" where feeling "special" will give even a moderately flush diner's......

Usually, when a "fish burger" appears on a menu, it's actually just a fish sandwich. At Ella Mae's Cuisine in Compton, however, every component save the fish itself -- chewy, well-seasoned planks of tilapia -- is burger-like. Unless you request otherwise, it even comes with cheese. From the waxed paper......