Ben Calderwood

The 70% Solution intentionally fudges the numbers by a few percentage points (the pun, Mom's honor, is accidental) to introduce Squid Ink tasters to Tcho, the world's first internet chocolate. Producer: Tcho, San Francisco. Bean: Peruvian single origin. Content: 68% cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, lecithin, vanilla......

The City of Los Angeles announced last Thursday the implementation of the Restaurant and Hospitality Express program, designed to ease permitting headaches and shrink red tape for new restaurants, bars and grocery outlets. Developed with the input of the Central City Association, which reps Los Angeles businesses and has taken......

Judging sessions for the 71st Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition have wrapped up as of the end of May. The ribbons may be on the bottles, but the winners will not be publicly announced until the annual Wine & Cars Under the Stars event at the Fairplex in......

Even the most prosumer home chef has found himself creeping surreptitiously down the aisles of the Macy's kitchen department, tempted by the siren song of the 23-piece cutlery set. There are boning knives, tomato/bagel knives, Granton-edged bread weapons, utility knives of indeterminate purpose, "sandwich" knives and steak knives and discount......

Witness the improbable marriage of grease-pusher KFC and the Susan G. Komen Foundation, who have united under the inelegant banner Buckets for the Cure in a bid to make "the largest single donation to end breast cancer forever." In their television ad, diners are encouraged to purchase a special pinkwashed......

Discussions about The Habit Burger Grill, the West Coast fast-patty chain spun out of a single Santa Barbara lunch shack in 1969, inevitably revolve around comparisons to other burger joints. The Habit is like In-N-Out. The Habit is like Fatburger. The Habit is like The Counter. Really. The Counter? The......

When I would plead for Wonder bread instead of wheat as a child, my mother would tell me, as if such a warning would scare me away from the shelf, that it turns to paste in your stomach. She bought a loaf once and demonstrated how each preternaturally moist, alabaster......

Creole, Opie and Tijuana are not strains of medicinal marijuana--at least not in this section of the LA Weekly online. They are the fellowship of hot dogs that compose North End Caffe's insidious, kamikaze Trio of Dawgs. Two are coiled with bacon, two are tucked among multiple slices of cheese--the......

Somehow, betwixt his maneuvering around financial reform and waffling on the closure of Guantanamo and obligatory fulminating about that hemorrhaging puncture in the floor of the Gulf, Barack Obama managed something like detente with Venezuelan president/TV personality/Twitterati Hugo Chavez. This means South America's lauded El Rey chocolate is flowing north......

Open for a month and a smattering of days in a peach-stuccoed Asian shopping plaza where you could slurp a ripening bowl of bún bò huê for lunch then try bubble tea and acupressure massage without leaving the parking lot, the neighborhood-size Pho Jackie is the new domain of the......