Ben Mesirow

Surely there are galleries, studios and warehouses to be found in the Arts District, but these days it's the food and drinks — not necessarily the art — that's drawing crowds to the industrial neighborhood just west of the L.A. River. The area is full of great coffee, excellent bread, pasta,......

For a long time, eating north of the 210 near Pasadena meant one of three things: smashing your face into a pastrami sandwich at The Hat, treating yourself to an old-school breakfast at Fox’s (which is across the line in Altadena) or succumbing to a late-night chicken-and-waffles foray at Roscoe’s......

With the restaurant industry’s ongoing fascination with Old Hollywood, it’s begun to feel like even our old places are new. We have a face-lifted cafeteria downtown, dozens of gleaming midcentury-inspired spots and as many re-imaginings of the Old Fashioned as we have bars. But if you’re willing to look, there......

Craft beer brewed with third-wave coffee sounds like something you’d come up with in trendy food Mad Libs, right after underground pop-up poke toast or fermented Edison bulb breakfast bowl. But craft beer and coffee have a longer and more natural relationship than your favorite exposed brick and fried egg......

Old Town Pasadena is just a few short miles from the heart of the San Gabriel Valley and its mind-boggling spread of spectacular and diverse Chinese restaurants, but it often feels a world apart. It’s not hard to see why; the pleasures to be found at Chengdu Taste and, say,......

Some trends start like applause, erupting out of relative silence as if everyone had the same idea all at once — this is how we ended up abruptly swamped in cupcakes and poke. Other trends come on much more slowly. This seems to be true of artisanal bread bakeries. What......

If you’ve walked down the main strip of York Boulevard anytime in the last couple of years, maybe on your way to grab a beer at Hermosillo or buy a trellis for your plants at Do It Best Hardware, then you’ve probably walked past Recess. You would be forgiven, however,......

Pasadena is a unique combination of old-money and blue-collar sensibilities, full of tasteful institutions and down-home charm, with a whiff of stuffiness and a seedy side, too. It is a city in which debutantes are introduced at the Valley Hunt Club and grizzled regulars know to park behind the Colorado......

In the tiny mountain town of Cornell, tucked away in the Santa Monica Mountains between Agoura Hills and Malibu, Morgan Runyon plays the busboy. He stacks glasses, piles up plates and then wipes down a table at the steakhouse his father operated for over four decades, The Old Place. It’s......

Among its hip, idyllic neighbors, Atwater Village is the neglected stepchild. It’s not as glamorous as Silver Lake, it's less trendy than Echo Park and Highland Park, and it's not blessed (or cursed) with an "up-and-coming" label like Frogtown. It's less family-friendly than Eagle Rock or Mount Washington, and it's just......