Posts by Richard Foss

by Richard Foss Most businesses follow strategies dictated by marketing studies. Then there are places like Fruition Organic Market, which moved into the former El Tarasco location at Goat Hill in Manhattan Beach. I’m pretty much certain that no marketing consultants were involved in the choice of location, menu, hours, or anything else. The business…

As we pass another month with neither indoor or outdoor dining in Los Angeles County, South Bay restaurateurs seem to remain cautiously optimistic. Few permanent closures have been announced, there have been some openings, and new projects have been announced. We’ll start this week’s column with some of that sweet good news. A Little Wonder:…

I first ran across the term “moveable feast” as the title of Ernest Hemmingway’s memoir, not knowing its original meaning in religious practice. It refers to a holiday with a changeable date but I had thought Hemingway was referring to a picnic, which I envisioned as involving sandwiches, potato salad, and because it’s Ernest, some…

Many classic horror movies start with characters blithely heading for a party or similar happy occasion, when suddenly things turn strange and terrifying. After various travails, they come out the other side scarred, changed, and wiser. The local dining scene in 2020 fits this scenario almost perfectly. As the year dawned the beach cities were…

The history of commerce is full of companies that leaped boldly into a new business, with unfortunate results. The Enfield rifle company’s excursion into making lawnmowers was successful compared to Colgate’s attempt at selling frozen lasagna, and both were lucrative compared to the Bic pen company’s foray into women’s underwear. These strategies must have made…

Thanks to the pandemic I’ve been gravitating toward restaurants that offer food that travels well. Looking at it from a historical perspective, this makes fried chicken a natural. It was a component of picnic lunches in the mid-19th century, a staple at the Harvey House railroad cafes in the 1870s, and the only entrée offered…

There’s a common cliché about the cranky old person trying to explain how awful things were when they were young. An example for someone who appreciates good restaurants might be to say, “In my youth, Manhattan Beach had two Chinese restaurants, one Mexican place, and everything else was a diner, bar & grill, or steakhouse.”…

I find it very easy to imagine the beginnings of Hawaiian cuisine. It doesn’t start in ancient Polynesia, because except for poi almost nothing in modern Hawaiian cuisine is eaten according to that tradition. Rather, it begins in the late 1800s when laborers in cane fields sat down for lunch, and somebody curiously asked, “Hey,…