Andrew Simmons

You may have read about Rose Edelstein on this site last year. The creation of USC professor and noted author Aimee Bender, this fictitious 9-year-old, a supertaster if there ever was one, learns in Bender's novel The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, that -- magically, realistically -- she can taste......

A new father snaps baby thumbing knowingly through an applesauce-smeared copy of Ada or Ardor. Another day, he tucks a Budweiser into the crook of her soft little arm as she sleeps, drooling and burbling away, and, with a few iPhone heroics, updates his Instagram to the applause of family......

You'll miss no work, and the kids will still head off to school. There'll be no moment of silence, nor office parties, nor gifts exchanged. Nonetheless today, Sept. 21, is a holiday. It's Grenache Day, fool -- that one day of the year on which highly privileged people all over......

Yesterday, fruit conglomerate Dole Food sent two of its major assets winging across the Pacific. As reported in Reuters, Dole has sold its packaged foods and Asian fresh produce businesses to Japanese company Itochu Corp. for the handsome price of $1.7 billion. The deal gives Itochu exclusive rights to the......

Particularly early in the evening, Tom Bergin's Tavern feels like a throwback, a place where men who have made mistakes eat alone in shadows: a small, rare steak; a potato. Mostly they drink here, looped around the oval bar, sliding faded bills across the wood to the smartly dressed barkeeps,......

The lounge. The smell of chalky beans in a microwaved burrito. Cold Chinese leftovers. A squashed tuna sandwich. Most of your co-workers wash their food down with water from the cooler or a diet Coke. However, one guy pulls a plastic vial from his pocket and waves it over his......

In the case of popular restaurants, the odd grumble on the Internet doesn't sway a customer base. In the case of fledgling eateries though, a few brutal Yelp reviews can lead to shutters and a wretched gastropub setting up shop. Undaunted by the risk involved, one local restaurant -- its......

In the early 1960s, Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup can paintings were a spectacularly ordinary counterpoint to any number of lush, sophisticated still-lifes of bowls of laboriously arranged fruit. Warhol wasn't about commentary. He was genuinely enamored of the commonplace and ubiquitous. And he actually did enjoy Campbell's, having once claimed......

When temperatures stretch into the upper 80s and 90s as they have in recent days, many people reach for a glass of lemonade, ice cream cones, or some coconut water. Others cling to the well-traveled notion that warm liquids actually provide more relief. Here's the rationale: Millions of people around......

In late August, composition books fly off the shelves. Kids and parent shuffle through Office Depot, grabbing rulers, graphing calculators, highlighters and fancy mechanical pencils the kids will lose six days into the new school year. It's the opening ceremony of a ritual reintegration of scholarship into the daily lives......