Michelle Huneven

Photo by Anne Fishbein Most Los Angeles restaurants have the shelf life of rock & roll bands — two to six years — so it’s an impressive and moving fact that Angeli Café on Melrose is coming up on its 20th birthday. Angeli was among the first of the new......

Photo by Anne Fishbein I drove right by Stroh’s Gourmet, a small corner shop on Abbot Kinney, my first time there. I called for the exact address, but the phone rang and rang. When I did finally find the place and go inside, I understood why nobody had picked up......

Photo by Anne Fishbein In the late ’80s, during the boom time of L.A. restaurants, Don Dickman was the chef de cuisine at Trumps, the groundbreaking West Hollywood restaurant started by chef Michael Roberts in the space now occupied by Morton’s. Dickman slipped off to work in Palos Verdes for......

Photo by Anne Fishbein Brooke Williamson is a mere 25 years old, but she’s already been an executive chef twice — first at the now-defunct Boxer, then at Zax in Brentwood. Nick Roberts is also 25 and has sturdy credentials — he’s worked at the New York restaurants Ducasse and......

I have come to In-N-Out on a hot weekday afternoon to try the Protein Cheeseburger — the famous In-N-Out hamburger sans bun. I don’t see it mentioned on the menu, but the countergirl knows what I want. The fact that such a burger now exists is testament to the newest......

Photo by Anne Fishbein Here, in the heart of Hollywood, at the White Lotus restaurant-club, a larger-than-life bronze Buddha presides over the vast, canopied patio. This is a slim Buddha — newly enlightened, still trim from the fasting and other deprivations he dabbled in before resting beneath the bodhi tree......

Photo by Anne Fishbein I first saw Juliano at the Santa Monica Farmers Market. Indeed, who there could not notice the impossibly long-waisted, shirtless, surfer-tanned, blond-dreadlocked human spectacle effortlessly humping boxes as if they were filled with air and not organic produce for his raw-food restaurant? At Juliano’s Raw, just......

Photo by Anne Fishbein It ain’t on Atkins. In fact, pie isn’t sanctioned on any diet. It’s fattening. Darn fattening. Unless you’re baling hay or digging ditches, you definitely won’t work off that slice you had at lunch. Pie, for most of us, is a special-occasion treat. At its best,......