Susan Ji Young Park

Thirty years ago, when I was attending junior high school at Gaspar de Portola magnet in the West San Fernando Valley, home economics was still a class designed to teach girls how to be good housewives. Most of my teachers and peers abhorred the very existence of the class as......

At first glance, Banadir Somali Restaurant looks more like a Somalian community center than a restaurant. White bars cover the shaded and tinted windows. The main entrance leads to a long hallway with a kitchen off to the left. You have to look around a bit before noticing a door......

Silk Road Garden opened last year in a busy shopping center populated with Chinese restaurants. If you're keen on assertively seasoned hand-pulled noodles with distinct Chinese flavors, you won't find it here. The aromas of pork, caramelized soy sauce, smoky ginger and garlic, oil and spices heated beyond the flash......

Some say that L.A. is having its pizza moment. Big Al's Halal Pizzeria entered the pizza fray on Saturday, Feb. 2 with a grand opening block party. Although, you might ask,"What exactly is halal pizza?" The second question you may ask is "Why halal pizza and in Maywood of all......

Los Angeles can, yet again, boast about having the most variety, if not depth, of something. Home to the most diverse Muslim population in the United States, Los Angeles County is full of halal restaurants. Halal means permitted or lawful according to Sharia (Islamic) laws. In the realm of dining......

Although Mini Kabob in Glendale looks like a modest house repurposed into a commercial restaurant, describing it as like dining in someone's living room would be far too extravagant. You're basically eating at Ovakim and Alvard Martirosyan's modestly decorated kitchen counter. Mini Kabob meets all the criteria of a great......

Los Angeles' Koreatown probably doesn't need another BBQ place -- well, at least not another Korean one. There seems to be a restaurant with tabletop grills in every plaza, strip mall and food court, cannibalizing another one's business two doors down or across the street. Let's be blunt: Entrepreneurial first-generation......

Our continuing series of Venn Food Diagrams has explored American regional and a smattering of international cuisines in no particular order or with any sense of geographic or cultural continuity. We're taking another random trip from the land of tater tot hot dish to the land of kimchi hot dish......

If you've ever wondered if Korean households have dining tables with built in bbq holes, like the ones at Korean bbq restaurants, the answer is "no". The historical antecedent for modern restaurant tables are traditional Korean kitchens with round stoves (agungi) that were fueled by wood or large cylindrical charcoal......

Mexican agua frescas, French and Italian syrups, and British sherbet powders are all derived from North African and Middle Eastern sharbats: sweetened drinks flavored with fruit, ground nuts, grains, seeds or flower petals. Sorbet and sorbetto are also descendents of sharbats. Orangina is actually a type of sharbat, in fact,......