Subtle, Simple, Serene [restaurant review]

Centuries ago, when the rest of Italy was a chaos of feuding dukes and statelets, Venice was called La Serenissima, the serene republic. The only Venetian-style restaurant in the South Bay is a quiet echo of that city, a place with candlelight, soft music, and a muted color scheme. Sosta means “rest” or “pause” in […]

Mexican slang [restaurant review]

Caló Kitchen takes its inspiration from the 1930s pachucos, with inspired results

Interesting things happen near borders, where cultures merge organically and children who straddle societies come up with ideas that confuse their elders. Sometimes this is deliberate, as a counterculture finds ways to dress, talk, and cook that stakes a claim to being different. In the 1930s hipsters along both sides of the Mexican border were […]

Food finds from 2018 [dining feature]

Last year’s best new South Bay restaurants offered fine traditional and innovative cuisines

For the past 15 years I’ve written about the best South Bay restaurants that opened in the previous year, and every time people complain. The complaint I hear most often is, “The list is subjective.”  Yes, it is. When it comes to taste, both literally when it comes to flavors and figuratively when evaluating décor […]

Dinner in Redondo with a side of history [restaurant review]

The 1892 Bistro in Riviera Village offers gastropub food with Caribbean and Mexican accents

I’ve heard it said that you only need to know three dates to pass an American history class: 1492, 1776, and 1941. That’s an exaggeration, but not much of one. My teachers thought it was more important to know the sequence of events than the numbers behind them, so were lenient about details, which I […]

Less Inventive, More Mature – Dining in review 2018

But success in the restaurant field is as unpredictable as always

The economic theory of creative destruction points out how old ideas fall to new ones in a cycle that is unpredictable on an individual scale, but inevitable when considered collectively. The object lesson for this might be the South Bay restaurant scene, in which we all know that some restaurants will close and be replaced, […]

Sea to table

Kai Gourmet brings fish from New Zealand to local restaurants and homes within 36 hours

If you are like most Americans, you probably can’t name 10 kinds of edible fish. (Even though your mother served them to you as a kid, fish sticks don’t count.) When you do consider buying finny creatures it’s as a commodity, something you shop for on the basis of price rather than where it came […]

A Northwest Passage [restaurant review]

America's northwest has a culinary embassy in Hermosa.

I am a big fan of American regional cuisines, and have been enthusiastic whenever a new outpost of our culinary heritage surfaced. Those featuring the American South have often been successful, while most offering food of the Midwest and Northeast have fizzled. The local population of expats was too small, and locals who delight in […]