Birch is at its best when Brendan Collins lets his inner butcher out

Christina House / Los Angeles Times Hello again, Can the proprietor of a nose-to-tail gastropub find true happiness at a twee small-plates restaurant? In the case of Brendan Collins, who we all thought would stay forever at his beery Waterloo...

The morning after my last meal at Hatchet Hall, I cooked steak hash with the remnants of the big rib-eye. I seared the soft, gingerbread-scented chunks of winter squash in a bit of olive oil. I let the slices of grilled sweet onion, zapped with...

Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times Gentlefolk, start your engines. Because we are mere hours away from Mother’s Day, the third most competitive restaurant day of the year, and you haven’t made reservations yet, have you? So you could...

One of the best things I’ve ever eaten was a pressed squab that was part of the Hunt menu at Chicago’s restaurant Next, a bloody, barely roasted bird whose breasts and legs were ceremoniously carved off by a chef at a tableside cart, and its...

Cheers! It’s six o’clock somewhere. And while your attention may have been diverted elsewhere, Los Angeles has become a cocktail town, a city where the sommelier thing seems just a bit old-fashioned, the craft-beer thing is a little played out...