To Each His (or Her) Own Mom

The reason I’ve been away is that I’ve been moving, and all I can say about that is: you really find out who loves you when you move. In my case, turns out it was my mother. While I like to give my mom a hard time for not being much of a cook, or [...]

Eat This, Oprah!

Finally, a diet muffin I can get behind. (Bran, too: my favorite!)
The muffin on top is the bran muffin sold in the bakery at Suzanne Goin’s new Tavern restaruant. The one below is sold at Whole Foods. I think (but this is a guess) it is baked by a company called Il Fornaio. Tavern’s weighs [...]

When Spaghetti Meets the Sea

I guess I’m one of the few people who still believes in the power of newspapers, because I wrote this two weeks ago and decided not to post it because I hoped to write it for a newspaper, which I imagined would have two advantages: a) I would get paid to write it; and b) [...]

It’s a Schlag World After All

I was at 3 square, the restaurant/bakery on Abbot Kinney in Venice Beach over the weekend when I noticed a word on a menu that I didn’t recognize, schlag. People I’m eating with often ask me about culinary terms on menus, and most of the time I’m able to help them. I know from coulis [...]

Meet The Other (Better) Nobu

I have a running joke with myself about my Japanese friends, that you need an instruction booklet to be friends with them—and the same thinking applies to Japanese cuisine. I suppose one can enjoy Japanese food even without such a manual. For years I lived a life of sushi where I considered eel rolls and [...]

Speaking of Food

I haven’t written here in awhile for a number of reasons, only one of which I will get into now, and that is that in one of my last posts I asked what people might serve to Alice Waters should she come to their house for dinner, which was, looking back, an inauthentic question that [...]

What Have You Fried Lately?

I fried oatmeal today. I almost didn’t tell you that because it is such a brilliant idea I wasn’t sure I wanted to share it. That said, the idea was not original. It was my oatmeal version of the ribollita at Osteria Mozza, which is a version of the ribollita at Da Delfina, by which [...]

Eating My Confession

I made lentil soup Monday night, which was and always is more than just dinner. Lentil soup is my edible version of taking confession. Cleaning my slate as it were.
After a night like Sunday night, lentil soup was really the only thing to do. The fact that I ate three meals was the least of [...]

See Green Garlic, Buy Green Garlic, Cook Green Garlic, Eat Green Garlic

I once heard that Lady Diana said that anytime you see a bathroom, you should use it. And I’m telling you now that if you ever see green garlic, you should buy it. Green garlic looks like a scallion but is slightly fatter and has a touch of pink, and tastes like only the things [...]

Eating Penance

As far as I can tell, there are two kinds of people who write about food: those who seem to have given in to the obvious occupational hazard, and those who are determined to continue to fit into their jeans. Years ago I went to a seafood restaurant in Boston, one meant to capture the [...]