Danny Godinez, Food Genius

The morning after my last meal at Maestro, Danny Godinez’s new Mexican restaurant in Old Pasadena, I pulled the leftover barbacoa out of the refrigerator to see if I could salvage enough for a taco. There were still a few scraps of lamb left, but...

End-of-year lists like these are fun to do, but hard to write because it is always difficult to just pick five of anything, let alone restaurants in a year full of great meals. This year, I used the same measuring stick as last year: in picking my...

This is the fifth edition of this guide — a roadmap to Orange County’s wildly diverse dining scene. Narrowing this list to 75 recommendations gets harder each year. Yes, this list is highly personal and subjective but also painstakingly...

I’ve been saying for years that everything that’s exciting and new in the Orange County food scene happens in SanTana, but it’s never been more true than now. To cutting-edge chefs, the city’s downtown, at this very moment, is the South of France...

If Carlos Salgado of Taco Maria is Kubrickian in his obsessive quest for technical perfection in alta cocina, then Danny Godinez of the new El Mercado in Santa Ana is Spielbergian, a proven master of his craft who never forgets the audience he's...