Posts by Richard Foss
A La Carte: Hermosa burger block, a Mexican metamorphosis, classic closed, dining events
by Richard Foss Burger Rebirth: In a previous column, I mused that Hermosa Beach might have reached peak burger, since so many pulverized protein palaces had opened there. I may have to eat crow (made into a crowburger, of course), because eateries with that specialty continue to open. Proudly Serving, which began flipping ground cow…
Read MoreBeach Cities 2023 Summer Dining
South Bay Beer & Wine Festival Ernie Howlett Park, Rolling Hills Estates May 21 The Palos Verdes Rotarians host their 10th food, craft beer, and wines festival, in support of local charities. $95 general/$165 VIP. Info at sbbeerwinefest.com Whiskey dinner Pacific Standard Prime June 6 Dan Garrison explains how, back in 2006, Garrison Brothers…
Read MoreThree decades of pizza on Pacific Coast Highway, Brooklyn Brick Oven Pizza
Brooklyn Brick Oven consistently delivers New York flavor. Want to argue? Fuhgettaboutit by Richard Foss I had to try some pizza on my first visit to New York, and did so with low expectations. Expat Manhattanites like to brag about how good it is, but there seems to be an element of ritual about it.…
Read MoreBest of the Beach 2023 Dining & Entertainment
American BBQ Willingham’s World Champion BBQ There are several good barbecue options in the greater South Bay that offer expansive menus of sides and other entrees, but the specialists win this round. There are no specialty salads, no appetizers, nothing but the traditional beans, potato salad, greens, and slaw to go along with those slabs…
Read MoreChinese American classics from another era
by Richard Foss The Chinese takeout container with its stylized pagoda on the side has been a symbol of fast food since shortly after that term was invented in the 1950’s. Some people have an almost Pavlovian reaction to seeing them thanks to so many childhood meals that began by opening those paper boxes to…
Read MoreTop 10 in 2022 – All cuisines, all prices, all different
2022 was a year of extraordinary diversity in the dining scene by Richard Foss Sometimes I look at previous columns about the best restaurants of a particular year to analyze patterns. The year of Italian restaurants was followed by the march of sushi and ramen joints, and another year the sound of burgers flipping was…
Read MoreTwo for the show – Pat Brown and son James honored for their early support of the Warner Grand Theater
by Richard Foss The Grand Vision Foundation periodically honors supporters of the arts, and for this year’s gala at the PV Golf Club they chose a duo whose contributions are very different. One is a veteran photojournalist, the other owns a downtown San Pedro restaurant, bar, and brewery. They might not seem to have any…
Read MoreHarmony of style – The Bluewater Grill is a classic fish house, down to the last detail
by Richard Foss Restaurant designers have plenty of strategies to choose from, one of which is theming the décor around the menu. I’ve been to vegetarian places plastered with images of tomatoes the size of basketballs, steakhouses with cows on the open range, a barbecue place decorated with piggy banks and a larger-than-life effigy of…
Read MoreChinese, simplified. Dan Modern Chinese does a few things very well
by Richard Foss Some people find ordering at traditional Chinese restaurants intimidating thanks to the overwhelming number of items on the menu, some of which have metaphorical names. One might guess that Buddha’s Feast is a vegetarian dish because the founder of a religion that forbids meat wouldn’t want to set a bad example, but…
Read MoreGet your French on at The Crepery and Pinwheel Cafe & Bakery at the Peninsula
Two breakfast and brunch cafes offer different tastes of France by Richard Foss The phrases we borrow from French say a lot about our opinion of their way of life. People who couldn’t understand street directions in Paris routinely wish us bon appétit, call someone a bon vivant, or speak of joie de vivre. We…
Read MoreSeashore Chinese Restaurant Local Chinese, native flavors
by Richard Foss Depending on which set of statistics you look at, Chinese food is either the most popular restaurant cuisine in the U.S. or in second place. That includes high style fusion places, down home eateries, and take-out counters all lumped into the one category, but one statistic proves the appeal. There are more…
Read MoreQuietly, everything changed
By Richard Foss When Chef Tin Vuong opened the first Little Sister restaurant in 2013, the food was an unusually personal expression of his family’s history. As the South Vietnamese regime teetered, uncles and cousins scattered to whatever country would give them refuge, winding up all over South Asia. They reunited in the USA, IN…
Read MoreThe universe beneath our feet
By Richard Foss Rolling Hills resident Kathy Kellogg Johnson tells the story of the founding of her family’s garden products company as though she were there, even though it happened in 1925. A young man with a new engineering degree from USC didn’t have much money or land. His father had lost his fortune…
Read MoreR10 Social House in Redondo marina is a name worth remembering
by Richard Foss Hermosa had a bar and grill called Fat Face Fenner’s Falloon that everybody knew because once you heard the silly name, you remembered it. Other odd names were more problematic – BamBiBu was hilarious to anyone who understood Japanese puns, but forgettable by everyone else, and even the staff at Les Joues…
Read MoreIn Remembrance: Redondo Beach’s Charlie’s loses its namesake
by Richard Foss The South Bay lost a pillar of the local restaurant community with the death of Charles Byrd two weeks ago. Byrd, known universally as Charlie, co-owned and operated Charlie’s on Pacific Coast Highway since1992. Byrd moved from New York to Hermosa Beach in the 1980s and worked at Naja’s and then at…
Read MoreA leisurely meal at Sand Bar 66 in Manhattan Beach
by Richard Foss The South Bay is full of older homes that have been added onto so many times that they acquire quirks – a switch somewhere that is on a different circuit than everything around it, pipes that come out of the wall and go right back in, a patch of wall where…
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