Jenn Garbee

There is a better way to ensure you get that hotel deal than punching vacation hours into your kids' old Calculus graphing calculator. The basic iPhone app works just fine for pretty much everything, including figuring out restaurant tips. The easiest solution? It involves drinking wine at the Ritz-Carlton in......

When the Chinese American Museum (CAM) opened downtown in the Garnier Building six years ago, the museum recreated the Sun Wing Wo General Store and Herb Shop that had been located in the building for decades. The circa 1891 one-stop shop was a sort of Walmart of the turn of......

Gavan Murphy, a private chef and caterer, moved to Venice from the Emerald Isle nine years ago. The Irishman is still just as enamored with the perky plums and year-round greens at the Santa Monica Farmers Market as the day he arrived. After making one too many beurre blancs abroad,......

It's been more than a year since Ballast Point Brewing's head brewer Yuseff Cherney began tinkering around on the new distilling equipment in the corner of the San Diego brewery's warehouse. A few weeks ago, Cherney released the brewery's fist spirit, Old Grove, a dry London-style gin. A handful of......

These days, most wine shops and wineries have a club program. You know, those clever marketing gimmicks that you inevitably sign up for after one too many glasses of Chablis in the tasting room. The idea for the clubs, according to Paul Kalemkiarian, Jr., was drunk up right in our......

Thomas Jefferson is well known for his penchant for wine (he planted one of the first American vineyards at Monticello). But did you know he was also a reverent consumer of beer, English muffins, and ice cream? Museum educator Maite Gomez-Rejón is leading a series of gallery tours dubbed "A......

Chocolate, classic vanilla and red velvet cakes are now order-ahead offerings from Jen Shen, pastry chef at Wilshire in Santa Monica (as are more nuptials-appropriate versions with mascarpone cream and white chocolate fillings). Shen's seasonal pastry offerings, such as passion fruit parfait with coconut tres leches, will also still be......

Rock legend Patti Smith is performing the season closer again this year at Santa Monica's free Concerts on the Pier on Thursday night. Although you can't BYOB like at the Hollywood Bowl, you can pack a killer picnic. Here are a few take-out suggestions appropriate for noshing while listening to......

Until last week, you could have gotten away with blaming the cool weather, rather than your potager skills, for your lifeless Beefsteaks and Green Zebras. This week, there's the heat wave to hold accountable for par-baking whatever produce manages to make it to the market. "It's been a pretty bad......

When Skylar Tourigny first began making chocolates, she was intent on selling them at the Manhattan Beach farmers market. "I built a clientèle around them but it was hard to grow at the market," she says of Cacao Couture, the organic chocolate company she founded in 2006. So in January,......