Posts by Richard Foss
Plenty To Feast On At Papa Guido’s [restaurant review]
Everybody should have a go-to place for a quick, cheap meal – a default destination for the times when you’re too tired to cook; it’s too hot; or you just crave what they do. Such places are often guilty pleasures, where you politely ask your diet not to notice what you’re about to do to…
Read MoreReturn of the Ragin Cajun [restaurant review]
I have never actually seen Brigadoon, but have absorbed the story from pop culture references: the name of the mythical village has become a slang term for anything that disappears and reappears erratically. I’ve heard the term bandied about with regard to a particular restaurant, the Ragin Cajun, which recently reopened in Redondo after serving…
Read MoreA Tale Of Two Tacos [restaurant review]
American ingenuity meets Mexican tradition – tradition loses. People who are seriously interested in food often get hung up on authenticity – where can they go to experience Sicilian wedding soup the way it’s made in Palermo, or khao soi noodles that taste like they came from a Chiangmai street stall? It’s a fun game…
Read MoreSit Down And Dine At Hermosa’s Standing Room [restaurant review]
The newspaper comic Blondie has a running gag that contributed a name to American cuisine. This is the Dagwood sandwich, in which every wildly unlikely item in the refrigerator is tossed between two slices of bread, and in the comic the eponymous maker devours them with great gusto. They are drawn as a pile of…
Read MoreGreenbelt Brings Bold, Eclectic Fare To Pier Avenue [restaurant review]
There’s a well-established sales technique that involves lowering people’s expectations so that you can exceed them. In the restaurant business this can include having a “soft opening” that extends for months instead of the usual week or two. The soft opening is designed to allow the staff to learn to work together and tinker with…
Read MoreBarney’s Beanery On Redondo Pier Celebrates Route 66 [restaurant review]
Some ideas are so good that as soon as they appear, they’re duplicated. When a San Bernardino hamburger stand developed what they called the “Speedee System” of assembly line fast food, the first sharp entrepreneur who saw it realized that it could be franchised. The fellows who started that business, the McDonald brothers, did pretty…
Read MorePisces Sushi: Simplicity and Grace In North Manhattan [restaurant review]
I occasionally hesitate when somebody asks if an establishment is a restaurant. Is a take-out joint that has some plastic patio furniture in the corner a restaurant? By the loosest definition, yes, but if there’s no welcome, no service, no other amenities, it’s just a place you buy food. You’d do better to take your…
Read MoreGen Offers A New Take On Korean Cuisine [restaurant review]
When I asked a Korean chef about why contemporary ideas have taken so long to filter into Korean cuisine, he had a ready answer. “Most Koreans believe their food is already perfect,” he explained as though that was the most obvious thing in the world. “We grow up believing that it is the best and…
Read MoreDarren’s boasts new look, same delectable quality [Restaurant Review]
Whenever a place that I like closes for remodeling, I fear an outcome best expressed by the German word verschlimmbesserung. This magnificent pile of syllables means “an attempt to improve something that makes it worse,” and it makes clear that my concern is shared across the globe. The expression “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix…
Read MoreA La Carte: South Bay Dining News, 10/30/14
Maybe We’ll Change The Name To Little Italy… After years of a quiet but diverse restaurant scene, Riviera Village is lively and increasingly looking like a suburb of Naples. News is that Gina Lee’s, which has been serving Asian-inspired contemporary cuisine, will soon become a high-end Italian restaurant. Since Locale 90 and the Bottle Inn…
Read MoreNear The Garden And The Sea [Restaurant review]
It’s fitting that that so many local Italian restaurants have big windows and sunny patios – after all, that peninsula is famous for sun, for old master landscapes drenched in light. Even at its most formal this is a cuisine with flavors that are not far from the garden and the sea, so it makes…
Read MoreAll fish, all the time: The Fish Shop in Hermosa Beach specializes in all things seafood
A restaurant owner once told me that if his place only served the things they actually did really well, the menu would be half the size. Why, I wondered, did they serve the rest? The answer was, “If I don’t have a burger on my menu and I have a party of ten come in…
Read MoreThe Return Of Giorgio’s [Profile]
The South Bay area is full of restaurant owners who learned their trade in the traditional manner, working their way through the kitchen until they got to the top. Others took the academic route, going through culinary school so they learned every aspect of cooking and management. Giorgio Borelli, of the reopened Giorgio’s restaurant in…
Read MoreNeapolitan Pizza Trend Hits Redondo [Restaurant review]
During the last five years one of the hottest national trends has been Neapolitan pizza. It’s a minimalist creation with very few toppings and a very thin crust, and it spends less than two minutes in a special oven, as opposed to five to seven minutes for an American standard pizza or as much…
Read MoreGrimaldi’s Brings Authentic New York Pizza to El Segundo [Restaurant review]
If you have been reading my columns in this paper for a long time, you have probably noticed that I usually give new restaurants a while to mature before reviewing them. The delay allows restaurants to assess their customers’ tastes and rework the menu accordingly, plus giving the staff time to get to know that…
Read MoreEnter The Green Temple [Restaurant Review]
The best restaurant environments have a consistent logic about them; food, music, and décor are all deliberately designed to create a mood. When done very well, the effect is almost subliminal; everything is so in harmony that it takes effort to imagine it some other way. One of the great dining spaces in the South…
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