Farley Elliott

"Barbecue has always been here," says Neil Strawder, who owns both the smokers and the nickname behind Bigmista's Barbecue, one of Los Angeles' best-known purveyors of low-and-slow-cooked 'cue. "But a lot of people haven't been willing to go to where the barbecue was." Strawder is standing inside Bigmista's pop-up tent......

Sure, Thanksgiving is a time to, you know, "give thanks." But it's also a time to take thanks, in the form of free food. America's most gluttonous holiday offers eaters the opportunity to cram their faces with seasonal favorites like stuffing, pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce in the shape of......

Halloween, in case you hadn't heard, is right around the corner. The annual children's holiday is a time where kids get to dress up and act like little pre-teen heathens, demanding candy from adults and generally messing with the unwritten rule that adults are in charge. This year, we're taking......

Vineland Avenue and Burbank Boulevard in North Hollywood is a famous intersection, at least to some. The perfectly silly Circus Liquor is there, with its polka-dotted clown sign lording it over everything else in sight. Of course, that sign (and its parking lot) gained a bit of notoriety in the......

Not content to snack on Neapolitan-style pizzas while drinking local craft beer or a rotating list of curated wines? Well, Mr. or Mrs. Bossypants, here's a deal for you. Last week the Fairfax outpost of the ever-growing Pitfire Pizza chain introduced an entirely revamped bar, complete with seasonal cocktails, a......

The eventual over-caffeination of our fair city continues unabated today, as we peek in on Andante Coffee Roasters, a new pour over coffee spot just north of The Grove on Beverly Boulevard. Open since the first week of September and located in the former Buzz Coffee space, Andante is looking......

If you haven't been to the New School of Cooking in Culver City yet, you must be running out of excuses. Not only is the open-windowed cooking school across the street from Evan Funke's Bucato and Sang Yoon's Helms Bakery empire, it's also putting together some of the best baking......

This week's Strip Mall Rat is a double-header. Well, sort of. See, there's this little cluster of strip malls on Slauson, just west of Crenshaw Blvd. in South Los Angeles. Two places to eat on one side of the street, and two more places to eat on the other. One......

Someone really needs to start looking into this "walk-up window only" food phenomenon that's seemingly sweeping Los Angeles. Is it all the work of the the shadowy Big Window lobby? We may never know. One thing is for certain: Some of the city's tastiest new meals are being handed off......