Andrew Simmons

Once you go vegan, you can never go back. This has nothing to do with the allure of almond cheese and kale chips. When you're a vegan, specifically one who has turned your lifestyle choice into a public platform, a bite of steak is a fall from grace, not an......

The worst thing about the L.A. Street Food Fest was something neither the young organizers or vendors could do much about. The heat. We can deal with the combination of steady blazing rays and no breeze that renders any attire save basketball shorts and a tank top uncomfortable at the......

You didn't come for the music videos, but they're staring you in the eye from across the small room: a heavily made-up waif darting teary-eyed between two equally made-up fellows making mournful faces and beckoning emphatically. You don't know Thai or Isan (or even enough to know which language you're......

In mid-May, the esteemed journal Gastronomica announced its new editor: Melissa Caldwell, a UC Santa Cruz professor of anthropology. From the fir-gilded hills of Santa Cruz, Caldwell will put out the magazine over which founding editor Darra Goldstein presided for 12 years. A recent UC Press interview ably introduces the......

Updated, June 25, 1:39 p.m.: We asked Choi if he was the owner or a partner, and he wrote back with some details: "I can tell you that the details don't matter about who owns what, just that it's being done in a neighborhood I love with a community I......

Top Chef alum Edward Lee studied English at NYU. While undergraduate English majors are not necessarily great writers, something about Lee's background as a student of literature infuses his new cookbook Smoke & Pickles: Recipes and Stories From a New Southern Kitchen. It's not just a collection of recipes and......

Street food is connected to place. An al pastor vendor releasing porky perfume on a Mexico City street corner. Salt-crusted sweet potatoes from a cart next to a temple in rural Japan. You can't think about the places you've been without contemplating the rushed culinary pleasures you've enjoyed there. On......

As recently reported in The Washington Post, al-Yamama, a Palestinian delivery company, has been sneaking Kentucky Fried Chicken into the Gaza Strip from Egypt: a three-hour journey and an extra $20-30 for cold chicken, which admittedly can be good. Of course, if Colonel Sanders knew that the red-and-white boxes which......

Cochon 555 is a feast for the senses. From the piggy small plates to oysters, to cheese cubes, to tartare, to ice cream, there are irresponsibly epic mountains of food. Some of it is really good. And from Anchor Steam bottles to wine tastings to single-barrel Four Roses Manhattans, there's......

After Cochon 555 2011, we surrendered. Fattened up like one of the hogs that the crowds of attendees had, locustlike, swirled around, oily-faced and intoxicated, we swore off the thing. We were almost politically opposed to the maniacal level of indulgence that the event seemed to encourage. This year, we're......