The Q Joint in Costa Mesa Smokes the Competition

Photo by Edwin Goei The barbecue chain Lucille’s takes great pains to transport its customers to the South of fables, of rocking chairs on the front porch, of twangy blues music. It’s all artifice, of course, designed to convince you that the...

When Adrian Miller was writing his first, award-winning book “Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine One Plate at a Time,” he originally planned to include a chapter on barbecue. In soul food restaurants, barbecued pork is often an...

As a born-and-raised Angeleno, I often judge the success of a meal (or a date) by how long I'm willing to sit in traffic for it. Was that sandwich worth an hour on the 405 Freeway? Should I really contemplate dating someone who lives 58 minutes...

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...

Summer goes with baseball; baseball goes with beer, hot dogs and . . . sushi? Yes, as you might have already heard, these days, there is more than peanuts and Cracker Jack at Angel Stadium. But that’s not to say you can’t find fried foods to rival...