Category: Californian

  • Brunch at Estrella on Sunset

    Brunch at Estrella on Sunset

    Estrella is the new restaurant by chef/partner Dakota Weiss, a Top Chef alum who also helms the back-of-counter at Sweetfin Poke.  It’s no secret that Sweetfin is one of my favorite new places to eat on the Westside—check out my review for some delicious food porn!  What I didn’t realize is that I had been […]

  • Maré at Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese

    Maré at Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese

    In the back of chef Eric Greenspan‘s eponymous Greenspan’s Grilled Cheese shop, through a freezer door—complete with a horizontal latch handle on one side, and an inside release button on the other—is Maré, an al fresco-only restaurant-within-a-restaurant.  Less exclusive-supper-club and more neighborhood-hidden-gem, the diminutive restaurant’s diminutive menu is well focused and affordable, and the staff […]

  • Superba Food + Bread

    Superba Food + Bread

    Venice’s Superba Food + Bread has had an interesting year so far, shuffling nearly all key back-of-house staff in the last couple of months–check Eater LA for the blow-by-blow details.  Having an unexpected Saturday evening free a few weeks ago, I decided to see whether the food was worth all the backroom drama. Pain d’Epi:  […]

  • Michael’s Santa Monica

    Michael’s Santa Monica

    One of the mainstays of fine dining in Los Angeles, Michael’s in Santa Monica is a 36-year-old institution.  Through the years, its kitchen has been the training ground for some of the best chefs in the city, and the country. A 1997 L.A. Times article titled “The Six Degrees of Michael McCarty”—the online archive of […]