Barbara Hansen

Dress up in your brightest and best to celebrate Diwali, India's Festival of Lights. The official day is October 17, but you can beat that by going to the L.A. Mumbai Sister City Affiliation's Diwali party the weekend before. On October 11, the group will go all out with a......

Mo-Chica definitely has great Peruvian food, and now it's getting even better. Chef-owner Ricardo Zarate has introduced tasting dinners that move way beyond the regular menu. They're composed of Peru's top dishes upgraded so skillfully that you'll think you're eating at the best place in Lima. The first dinner was......

The Astroburger on Melrose Avenue has two of the coolest drinks in town. And they're both Greek, which is not what you would expect from a corner sandwich shop. The Vissino Shake blends milk, vanilla ice cream and sour cherries from Greece into a pale pink drink so thick that......

Seven Latin American countries celebrate their independence day in September. That makes it the perfect month for San Antonio Winery's "Taste of the Americas" food and wine festival. The festival, held September 20 in downtown Los Angeles, will feature dishes from five of those countries--Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile and......

Get ready to armchair travel, wine glass in hand, at Cube Café and Marketplace on La Brea Avenue. Starting September 8, Cube will pour 20 wines from 20 regions of Italy in 20 days. It's to celebrate winning a 2009 Wine Spectator Restaurant Wine List Award of Excellence. One wine......

If you need to extend an olive branch to someone, you might as well offer the whole tree, plus a few bottles of olive oil. The place to get them is the Temecula Olive Oil Company in Old Town Temecula. The tasting room and shop sells Mission and Arbequina olive......

Want a huarache? Mexican pan dulce? A chocolate mousse? A few pounds of tamale masa? It's all at La Morenita, a newly re-opened Mexican bakery, restaurant and market in Cypress Park. The neighborhood, which is heavily Latino, is delighted to get the place back. And so are shoppers who make......

Don't cry, Argentina, but you've lost a bit of your glory. The top Malbec in the 2009 San Francisco International Wine Competition didn't come from Argentina, where Malbec is so common that wine judges there get tired of tasting it. Voted overall best was a California wine, the 2006 Malbec......

Eat like the ancient Romans at Getty Villa's class, "The Pleasure of Empire: Food and Cooking in Ancient Rome," held this Thursday and again on Saturday at the museum. Historian Andrew Dalby and chef Sally Grainger, authors of "The Classical Cookbook," will discuss the dishes of the Roman table, based......