Besha Rodell

As the great middle ground takes over dining in L.A. and beyond, we're left with an odd conundrum: Where can you go for a truly special occasion? Fine dining is too stuffy for many, and the difference between Saturday-night dining and Tuesday-night dining is generally measured only in dollars, not......

In my life as a slave to a food blog, and also as a consumer of far too much food media, I have come to hate a certain type of food commentary, the kind that goes: Here is a teeny tiny little part of dining culture that mildly annoys me......

When Valerie Gordon and her husband Stan Weightman, Jr. opened Valerie Confections on West First St. in Westlake, they would not have been able to foresee a time when the company would have three successful locations, a James Beard finalist cookbook, and a brand beloved in the city and beyond. Today (on......

Jeremy Fall, the guy behind nightclubs Golden Box, Genesis, and the recently opened Nighthawk Breakfast Bar, is getting close to opening Tinfoil Liquor and Grocery in Highland Park, and it isn't your average corner store. While the front of the rehabbed historic tienda will have household items and plenty of booze,......

Six months after opening, Sawyer on Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake has a new chef. Sydney Hunter III takes over the kitchen as of tomorrow, replacing Alex McWilliams, who "stepped out of his role as Executive Chef several weeks ago due to health matters," according to a press release.  Hunter was already......

Living in Los Angeles these days is an exercise in figuring out how much longer you can afford to live in a city that gets more expensive by the nanosecond. That's true of regular residents and its also true of restaurateurs. A few years back we could gloat about how......

Someone should give Santos Uy a prize. The restaurateur has made a practice of backing projects that have more personality in their door frames than many restaurants exhibit in their entirety. These projects include RiceBar, the Filipino rice-bowl counter, and Mignon, a wine bar downtown that also houses Cento Pasta......

When Frederic Soulies opened Pitchoun! Bakery, he aimed to bring a piece of his home country to the streets of downtown Los Angeles. But man cannot survive on baguette alone (to be fair, Pitchoun! serves far more than just baguette, but you get my drift), and Soulies seeks out the taste of France at other......

It's true that stepping away from something for a time allows you to see that thing in a clearer light. The grind of weekly restaurant criticism is one of the most pleasurable grinds around, but it is a grind. It's difficult to take pause and think about the bigger picture......

L.A. may be about to cement its place as the premier city in the U.S. for modern Mexican cooking with the announcement that chef Diego Hernandez will be the executive chef of the new Verlaine Restaurant in West Hollywood. Verlaine, which is slated to open this coming winter, takes the spot where legendary......