Posts by Richard Foss

One of the defining moments in California cuisine was when Alice Waters of Chez Panisse surprised her customers with an unorthodox dessert: a plate with nothing on it but a peach. No sauce, no garnish, just a piece of fruit. In the1980s, when wild creativity was fetishized, it was daring to insist that something natural…

Manhattan Beach has several restaurants that are architectural showpieces, among them the otherworldly Esperanza, sleek Zinc at Shade, the retro grandeur of The Arthur J, and hyper-modern Love & Salt. Places that can’t afford the architects and decorators festoon their places with surf memorabilia, photos they purchased from the Historical Society, or kitsch to convey…

The Goat Is Dead: The Goat Hill mall on PCH had a long and storied career, beginning when it was actually a goat farm owned by an irascible Scottish lady named Mrs. Auchmoody. She won LA County Fair awards in the 1920’s but was notoriously bad-tempered and prone to suing her neighbors. The Goat Hill…

If you grew up in this area, you may not remember your first visit to the Bottle Inn. You were probably too young to drive, or to legally sample anything from the wine list, a kid dressed in nice clothes going out to dinner on mom, and dad’s anniversary, or a significant birthday. In the…

I have expat friends who live in New Zealand and stay with me when they visit family here. Their first actions on arrival follow a pattern. On the way from the airport, even before dropping their luggage, we stop for Mexican food, and within the next two days we go out for barbecue. These are…

The most expensive steaks in the world come from Japan, which is ironic for those who know history. For over a thousand years the Japanese ate no beef at all. In that Buddhist country, anyone who consumed as much as a mouthful was required to do penance for 150 days. When the modernizing Emperor Meiji…

Meat Central: There’s a lot of activity involving barbecue of various sorts in the South Bay, with one opening this week, one a few months down the line, and another relaunch of a local favorite. The established place is the former Silvio’s Brazilian Beach BBQ on the Hermosa Pier Plaza, which is now Silvio’s South…

Hermosa Happenings… After a period when most new restaurant action was in El Segundo and Redondo, Hermosa is hopping. We’ll start with doings there and then get to other cities and an event roundup… Living In A Musical?… A new Colombian restaurant called Encanto is coming to the long-empty ground floor space beneath Radici restaurant.…

At fine tables in the 1800s, there were two competing models of how to make a meal special: Service Francais, where a table is set with all the ornamentally prepared dishes of a meal arranged so diners could admire them, and Service Russe, where servers bring each dish from the kitchen individually portioned for one…

When I consider some dining establishments, I am reminded of Shakespeare’s observation, “There is a tide in the affairs of restaurants, which taken at flood leads on to fortune.” It shows that…excuse me, I just looked at that again and apparently the bard was talking about something else Where was I? Oh yes, tides of…

The little building just south of Torrance Boulevard on PCH isn’t beautiful when it comes to proportions or decoration. From the outside it has all the charm of a shoebox, a yellow stucco square with olive green trim, unembellished but for a sign proclaiming it the Cozy Café. The building has probably been there for…

Sweet and Virtuous: Enjoy cookies but don’t eat wheat? The recently opened Confections by Kirari West offers rice flour-based cookies with a Japanese twist, including matcha white chocolate chip and butterscotch with white miso. They also make more traditional chocolate chip and oatmeal rum raisin cookies. They offer the cookies by themselves or on sundaes,…

Putting two businesses under the same roof can make a lot of sense under some circumstances. A bakery and café is an obvious example, because if you’re going to be baking breads and pastries, making sandwiches out of some of the bread and serving coffee along with the pastries will appeal to a wider range…