Clarissa Wei

Indonesian food is fundamentally earthy: Think of spicy red sambal sauce paired with ayam goreng (fried chicken), or fish paste balls and a creamy peanut sauce over lean bean sprouts and crispy green vegetables. Meals are sometimes served on banana leaves, and each dish is designed to stuff you full......

Walk into Bhanu's Grocery and Cuisine in San Gabriel and you'll see a grocery store that's slowly being consumed by a restaurant. "We started off with five tables," Richard Harrison, a server at the restaurant, said. Now, there are more than a dozen. Owned by Mr. Bedi and Bhanu, a......

Deciphering the meanings of the items around the Chinese New Year table is a lot like a treasure hunt. Each individual dish is steeped in tradition and is a homonym for a particular wish in the upcoming year. This year, the Spring Festival falls on Sunday, Feb. 10. For 15......

Chipotle is testing out tofu in their menus. The Tex-Mex chain recently announced that they're trying out a new item called Sofritas in seven San Francisco Bay Area restaurants beginning Feb. 12. "It's seared and browned and braised like a sofrito," Chipotle communications director Chris Arnold told Squid Ink. What......

In a world where attention spans are rapidly decreasing, it's tough to stay afloat unless you have a catchy storyline, good characters and, preferably, scrumptious photography. Inside My Kitchen, a YouTube-funded web series, is doing all of that. Launched in Sept. 2012, the Los Angeles-based production gets behind the scenes......

If you're one of those people who puts Sriracha on everything, you're not the only one. The Rosemead-produced condiment has been making big headlines these days. Over ten million bottles of the popular chili are made each year and the sauce has become a food-culture mainstay. Remember Sriracha lollipops? Now......

At first glance, the pastry looks far from appetizing. The exterior is a steely black color and out from the middle, a green, mucus-like spread of garlic oozes out from the freshly baked crust. It's an ugly specimen of pastry -- but a cult-favorite among customers. It's really just a......

Half a century ago, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf graced us with their first location in Brentwood. Today, with over 900 stores across 25 countries, the company shop is the oldest coffee and tea retailer in the United States. They're celebrating their 50th birthday on Wednesday, Jan. 30 and the......

Some call it the "new Chinese Beverly Hills." For others, it's just the city where Din Tai Fung and the Los Angeles County Arboretum are located. But look closely and you'll see a lively food community in an otherwise very suburban neighborhood. Arcadia is the home of the recently relocated......

Java junkies rejoice. For those unwilling to fork out more than a buck for caffeine, 7-Eleven is selling coffee for only $1. The promotion is only on Wednesdays and lasts until the end of January. That means any size cup and all the sugar, flavorings, topping and cream you can......