Michelle Huneven

It’s a Friday night in the Valley, and I’m standing around at the entrance to Señor Fred’s, a new Mexican restaurant in Sherman Oaks. A chef whose cooking I really like — Andre Guerrero of the sophisticated Max a few blocks to the east — has opened Señor Fred’s with......

Photo by Anne Fishbein Monsieur Marcel, which somehow finesses that very French mix of bar and café, may employ the most charming French waiter in Los Angeles. I’ve heard that there are classes for French businessmen coming to America, classes that parse the cultural arcana, such as how close to......

Photo by Anne Fishbein When is a bistro not a bistro? Well, in the space formerly known as Atlantic, on Beverly Boulevard, you’ll find no dark wood or canary-yellow paint, no banquettes or baguettes or long-aproned waiters. EM Bistro — named for the owner’s daughter — is a soft, gull-colored......

Photo by Anne Fishbein I don’t like brunch. The word itself, a silly elision, evokes big hotel buffets with omelet stations and meat carvers, steam trays and ice sculptures, and Sterno-scented rooms filled with the overweight well-off. Even in its lesser local incarnations, brunch is breakfast for the late-to-bed, late-to-rise......

Photo by Anne Fishbein Okay, let's start with the name. Menemsha. Rhymes, somewhat, with dementia. It's an Algonquin word meaning "still waters" and is also a fishing village in Martha's Vineyard. And now, a New England-themed restaurant and seafood bar in Venice. Menemsha did not at first seem to me......

Photos by Anne Fishbein There was a lot of kissing going on at A.O.C. the other night. Couples at the bar, mostly. Nothing wrong with kissing, it's just that I'm not so used to seeing such PDA in L.A. Paris, along the Seine, yes. West Third Street in a noisy......

Photo by Anne Fishbein For many years, the Spanish Kitchen on Beverly Boulevard was a mystery, the Los Angeles version of Miss Havisham's dust-grizzled, spider-webbed, clock-stopped digs in Great Expectations. Back in 1961, the restaurant — which was once a kind of earlier version of El Coyote — was open......

Photo by Anne Fishbein A FEW YEARS AGO, CALIFORNIA TUSCAN WAS SO UBIQUITOUS IN THIS town, you couldn't toss a tomato without hitting some sparely sauced pasta or chicken roasted with rosemary. But the pizza-pasta-insalate wave seems to have run its course; and while no single trend has replaced it,......

Photo by Anne Fishbein THE LAST TIME I WAS IN MEXICO CITY, I BECAME OBSESSED WITH tacos, of which there are endless kinds. Here in Los Angeles, we get carne asada and carnitas, chicken and fish, buches and sesos (stomach and brains). But walking along the streets in Mexico City,......