Restaurants
Some norteamericanos view Mexico as a romantic destination — aah, the wide beaches, the colorful villages, the open-air markets, the cute guys/gals, etc. On my initial trip to Mexico, my romance was with a fish …
"B, u, bb, le. G–u–m spells bubble gum/It’s the only kind of chewing gum/The guy who made it must have really been a bum…” Beth, the gal behind the ice cream counter, will sing this …
The small sign on the restaurant’s front door, displaying the charming logo of a clever-looking billy enjoying a pipe, is hard to spot when you’re driving by. You have to know where to look: the …
“Poet, musician,” reads the little plaque. It’s about my good-time buddy Frankie — Cisco — and I couldn’t put it better myself. He died early last year. We all chipped in the $1400 — sisters, …
My friend Charlie Perry (now food writer for the L.A. Times and various food-scholar magazines) used to live about a mile from me in San Francisco. Both of us were ambitious, striving cooks (we eventually …
“Danger: Sheer Unstable Cliffs. Stay Back." The sign has been hammered into the sand a couple of yards from the edge. No fence. Big slab of rock down in the ocean looks like a fossilized …
I had to think twice about trying Little Sheep, a Mongolian hot-pot restaurant, but I figured that if I hated it, I could title the review “Baah, humbug!” That’s because my prior experience with hot …
Slap, slap, slap. Joanna’s whipping those dough balls into tortillas. “Busy day today,” she says. She’s working right here with her tables and pans, out on the Astroturf entrance to Don Diego’s, a red, orange, …
It’s summer-movie time, bringing all those boyish action flicks, indefatigable heroes with glam starlets breathing heavily all over them. This story, however, features a heroine, a dynamic brunette with more energy than Lara Cross, a …
I’ve passed Crown Bistro scores of times, always wondering about it: a little white building, well gardened and with an inviting front patio in front of a small white boutique hotel, it looks charming — …
Serendipity? This is how it happens: “No, no! Not one step further! You want 40 bucks down the drain?” Carla has planted her feet on the sidewalk. The palm trees are whipping around her. It’s …
Too much, too soon? Bencotto, a new Northern Italian restaurant in Little Italy, launched sometime this winter (the earliest Yelp raves I’ve spotted were posted in early February). The management didn’t tell me about the …
Ain’t it funny how things happen in strings? Maybe that’s what string theory’s all about. But one week after chew-chewing gourmet burgers downtown at Neighborhood, I’m being tempted by another hip joint (heh-heh) that sells …
“Life’s too short to drink crappy beers,” says Todd. He’s sipping on his Allagash Black, a dangerous-looking high-octane brew from Maine. But most of the 27 microbrewskis on tap behind the bar we’re sitting at …
King’s Fish House’s announcement of its May–June Maine lobster event (ending July 4) set the gears spinning: I realized that my last review was eight years ago — pleasant memories, but high time for a …