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Bruce Marder’s long-awaited Rooster in the former Bistro of Santa Monica space is open for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner with a menu worth crowing about. After more than two years of transforming the historic corner location across the street from St. John’s Health Center, Marder has added to his gaggle of West L.A. restaurants, which include Capo, Brentwood Restaurant and Lounge, the iconic Cora’s Coffee Shop and Pono Burger.

If you want a little spicy dish without the need for utensils, dive into Andrew Friedman’s Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll, a comprehensive look at how the superstar American chef of today evolved from the rebels — and even acid-dropping hippies — who took cooking seriously at a time when no one else did.

Broadway Deli, which Bruce Marder and Marvin Zeidler opened in 1990 on the Santa Monica promenade, closed its doors for the last time on Monday. Santa Monica Daily Press reports that the lease had expired, the rent had tripled, and Marder and Zeidler were threatened with a lawsuit if they...

What makes a wine bar a wine bar? Generally, there has to be a bar, and an emphasis on wine. But is that enough? When is a place a wine bar and when is it a restaurant with a good wine list? I considered all this during a recent visit...

Bruce Marder, several partners from his other restaurants (Capo, Broadway Deli, Cora's and Brentwood Restaurant and Lounge) and his son Max have joined forces to open the Cal-Ital café/restaurant House on the former Pastis premises on Beverly. Head chef is Ricky Moreno, of Capo and Cora's. Twenty-five years in the...

Cora’s, Bruce Marder’s lunch place in Santa Monica, is a nice place to spend an afternoon: strong coffee, a leafy patio a block from the beach and a relaxed style of California-lunchroom cooking that admits both carnitas tacos and Italian sausage with polenta, burrata omelets and a decent mac ’n’...

View more photos in Anne Fishbein's slideshow, "Tinga's New Wave Tacos." A taco, it could be argued, is the basic unit of consumption in Southern California, the parcel of corn and spice and animal whose masters line our boulevards, a food whose reach extends from the meanest barrio streets to...

View more photos in Anne Fishbein's slideshow, "Smoke City Market: Barbeque, Texas-style." If you have ever had the misfortune of arguing about barbecue with a Texan, you are no doubt familiar with at least the idea of meat cookery in its purest, most atavistic form: slabs of beef flavored with...