Celia Soudry

Though we still have a long way to go, Los Angeles is continuing to up its wine game. Taking cues from the French, the culture is moving towards more casual wine drinking, with bars serving wines on tap and restaurants offering carefully selected affordable bottles. But now you can drink......

At Bountiful Bakery in Montrose, owner Denise Assad is no stranger to early mornings (if you can even call them that): She wakes up at 3 a.m., makes her way to some Stumptown coffee and then heads to the kitchen where hours are spent kneading, twisting, stirring, pounding. The real fun begins......

Fed up with the rowdy sports bar scene, owner Richard DiSisto (Tipple & Brine, Tunnel Bar, Lucy’s 51) closed Mad Bull's Tavern a few months ago to make way for his latest concept: Murph's Service Station. "That bull was on steroids," he says, now looking to attract a very different crowd into Murph's,......

L.A. lost a few old-timers this month: Ernie Jr.'s Taco House shuttered after 41 years, and father/daughter duo Guy and Sylvie Gabrielle bid adieu to Café Pierre after serving the Manhattan Beach community for 37 years (although they're planning to re-open as a new restaurant, Love and Salt, with chef Michael Fiorelli).  In opening......

Cavatina, opening in early January inside the Sunset Marquis hotel, is Mediterranean with a twist. James Beard Award winner Michael Schlow's first West Coast venture is a tad nostalgic. Snacks include homemade potato chips with chile-green onion dip and jalapeno tater tots. Best known for his five restaurants in Boston,......

Your New Year's resolutions are about a month away, so you might as well live it up, right? To help you with that is Bo Nuage, a pastry shop on Melrose specializing in French nuage (cloud) cakes, opening in mid-December. Pascal and Audrey Achcar whip up desserts that hold their......

Following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, chef Hiroyuki Naruke could no longer operate his six-seat sushi bar in Roppongi, Tokyo. Fortunately, three attorneys from the Quinn Emanuel law firm, particularly Ryan Goldstein, a partner at its Tokyo office, couldn't live without Hiro's sushi. You now can find Hiro at......

So far this fall we've seen new restaurants emerge and some of our favorites suddenly shutter (RIP the Parish). Westwood Brewing Company, which closed this summer, will be replaced by the Boiling Crab, but we won't know any information about its opening until 2014, according to an employee at its......

We've cooed over cronuts, farm-to-table fare and inventive cocktails. Now we're back to L.A.'s most iconic food: tacos, fancy and otherwise. Chef Ricardo Diaz recently opened Colonia Taco Lounge in La Puente. Crunch into guisados-style tacos, sip craft beer and enjoy free parking. There are about a dozen taco mainstays......

Anyone who's been to high-profile food festivals in L.A. knows what to expect: hot sun, parking jams, long lines, celeb chefs, actors and affluent women in floppy hats. There was plenty of that at this year's L.A. Loves Alex's Lemonade (cast of Criminal Minds and Parenthood, Jimmy Kimmel, Scott Wolf,......