Jelly Rats

Gustavo Arellano first wrote about Lola Gaspar four years ago, when our food blog was still young and the restaurant had just opened. He weaved a brutal account of the inattentive service, the exorbitant $9 tacos trios, and a toothless habanero...

Complacent and apathetic aren't traits you want in a chef, and the words certainly don't describe Jason Quinn, who made waves last week for telling a Yelper to “burn in hell” after the customer leveled a personal attack on his burger, his 3...

The last time I ate the woefully underappreciated sausage called boerewors, it was at a now-shuttered South African bar in Long Beach. It’s as basic a tube steak as you can imagine: mildly spiced ground beef stuffed into casing with bits of fat,...

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...

Russ Bendel, the restaurateur behind the excellent Vine in San Clemente and sublime Ironwood in Laguna Hills, uses the three-worded slogan “Cellar. Craft. Cook” to describe his wine-country-cuisine concept. But as he debuts Olea in Newport Beach,...