Michelle Huneven

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In the Bedroom

Michelle Huneven
Photo by Jerome Tisne One year after her husband dies at the hands of Muslim extremists, a woman decides to take a Muslim lover, a man she’s barely met, and meets him at a rundown, empty seaside motel. If such a synopsis of After, Claire Tristram’s first novel, sounds like......
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An Island of Words

Michelle Huneven
When I first met Luisita López Torregrosa, I’d just finished reading her literary debut, The Noise of Infinite Longing: A Memoir of a Family — and an Island. This was three weeks ago, while I was on vacation in New York, and we met at a small, upscale Mexican restaurant......
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Kim Chic

Michelle Huneven
It’s Sunday, and four of us have piled into the car to get dinner fixings in Koreatown. Nothing fancy, we agree. No big cooking projects. A low-key, easy dinner after too much fun on a too-late Saturday night. Two of us, the Kim sisters, Betty and Laura, are leading the......

6 Kitchen Epiphanies

Michelle Huneven
It was a good year in my kitchen, if I say so myself. Here are the high points: Cooking with clay: My stockbroker, of all people, imports clay moqueca pans from Brazil. The size of a shallow salad bowl, the color of dark wood and with a loose-fitting lid, these......

The Short List: Two Great New Books

Michelle Huneven
1.The Clearing, by Tim Gautreaux, is about a sawmill in Louisiana in the 1930s, perhaps, offhand, not the most alluring subject, but Gautreaux writes so gorgeously, with such energy and heart, even inanimate objects in his prose — a shovel, for example — take on distinctive personalities. The story is......

Eat, Drink, Man, Woman: Best New Restaurants

Michelle Huneven
I’ve reviewed about three dozen new restaurants this year, many favorably, even if I would never choose to go back again. Restaurants are, after all, a personal preference. Everyone has favorites, and often their choices reek of idiosyncrasy. There are restaurants I would happily revisit if you were taking me......
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Dinner at Eight

Michelle Huneven
Photo by Anne Fishbein It’s a terrible — and telling — moment when, squeezing into your place along the banquette, your butt manages to tip two big drinks onto your dining companion’s lap. Your companion isn’t happy, but rapidly rallies, through friendship, into forgiveness. What is also telling, of course,......

Writing Los Angeles

Michelle Huneven
Photo by Anne Fishbein Eight or nine years ago I went to a friend’s reading at a synagogue in Brentwood. Five other L.A. writers were sharing the stage, John Rechy and Kate Braverman among them. Braverman, when she took the stage, looked at Rechy and said: “It’s good as ever......
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Night Fishing

Michelle Huneven
Photo by Anne Fishbein Weeknights in the restaurant world can be quiet. But a number of the city’s enterprising chefs are luring customers out on work nights with special menus that promise a bit of novelty and a bargain as well. Chefs themselves take advantage of these less busy evenings......
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Buena Cantina

Michelle Huneven
Okay, right off the bat: Malo is not malo. It’s a decent, new, stylish Mexican restaurant that inhabits the former Cobalt Cantina in Silver Lake. Back during the ’80s restaurant boom, the building was originally Larry Nicola’s Martini Lounge; 20 years of neighborhood trends — stylistic, demographic, economic, culinary —......