Andrew Simmons

Once, an uncle, having consumed half his weight in Fetzer Chardonnay, switched to Sierra Nevada halfway through Thanksgiving dinner, and remarked, quite loudly, as he took an exploratory sip and jauntily contemplated the bottle: "This beer tastes like p***y." Thanksgiving can be bad enough with family and friends, but they're......

The cucumber sandwich is a posh punch-line. We think of feathery pads of crustless white bread layered with butter and icy green wafers. They're arranged like tiles on silver platters at high teas presided over by the wigged, rouged, and powdered. "We need more of THESE," coos one glassy-eyed aristocrat,......

For over a thousand years, nomadic peoples have been drying strips of meat to capture maximum calories in easily transportable form. Modern-day road-trippers choke down packages of Oberto because jerky is affordable and satisfying--a stop-gap when pulling over for real food isn't an option. For Riverside County resident Steve Johnson......

At Mo's Place in Playa Del Rey, the television pageantry of Monday Night Football is no match for the debauched live-action carnival Mo concocts. When you first walk in, you see a typical sports bar. Faded pennants and posters plaster every speck of the interior not occupied by blinking screens......

People choose to travel in ways that reflect their values. We know a well-heeled dentist who refuses to pay for a hotel in Los Angeles because his daughter has a comfortable couch. We know threadbare food fanatics who splurge on Korean barbecue blow-outs. We know people willing to subsist on......

Next week, the San Fernando Valley Historical Society will present two events culinary history buffs won't want to miss. On November 18, at 7 p.m., amateur collector David Boulé talks about the orange as a symbol of the myth of California as an agrarian paradise. In keeping with the citrus-scented......

On Tuesday, November 16, Los Angeles chefs Josiah Citrin, Walter Manzke, Alain Giraud, and Tony Esnault will gather at Providence with Providence chef-owner Michael Cimarusti and pastry chef Adrian Vasquez to prepare a multi-course benefit dinner boasting their renditions of the most celebrated dishes of chef Paul Bocuse, founder of the......

At the conclusion of our November 1st post about the Los Angeles-baked blog Bread People, we entertained the idea of starting a "cheese-themed spin-off." Before we could get a tumblr account running though, we discovered that the blog we'd envisioned already existed. While intellectual property lawyers, college professors, and most......

Meat may or may not be murder, but descriptions of it certainly murder plenty of restaurant reviews. In general, food can be challenging to describe, particularly for lazy writers. After all, there are only so many ways to inform readers that the bottom of a pizza crust was "crispy" without......