Beyond beer [restaurant review]
Redondo Beach Brewing’s Becky Bond welcomes guests to the restaurants upstairs patio. Photo Food fads aren’t a new thing in California. At various times in the 20th century we went nuts for fondue, sukiyaki, Cajun blackened everything, and various other items. The book Fashionable Food chronicles these gyrations during the last hundred years, and some things that were wildly popular seem inexplicable. Why were pineapple and marshmallow desserts wildly popular the 1920s, or concoctions of tuna in gelatin the rage in the 1950s? To read about them is to discover how much our sense of flavor and texture has changed, and when you replicate the recipes your palate confirms it. Pity the poor restaurateur who started specializing in Americanized chow mein in the 1930s as that fad ebbed, or who proudly inaugurated a “Continental” restaurant in the ‘60s just as people decided they wanted nouvelle cuisine. Some owners probably saw the way the wind was blowing and did a quick remodel so they could join the next fad, while others soldiered on with the original concept. Redondo Beach Brewing opened in the mid-90s, a decade that saw the number of microbreweries in California mushroom from 65 to…
Read this story on easyreadernews.com