Tien Nguyen

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2014 issue. Check out our entire People 2014 issue. If you're having a particularly bad day, you can do far worse than to go to Irv's Burgers in West Hollywood. There you'll meet Sonia Hong, possibly the most cheerful person you'll ever......

After a six-month-long soft opening - the very long hello came courtesy the numerous and no doubt frustrating vicissitudes of the permitting processes -  Bar Nine Collective is now officially open in Culver City in the Hayden Tract, or just a stone's throw from Surfas. So now you know where to get......

Belcampo Meat Co. opened Downtown at Grand Central Market not too long ago, but if you haven't yet visited the pioneering meat company because you live on the Westside and waiting for its second location in Santa Monica to open this fall is mentally and physically easier than crossing the 405, you're in luck: from now......

Oakland-based Blue Bottle Coffee has announced that it has acquired two much-lauded L.A.-based coffee companies: Handsome Coffee Roasters, the coffee roaster and cafe in the Arts District of Downtown L.A., and Tonx, a roaster and coffee subscription service. According to Blue Bottle's press release, Handsome will be transitioned into a Blue Bottle shop and production facility......

Are you at a Thai restaurant and suspicious about whether the pad Thai and other dishes on the menu really are authentic? Finally, there's an app for that. The app, called LikeGrandmaMade, is simple to use: Take a photo of the dish in question and it will immediately will return......

There are quite a few things to contemplate while watching Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel - the colors! Ralph Fiennes! - but maybe you'll think more about the pastries. The courtesan au chocolat, specifically, the fictional pastry that's a favorite of main character Gustave H. and subsequently figures largely into the film's......

When we last left Verve Coffee Roasters, the Santa Cruz-based coffee roaster had plans to open a roastery here in L.A., though they were keeping (wisely) mum on the details. Now, happily, there are considerably more specifics: Not only will Verve open a roastery in the Arts District in Downtown, it also......

It's that time of the year again: L.A. Taco's Taco Madness Presented by Groupon has officially started, pitting 32 great tacos against each other in a very fun bracket-style tournament. Print out the bracket, make your picks, start an office pool. Something else to do, in other words, in addition to deciding whether __......

Food & Wine launched a FWx last Thursday, a mobile-friendly "lifestyle site for the wanton and wicked." Or, more specifically, a food-related website for Millennials: "We wanted to target this group of 25- to 35-year-olds who are just obsessed with eating and drinking and going out," FWx editor Alex Vallis told Adweek, also saying that "this......