Michelle Huneven

Photo by Anne Fishbein Sometimes change is good. Twenty-five years ago, I used to eat at a crummy little hole in the wall red-sauce Italian joint in a rundown mini-mall on the northeast corner of Sunset and Silver Lake. I fell in love there and, not so long afterward, broke......

Photo by Anne Fishbein Paladar, says our waiter, is what you’d call a restaurant started in somebody’s home in Cuba. And this, he declares, is the guiding concept behind the so-named new Hollywood café on Wilcox. “This is the living room area,” he says, speaking of a central space enclosed......

Photo by Anne Fishbein At the Santa Monica Farmers Market, early on a fog-cooled morning in late June, See Canyon apricots are making their first appearance of the year. Fragile, blushing and intensely flavored — at once meaty, tangy and bursting with juice — Blenheims are an older variety that......

Photo by Anne Fishbein The coyote is a young, handsome dog, his nose long and finely pointed, his ears so enormous, his gait so weightless, there’s something fine, even deerlike, about him. While many of his fellows are mangy, scruffy, besieged by fleas and in midsummer molt — life in......

Photo by Anne Fishbein Restaurant Halie in Pasadena has a new chef. And not just any new chef, but Claud Beltran, a local chef whose classical Cal-French cooking I’ve admired for years — first at Dickenson West, a pricey French jewel box in a mini-mall, then at Cayo, a big......

Photo by Anne Fishbein Pete’s Café and Bar, on Fourth and Main in Los Angeles’ Old Bank District, has transformed a once degraded and decrepit corner into a large, classic urban bar and restaurant scene. And Pete’s is only one component of the area’s redevelopment, a project that’s largely authored......

Photo by Anne Fishbein A friend of mine has eaten at the new Pho Café in Silver Lake a couple times a week since it opened a few months ago. It’s that kind of place — an easy, no-fuss, whatever-you’re-wearing, bring-the-baby neighborhood canteen. The long, narrow storefront has a sleek,......

Photo by Anne Fishbein The longstanding, beloved Jimmy’s in Beverly Hills was a landmark — and was brought to us by that great old redheaded charmer Jimmy Murphy and family. When it closed some years back, Jimmy’s sons — the two Murphy boys, Jamie and Sean — went to work......

Photo by Anne Fishbein Cheebo is impossible to miss. The name, a phonetic spelling of cibo, the Italian word for food, is painted directly on the building in huge blocky Caltrans-orange letters. More of that cheerful orange can be found inside, paired with marigold yellow, in amusing cartoonish wall graphics......

Photo by Anne Fishbein I had the worst time getting a reservation at Grace. Word goes out about these new places, and they fill up for better or for worse. The words about Grace were: Neal Fraser. Where Muse used to be. Ambitious. Let’s start with Neal Fraser, the executive......