Date Night Special

Monday is the slowest day for the restaurant industry, and the generally stated reason is that most people dine out on weekends and spend the following day recovering. Or perhaps it’s their wallets recovering, because they feel less affluent after spending on fancy food and drink on Saturday and Sunday. Whichever it is, it has…

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The unexpected hotel restaurant

The management at a hotel in an area with many dining options has a difficult choice for their restaurant: stay safe or go bold. Most stay safe, creating a generic menu that will appeal mainly to the hotel’s clientele. A menu of steaks, seafood, and simple pastas isn’t a road to fame, but it’s easy…

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Side street hangout

There are places around Los Angeles where roads do things that seem inexplicable, taking odd turns and bends or suddenly switching orientation so that a normal grid pattern goes diagonal. Sometimes the bends have a logical explanation, such as Torrance’s Walteria neighborhood where some streets go around a lake that was channeled elsewhere decades ago.…

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Evolving toward simplicity

There’s a cliche about what teenagers like when they go to restaurants, and it usually involves loud environments, bright colors, and bland food. My offspring weren’t excited by those, but always welcomed a chance to visit Hoka Hoka, a Japanese/Korean fusion restaurant on Torrance Boulevard. The environment was cheerful and lively, and our youngsters enjoyed…

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Back to his roots, personally and professionally

When I saw the sign for Fête Bistro by Slay, my immediate thought was that this is going to be the most mispronounced restaurant in the history of the South Bay. For those who haven’t run across it before, that thing over the E is called a circumflex, and it changes the pronunciation of the…

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True to tradition

I have fond memories of visiting Captain Kidd’s when my children were little. It was their favorite restaurant, where they could enjoy staring into tanks of crabs, looking at pictures of fishermen from past decades, studying taxonomy charts of fish species on the outside patio, and then eating more fried items than I would ever…

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Hermosa holdout

The Beach Cities are noteworthy for their lack of fast food chain restaurants in our downtowns – there are plenty on PCH, but not a single one west of the highway. There used to be one exception, a Taco Bell south of the pier in downtown Hermosa. They served mediocre Americanized tacos and burritos to…

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Breakfast in America, exemplified

Every time you sit down to a breakfast of bacon and eggs or pancakes, you participate in a ritual that is unlike the way most of the world eats. While some other cultures have traditional foods to start the day, America probably has the most varied selection of items eaten only at breakfast of anywhere…

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Practice makes perfect

Sometimes I hear from someone who mentions a place that just opened and asks why I haven’t reviewed it yet. Do I want to let some other publication beat me to the story? They’re often surprised when I respond that I’m not concerned about this possibility. Any restaurant is likely to have problems when they…

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A tasty plate of history

I used to be an avid historical reenactor, demonstrating skills like woodfire cooking, baking, and traditional brewing. My closet contains costumes from various eras, some with stains and scorch marks from feasts of decades ago, and my kitchen cabinet has cookware that I crafted on a potter’s wheel and pewter forge. It can be thrilling…

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A delight, but not ready for prime time

Thai cuisine was once regarded as unlikely to succeed in America because it was too spicy, too sour, too strange to American tastes. The breakthrough came because a rock band promoter named Tommy Tang opened a restaurant that not only softened the more assertive flavors, but had a menu that carefully described the unfamiliar items.…

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Two slices of bread with ideas between them

History books say that the idea of putting meat between slices of bread was invented by an inveterate gambler sometime in the 1770s. John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich (and yes, there is a town in England called Sandwich) was a talented civil servant, patron of music and sports, and also a member of the notoriously…

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