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Thursday, November 13, 2014
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Asian CuisineEat Komodo's Pho Burrito Before It Goes Away Forever
Comments (1)By Sarah Bennett
Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 11:12 AM
Categories: Asian Cuisine, Food Oddities, Weird Food
Only in fusion-forward Los Angeles is something that smells like a bowl of pho and steams like a bowl of pho not necessarily an actual bowl of pho.
At the two brick-and-mortar outposts of the Komodo food truck, Southeast Asian–inspired Chef Erwin Tjahyadi has created a hand-held version of the traditional Vietnamese beef noodle soup, which stuffs all its savory, crunchy, spicy goodness into your everyday flour tortilla. It's name? The Phoritto.
The brand is already known for its combining of Thai, Indonesian and Korean with Latin and American cuisines — its menu includes items such as kimchi nachos and Hawaiian-style fried chicken — but the Phoritto is easily Komodo's most adventurous fusion yet.
Originally meant to be one of the restaurant's temporary chalkboard specials, which rotate out every few weeks, the Phoritto has been such a hit (even selling out on some days) that its residency has been extended through the end of November.
At the two brick-and-mortar outposts of the Komodo food truck, Southeast Asian–inspired Chef Erwin Tjahyadi has created a hand-held version of the traditional Vietnamese beef noodle soup, which stuffs all its savory, crunchy, spicy goodness into your everyday flour tortilla. It's name? The Phoritto.
The brand is already known for its combining of Thai, Indonesian and Korean with Latin and American cuisines — its menu includes items such as kimchi nachos and Hawaiian-style fried chicken — but the Phoritto is easily Komodo's most adventurous fusion yet.
Originally meant to be one of the restaurant's temporary chalkboard specials, which rotate out every few weeks, the Phoritto has been such a hit (even selling out on some days) that its residency has been extended through the end of November.
Food Safety
Genetically Modified Potato Lowers Cancer Risk
Comments (0)By Samantha Bonar
Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 8:16 AM
Categories: Food Safety, Food Science, Weird Food
A new potato has been genetically modified to produce less of a potentially cancer-causing chemical when fried.
The Innate potato, which was just approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for commercial planting, produces up to 70% less acrylamide, a chemical that is emitted when potatoes are fried to make such snacks as French fries and potato chips. The chemical causes cancer in rodents and is a suspected human carcinogen. The potato, whose "innate" DNA has been altered, also resists bruising.
The Innate potato, which was just approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for commercial planting, produces up to 70% less acrylamide, a chemical that is emitted when potatoes are fried to make such snacks as French fries and potato chips. The chemical causes cancer in rodents and is a suspected human carcinogen. The potato, whose "innate" DNA has been altered, also resists bruising.
Food in the Media
10 Best Food Documentaries of the 21st Century (So Far)
Comments (0)By Angela Matano
Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 7:07 AM
Categories: Food in the Media, Lists
Food documentaries serve a lot of different purposes. Sometimes they're almost culinary porn, with sumptuous photography and lovingly detailed preparation. Other times, the films can be informative, recounting the horrors of the American diet or the shady dealings behind agribusiness.
These films can also be celebratory, focusing on dining establishments and their community. Another great genre of documentary is character driven, though of course this only works if the person can hold the audience for a whole hour and a half.
After spending hours in front of our television watching films about everything from bananas to tongue cancer to food Nazis, we've compiled this list of the best food-based titles made since the beginning of this century.
Whether you are looking to be educated or moved or even laugh until you cry, there is something for everyone. And thankfully, chefs, kitchens and restaurants make for great drama.
These films can also be celebratory, focusing on dining establishments and their community. Another great genre of documentary is character driven, though of course this only works if the person can hold the audience for a whole hour and a half.
After spending hours in front of our television watching films about everything from bananas to tongue cancer to food Nazis, we've compiled this list of the best food-based titles made since the beginning of this century.
Whether you are looking to be educated or moved or even laugh until you cry, there is something for everyone. And thankfully, chefs, kitchens and restaurants make for great drama.
Cookbooks
All or Nothing Is Chef Jess Schenker's Addiction-Fueled Culinary Memoir
Comments (0)By Angela Matano
Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 6:03 AM
Categories: Cookbooks
Jess Schenker does nothing to dispel the romance of the badass chef in his new culinary memoir All or Nothing: One Chef’s Appetite for the Extreme. In fact, in Schenker’s frank and poignant telling of wretched to riches, gustatory archetypes only get reinforced.
Now the successful owner and executive chef of two New York City restaurants, Recette and The Gander, Schenker was born with a compulsive personality that worked both for and against him. Even as a toddler his parents noticed an unusual obsessiveness. One morning his mother went into his room and found all of the wallpaper ripped from the walls. “Strip by strip, I’d torn it down all the way from the ceiling to the floor in clean, straight lines.”
As Schenker succinctly puts it, “Compulsiveness became my lifeline.” One way the author found respite from his nervous, free floating energy was around food. In cooking, Schenker finds a place to land. “For me, being in the kitchen was like taking a Xanax.”
Now the successful owner and executive chef of two New York City restaurants, Recette and The Gander, Schenker was born with a compulsive personality that worked both for and against him. Even as a toddler his parents noticed an unusual obsessiveness. One morning his mother went into his room and found all of the wallpaper ripped from the walls. “Strip by strip, I’d torn it down all the way from the ceiling to the floor in clean, straight lines.”
As Schenker succinctly puts it, “Compulsiveness became my lifeline.” One way the author found respite from his nervous, free floating energy was around food. In cooking, Schenker finds a place to land. “For me, being in the kitchen was like taking a Xanax.”
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Restaurant Openings & ClosingsAn Early Peek at Dinette, Now Open in Echo Park
Comments (1)By Besha Rodell
Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 11:28 AM
Categories: Restaurant Openings & Closings, Bakeries
At 8 a.m. yesterday morning, the 99 Cents Only store on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park got a shiny new neighbor: Dinette opened its doors — or more accurately, window — serving pastries, cookies and breakfast items.
The sleek, glassed-in space sits in stark contrast to its more worn-down neighbors, and the ultra-hip patrons sitting at low metal tables out front stand out among the bustle of families shopping at nearby stores. This is only a block away from Sage, the popular vegan restaurant that was one of the early businesses to begin changing this stretch of Sunset, but even so, Dinette seems very manicured and curated tucked into this block.
The sleek, glassed-in space sits in stark contrast to its more worn-down neighbors, and the ultra-hip patrons sitting at low metal tables out front stand out among the bustle of families shopping at nearby stores. This is only a block away from Sage, the popular vegan restaurant that was one of the early businesses to begin changing this stretch of Sunset, but even so, Dinette seems very manicured and curated tucked into this block.
Beer
5 Reasons the Shelton Bros. Festival Was the Best Thing to Happen to L.A. Beer
Comments (0)By Cleo Tobbi
Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 8:45 AM
Categories: Beer
For four sessions stretched out over two days in a warehouse at Crafted at the Port of Los Angeles last weekend, Shelton Brothers — an East Coast alcohol-distribution company — hosted a beer festival so epic, it actually deserved its simple title: The Festival. Partly an excuse to showcase their extensive portfolio of national and international breweries, this weekend-long event also brought various highly coveted beers to Los Angeles for the first time and provided a tasting opportunity unlike any other.
Top-rated breweries like Arizona Wilderness, Belgium's Cantillon and England's Moor Beer (none of which have regular distribution in Southern California) poured samples at this unprecedented event, letting locals not only try some of these rarely seen beers, but also meet the brewers responsible for them.
More than providing an enviable assortment of beers in one place, The Festival left a lasting impact on Los Angeles' beer community, which has become increasingly local-centric in recent years. Here are the top five reasons why a gathering of the world's best breweries was the best thing that could have possibly happened for L.A. beer:
Restaurant Openings & Closings
Blu Jam Cafe Opens in Woodland Hills
Comments (0)By Emily Dwass
Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 7:37 AM
Categories: Restaurant Openings & Closings, Breakfast
A crowd has been gathering most mornings at one end of a nondescript, old-school strip mall in Woodland Hills. It doesn’t seem like a promising spot for destination dining – but that’s exactly what’s going on, with people in the area lining up for the new location of Blu Jam Café, which opened last month.
With two other sites in Hollywood and Sherman Oaks, the restaurant serves breakfast and lunch daily from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Favorite dishes include crunchy French toast with a vanilla bean sauce, and pan-roasted macaroni scrambled with eggs, smoked bacon, ham, garlic, chives and cheddar cheese.
Awards and Contests
Win a Copy of Best Food Writing 2014 Featuring L.A. Weekly's Own Besha Rodell
Comments (0)By Sarah Bennett
Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 6:11 AM
Categories: Awards and Contests, Contests and Awards, Gratitude
Fourteen years and more than 600 stories later, Da Capo Press' Best Food Writing series remains the definitive anthology for gastronomical prose.
Edited by Holly Hughes, who each year combs through a diverse range of food-centric publications to come upon the relatively small number of stories worthy of her missive, the 2014 edition features works by everyone from local food bloggers to prominent James Beard Award-winners — including the L.A. Weekly's own food critic Besha Rodell.
Rodell's 2013 profile of L.A. pastry queen Sherry Yard is featured in Best Food Writing 2014 and in celebration, we have a copy of the book to give away to one lucky reader.
The piece, Sherry Yard's Sweet Independence: After 19 Years With Wolfgang Puck, She's Creating Her Own Empire, was our main story from our 2013 Dessert Issue and shed light on the history, talent and new food ventures of Yard, Spago's longtime pastry chef.
Edited by Holly Hughes, who each year combs through a diverse range of food-centric publications to come upon the relatively small number of stories worthy of her missive, the 2014 edition features works by everyone from local food bloggers to prominent James Beard Award-winners — including the L.A. Weekly's own food critic Besha Rodell.
Rodell's 2013 profile of L.A. pastry queen Sherry Yard is featured in Best Food Writing 2014 and in celebration, we have a copy of the book to give away to one lucky reader.
The piece, Sherry Yard's Sweet Independence: After 19 Years With Wolfgang Puck, She's Creating Her Own Empire, was our main story from our 2013 Dessert Issue and shed light on the history, talent and new food ventures of Yard, Spago's longtime pastry chef.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Restaurant Openings & ClosingsStir Market, Jet Tila's Food Hall & Restaurant, Opens Today on Beverly Blvd.
Comments (0)By Besha Rodell
Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 11:13 AM
Categories: Restaurant Openings & Closings
Food halls are the new black, the new gastropubs, the new hotness. Eataly is coming to L.A., Anthony Bourdain is opening a food hall in New York, and we are still anxiously awaiting the food hall attached to the Helms Bakery that's forthcoming from Sherry Yard and Sang Yoon. And today, Jet Tila and Mimi Mok open Stir Market, a food hall and restaurant on Beverly in Fairfax.
As SNL's Stefon would say, it's got everything: 4,000-square-feet of minimalist space containing a European rotisserie, expo kitchen, a salad and sandwich station, a wine and snack bar with charcuterie and cheese, a bakery, and an espresso bar. There is also a grocery component offering gourmet retail products, and prepared food to-go.
As SNL's Stefon would say, it's got everything: 4,000-square-feet of minimalist space containing a European rotisserie, expo kitchen, a salad and sandwich station, a wine and snack bar with charcuterie and cheese, a bakery, and an espresso bar. There is also a grocery component offering gourmet retail products, and prepared food to-go.
Beer
The Visual Scribe of L.A. Beer Opens Photo Exhibition at Mohawk Bend
Comments (0)By Sarah Bennett
Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 11:01 AM
Categories: Beer
If you've been drinking beer at events in Los Angeles lately, you've probably seen Bernie Wire, the friendliest man in the room and the only one toting a Canon 5D Mark II on a ten-foot-tall monopod. Maybe he's asked you to pose for a photo, which he then individually edited and uploaded onto his Friends of Local Beer Facebook page. The angle, exposure and coloring on it inevitably looked so cool that you probably made it your profile picture.
For the last three years, Wire has been the unofficial photo-documentarian of L.A.'s growing beer scene, showing up at events as big as the LA Beer Week kickoff festival and as small as a tap takeover at City Tavern, snapping shots of the brewers, fans and, of course, beverages that make drinking beer in this city so great.
But Wire isn't just your everyday club photographer turned loose on the beer community. Last year, Mowhawk Bend hung prints of his most timeless human-featuring images in the exposed-brick walls of the Ramona Room for a show appropriately called I Shoot Beer People. And tonight, his next exhibition will open to the public — an assortment of 10 powerful aluminum-printed photographs that remove the human element so present in most of his shots.
For the last three years, Wire has been the unofficial photo-documentarian of L.A.'s growing beer scene, showing up at events as big as the LA Beer Week kickoff festival and as small as a tap takeover at City Tavern, snapping shots of the brewers, fans and, of course, beverages that make drinking beer in this city so great.
But Wire isn't just your everyday club photographer turned loose on the beer community. Last year, Mowhawk Bend hung prints of his most timeless human-featuring images in the exposed-brick walls of the Ramona Room for a show appropriately called I Shoot Beer People. And tonight, his next exhibition will open to the public — an assortment of 10 powerful aluminum-printed photographs that remove the human element so present in most of his shots.
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