News Flash: The Line at Halal Guys is Long

It was 7:30 on a Saturday night. I was in a line of people that stretched from Sears to the Carousel Court–spanning an entire wing of South Coast Plaza. From one end to the other, it would be a two-and-a-half-hour wait. But this was only half of...

Sometimes, my social media feed is flooded with certain dishes. Friends, influencers and fellow writers will all rave about a burrito, a sandwich or dessert. A few years ago, multiple people messaged me about a must-try tuna sandwich from a pop-up...

Never has a new restaurant filled me with such equal measures of excitement and dread as Heritage Barbecue, which opened in August across the street from the mission in San Juan Capistrano. My first couple of attempts to dine here end in dread. As...

The hosts running the waitlist at Pappy & Harriet’s restaurant in Pioneertown have nerves of steel. On a recent Saturday night, the line to add your name spilled out of the entry room, through the bar and into the main dining room. It seemed as if...

Truck Season!In which our critic recounts his hunt for the Kogi Korean-barbecue taco truck—using considerably more than 140 characters Last fall, out of the blue, I got an e-mail from someone named Alice. She reads my food blog, she said, and she...