Latest news with #L.A.TimesFood
Los Angeles Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Distilling seven Australian seasons in a bottle ... with ants
Ants in gin, Australia's rule-breaking chefs, Adam Leonti's date-night pasta, curbing L.A.'s cream-top enthusiasm, Chin Chin's endangered Chinese chicken salad and more. I'm Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week's Tasting Notes. For Daniel Motlop and his fellow Larrakia people in the Darwin region of northern Australia, there are not four seasons but seven. Some seem intuitive for outsiders to grasp — the rainy season (balnba), monsoon season (dalay), heavy dew time (dinidjanggama) and big wind season (gurrulwa). Others are named not only for weather changes but animal and plant patterns as well as harvest traditions, such as barramundi and bush fruit time (damibila), build-up time (dalirrgang) and the speargrass, magpie goose egg and 'knock 'em down' season (mayilema). These seasonal variations are different from ones observed by other indigenous societies in the country. 'In Australia,' said Motlop, who built on his fame as an Australian rules football star to become a native foods entrepreneur, 'we've got over 500 different aboriginal groups.' For instance, the Woiwurrung, of the Yarra River Valley in the country's southern reaches, observe eel (iuk) season and kangaroo-apple (garrawang) season. A sense of place, ancestry and the rhythms of nature are important for Motlop. Which is why he named his distillery company Seven Seasons — to honor the heritage, he says, 'of my grandmother's country up in Darwin.' Last week, Motlop was in Southern California pouring samples of some of his distilled spirits at the Great Australian Bite, an L.A. Times food event held at chef Curtis Stone's Four Stones Farm in Agoura Hills. 'Different signs in nature tell us when a season's starting,' Motlop said during the welcome drink hour. 'A lot of these native ingredients represents a certain season.' One of his most popular distilled spirits is a kind of vodka made, Motlop said, with 'yams harvested by aboriginal people up at the top end of Australia' during the rainy season. In the build-up season, just before the rains hit, he said, 'you can't really find that yam.' But with the rains' arrival, little bell flowers pop up from the yams in the ground, a sign that the tubers, which come in multiple varieties, can be harvested. One of the yams Motlop's team uses in Seven Seasons spirits is 'quite creamy,' he said, 'and another one is a bit like horseradish.' These are blended together, evoking, Motlop said, 'the flavor of the earth.' His most unusual and sought-after spirit might be green ant gin, made with boobialla, which is a native flowering juniper; strawberry gum, a kind of eucalyptus with a bell-shaped fruit; lemon myrtle; pepper berry, and, floating in the liquid if you give the bottle a shake like a snow globe, green bush ants, which Motlop says adds a pop of citrus flavor. (He points out that only the worker ants are used for the gin and the harvest never happens during the ants' breeding season.) Seven Seasons' spirits aren't easy to find at this moment in Southern California, but gin from another Australian small craft distillery pouring at last week's event, Four Pillars, based in the Yarra Valley, is sold in many L.A.-area stores, including Total Wine and Woodland Hills Wine. 'Australia went from about eight distilleries to about 600 distilleries in a period of about 20 years,' wine and spirits writer Mike Bennie said at the event. 'There's been a massive interest in the utilization of native ingredients in Australia ... and tasting Australia through the native things that don't grow anywhere else.' Native ingredients are just one aspect of Australian culture that make its cuisine distinct from other places and hard to define. In some respects, it's like California, both for its climate, openness to new flavors and the multiplicity of international influences that appear on the plate. Last week, restaurant critic Bill Addison wrote about eating at Jung Eun Chae and Yoora Yoon's Korean restaurant Chae outside of Melbourne, where the food, he said, 'expressed another side of the culinary Korean diaspora unlike anything I've experienced.' Clare Falzon, who traveled from her Barossa Valley restaurant Staġuni to join Stone as co-chef for the Great Australian Bite, brings her family's Maltese heritage into her cooking. 'I'm utilizing memories from my childhood experiences from when I was overseas, as well as produce from Australia,' she said after serving guests freshly baked flatbread topped with smoked tomato cream, amaranth, sumac and basil. 'Malta has Italy to the north and North Africa to the south so that's quite a lot of cultures smashed together.' 'You know, your background is Maltese, mine are convicts,' Stone said to Falzon, taking a break from the grill where he was serving spiced lamb ribs to the crowd. 'The truth is, we're rule breakers in Australia. We're a little anti-authoritarian. And I think you see that in the cuisine. You see lots of different multicultural influences and you also see a real spirit.' Date-night pasta: Watch Alba chef Adam Leonti make his lightly smoky spaghetti with lemon, which may be the perfect dish to make for a date. Find the recipe here.
Los Angeles Times
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
What chefs bring to a no-cook potluck party. Easy takeout ideas you can duplicate
More than 20 easy takeout ideas from chefs and food pros for your next potluck. Plus, Curtis Stone grows a lifestyle empire in Malibu wine country, the return of Miya Thai, making chicken in a rice cooker. I'm Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week's Tasting Notes. The invitation via text message was brief: 'Having a 'potluck' at my house next Sunday. Bring your favorite takeout food.' I looked at the sender's name: Nancy Silverton. I've been to Nancy Silverton's house for parties many times. I co-wrote her bread book and first got to know her while writing a story for this paper on the making of Campanile, the restaurant she and her late ex-husband Mark Peel opened in the complex that is now Walter and Margarita Manzke's Republique. So the idea of Silverton throwing a party with only takeout food — nothing cooked by her or any of her chef or food-obsessed friends — was surprising. It's not that Silverton favors complex dishes. One of her lesser-known cookbooks is 'A Twist of the Wrist,' with simple recipes made from jarred, tinned or boxed ingredients. And she sometimes augments her party menus with food from some of her favorite takeout spots like Burritos La Palma. But Silverton is obsessed with details, even at a burger party where the patties are hand-shaped with a custom-blend of meat (20% to 28% fat, as writer Emily Green once described in a story on the chef's hamburger process), and she only entrusts grill duties to trusted cooks (frequently Elizabeth Hong, culinary director of Silverton's many Mozza restaurants, or Jar restaurant owner-chef Suzanne Tract). Even the burger toppings and condiments are precisely arranged. Her avocados, for instance, are almost always halved, loosened from the skin, which remains to protect the fruit, then sliced, drizzled with lemon or lime juice and seasoned with salt, pepper and often chopped chives. I wondered how Silverton would react to the chaos that can ensue at potluck gatherings. What if everyone showed up with Burritos La Palma? (Well, maybe that wouldn't be so bad.) Of course, Silverton and her partner, former Times reporter Michael Krikorian, eliminated some of the event's wildcard nature by making gentle inquiries over text to find out what people were bringing. It was clear from the start that one of my favorite foods to bring to a party would not be an option: the football-shaped Armenian flatbread from Glendale's Zhengyalov Hatz — filled with more than a dozen different herbs, as writer Jessie Schiewe described in our recent guide to '15 L.A. restaurants where ordering the house specialty is a must.' Krikorian was already bringing some. He was also getting brisket from Andrew and Michelle Muñoz's Moo's Craft Barbecue, which is one of critic Bill Addison's favorite L.A. barbecue spots; 'kuku sandeviches,' or house-leavened flatbread filled with herb-and-leek frittata, yogurt, cucumber, tomato and radish from Azizam, which Addison called 'L.A.'s best new Persian restaurant'; fried chicken and fish sandos from Mei Lin's Daybird, the shop that attracted columnist Jenn Harris' admiration soon after its 2021 opening and before Lin's most recent restaurant, 88 Club in Beverly Hills, previewed recently by Food's reporter Stephanie Breijo; and fantastic basturma brisket sandwiches from III Mas Bakery & Deli (pronounce it 'Yerord Mas') run out of a Glendale ghost kitchen by husband-and-wife team Arthur Grigoryan (who used to work at Mozza) and Takouhi Petrosyan. Oh, and Silverton also arranged for Frutas Marquez (phone: 909-636-1650) to set up an umbrella-shaded cocos frios and cut fruit stand. So before the first guest turned up, there was enough food for a hungry crowd. Then the chefs and other food pros started to arrive with food from all over city. Chef Chris Feldmeier of the sorely missed Bar Moruno in Silver Lake and now back in the kitchen at Love & Salt in Manhattan Beach gave Silverton's guests a chance to try some of the Southland's greatest Indian cooking from Quality of Bombay in Lawndale. He brought goat biryani, butter chicken and palak paneer, with large pieces of curd cheese mixed into the gently seasoned spinach. People were raving over the butter chicken and I was so taken with the goat biryani that I stopped into the unassuming storefront this week and picked up some lamb biryani as well as two of the restaurant's naans, one flavored with green chile and one, Peshawari naan, baked with ground nuts and raisins. Feldmeier also brought crispy rice salad with Thai sausage from North Hollywood's Sri Siam, a place I recently rediscovered. Feldmeier's former Bar Moruno partner (and contributor to our wine coverage), David Rosoff, brought a sampling from Armen Martirosyan's Mini Kabob spinoff MidEast Tacos in Silver Lake. Many guests had heard about the Armenian-Mexican tacos and were happy to have a chance to try them. Another hit from the party came from Jar's Suzanne Tract, who brought spicy shrimp dumplings and kimchi dumplings from Pao Jao Dumpling House started by Eunice Lee and Seong Cho in the food court of the Koreatown Plaza on Western Ave. In the dumpling season of Jenn Harris' video series 'The Bucket List,' she finds out that Cho developed the recipe for the spicy shrimp dumpling and isn't sharing the secret to its deliciousness — which will make you all the more popular when you show up with a batch at your next potluck. Photographer Anne Fishbein brought many delicious things from chef Sang Yoon's Helms Bakery, including doughnuts and gorgeous breads with different schmears and butters, including the sweet black garlic butter that Harris included in her story about the Helms' foods that got her attention when the marketplace opened in Culver City late last year. Times contributor Margy Rochlin arrived with swaths of the pebbly Persian flatbread sangak, so fresh from the oven at West L.A.'s Naan Hut the sheets of sesame-seeded bread burned her arm when she picked up her order. (Read Rochlin's 2015 story for Food for more on how sangak is baked on hot stones.) She then went to Super Sun Market in Westwood for French feta cheese, fresh herbs and the shallot yogurt dip mast-o musir, arranging everything on a wood board. Silverton's daughter, Vanessa Silverton-Peel set out an impressive array of flaky borekas from the always-busy Borekas Sephardic Pastries in Van Nuys with various fillings. These included cultured cheese and za'atar; potato and brown butter; mushroom, caramelized onion and truffle; spinach and cheese, plus carrots and hot honey, which is an occasional special. With them, came pickles, tomato sauce and jammy eggs. And because she is everywhere, Harris has written about her love for this place too. Taylor Parsons, once declared L.A.'s best sommelier when he was at Republique by former L.A. Weekly restaurant critic Besha Rodell, and Briana Valdez, founder of the growing Home State mini-chain of Texas-style breakfast tacos and more, brought cheesy Frito pies and tacos from Valdez's restaurant. And Pasquale Chiarappa, a.k.a. the sometime actor Pat Asanti, a.k.a. Patsy to his pals, brought his own Della Corte Kitchen focaccia, which he supplies to Pasadena's Roma Deli among other places. Pizza and cake from another Addison favorite, Aaron Lindell and Hannah Ziskin's Quarter Sheets in Echo Park went fast, though I'm not sure who brought them since at this point it was getting hard to keep track of all the incoming food. The same goes for the bucket of Tokyo Fried Chicken that was quickly gobbled up. Jazz musician and composer Anthony Wilson had the good taste to bring a whole duck from Roasted Duck by Pa Ord, which I wrote about in this newsletter recently because I think it might be the best duck in Thai Town. Claudio Blotta, founder of All'Acqua in Atwater Village and Silver Lake's Barbrix, which is undergoing rennovations at the moment, tapped his Argentine roots by bringing empanadas. I missed the name of the place he bought them, but a good bet if you're looking for some to bring to a party is Mercado Buenos Aires in Van Nuys. Erik Black, founder of the recently revived Ugly Drum pastrami, broke the rules a bit by actually cooking something — spiced caramel corn from recipe in 'Nancy Silverton's Sandwich Book.' And Mozza's Raul Ramirez Valdivia made tortilla chips, guacamole and wonderful salsa verde. Of course, Burritos La Palma showed up thanks to Mozza's Juliet Kapanjie. I ended up bringing a tray of fresh Vietnamese spring rolls, a party offering that has never failed me, from Golden Deli in San Gabriel. There were three kinds: shrimp and pork, beef and tofu for vegetarians. And just when it seemed that the party could not take one more food offering, in walked former L.A. Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila and photographer, wine aficionado and cook Fred Seidman with a box of burgers from In-N-Out. Because no matter how full you are, there's always room for In-N-Out. Food reporter Stephanie Breijo got a look at the inner workings of Curtis Stone's Four Stones Farm in the Santa Monica Mountains, where the Australian chef of Hollywood's Gwen and the Pie Room in Beverly Hills has established a base for his burgeoning lifestyle empire. This includes TV-ready testing and production kitchens for taping live HSN cooking demos promoting his cookware, plus a winery that uses grapes grown on the property's vineyards and a set up for events, including the upcoming Great Australian Bite in collaboration with the L.A. Times and Tourism Australia. On May 31, Stone and visiting chef Clare Falzon of Staġuni in South Australia's Barossa Valley are teaming up to prepare a multicourse meal in the area becoming known as Malibu wine country. Tickets cost $289 and are on sale now. Regular readers of this newsletter know that I have been keeping watch in my Altadena neighborhood for signs of recovery following the firestorm that destroyed so much of the area. I'm thrilled to report that Miya — David Tewasart and Clarissa Chin's Thai restaurant, which survived in the section of Lake Ave. that saw major destruction — has quietly reopened and is happily busy. We ran into friends from the neighborhood and sat with them at a table to catch up. It felt like home. And the fried chicken with hand-pounded papaya salad? It's as good as ever. Have you seen that woman who cooks an entire chicken in a rice cooker?' style pro Joe Zee asked columnist Jenn Harris recently, as she wrote in our most recent Cooking newsletter. He was referring to the Instagram video made by London content creator Shu Lin, who showed her followers how to make Hakka-style salt-baked chicken with not much more than a seasoning packet sold in most Asian supermarkets and a rice cooker, plus ginger, green onions, shallots and oil. The technique isn't new, but Lin's recipe is very simple and inspired Harris to try it. Gefen Skolnick tells Food contributor Jean Trinh that she wanted a 'fun and funky' Gen Z-friendly space when she opened Couplet Coffee in Echo Park this year. That means 'limited-edition product drops, community-building, storytelling and social media.' As Skolnick put it to Trinh, 'There needs to be great coffee made more approachable.'
Los Angeles Times
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Top Chef' begets Martha Stewart and José Andrés' new ‘Yes, Chef!' Will their kitchen therapy work?
Chefs who behave badly get their own show. Also, pink Champagne cake at Madonna Inn plus more road food favorites. And can fish be too fresh? I'm Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week's Tasting Notes. 'For far too long,' Martha Stewart says into the camera during the opening moments of NBC's new 'Yes, Chef!' cooking competition show, 'the pressure of the kitchen has been an excuse for out-of-control behavior.' 'That kind of behavior doesn't make a great chef,' adds her co-host, chef José Andrés. 'It holds them back.' Stewart and Andrés are correct. And yet, that kind of behavior — yelling at fellow chefs, throwing pans in frustration, undermining colleagues and sometimes inflicting more harmful abuse — has been the roiling soup that has fed reality TV cooking competitions for more than 25 years. It's also been the kind of behavior that restaurant workers have tried, with varying degrees of success, to root out as cheffing became an aspirational profession instead of disrespected grunt work. You can read about the pain as well as the allure of working in and around restaurant kitchens in several recent memoirs, including Laurie Woolever's 'Care and Feeding,' which restaurant critic Bill Addison praised in this newsletter last month, Hannah Selinger's 'Cellar Rat: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly' and books by two chefs and reality TV cooking show insiders, Tom Colicchio's 'Why I Cook' and Kristen Kish's 'Accidentally on Purpose,' which I wrote about last week. If you've watched even a few minutes of a reality TV cooking competition — from 'Hell's Kitchen's' Gordon Ramsay angrily dumping out a contestant's overcooked steak to even the sweet contestants on 'The Great British Baking Show' expressing frustration — chances are good that you've seen how the kitchen pressure Stewart talks about often does lead to bad behavior. So can a reality TV cooking competition really help chefs become better people — and better bosses? Possibly. But three episodes into the inaugural season of 'Yes, Chef!' — a show cast with '12 professional chefs, each with one thing standing in their way: themselves,' Stewart says — it looks as though the cards are stacked against redemption. 'In our kitchen,' Stewart tells viewers about the chefs, 'it takes a lot more than good food to win. They'll need to figure out how to work together.' Andrés and Stewart have a lot of life experience and advice to offer, with Stewart admitting, 'I have been known to be a perfectionist. And that kind of holds you back sometimes.' But when it comes down to which team wins and which team loses, it turns out that good food does matter more than bad behavior. (Note that there are spoilers ahead if you haven't watched the show yet.) After TV competition show veteran and designated villain Katsuji Tanabe ('Top Chef,' 'Chopped') takes all the eggs in the kitchen so that the opposing team has none to work with, he and his teammates are rewarded with a win. The reasoning: The losing chefs struggled to, in the language of the show, 'pivot.' Even worse for the development of the chefs, the decision of who stays and who goes at the end of each episode is not made by Andrés or Stewart. Instead, a one-on-one cook-off is set up between the contestant deemed to be the Most Valuable Chef (MVC) and another contestant that the MVC strategically chooses to go up against. If the MVC wins, the challenger chef goes home. But if the challenger chef beats the MVC, the challenger becomes the decider. So far, this has led to one of the better chefs, Torrece 'Chef T' Gregoire, being booted largely to reduce the competition, followed by the executioner of that decision, Michelle Francis, getting axed in the next episode, possibly comeuppance for sending home a popular player the week before and partly because of her dish — even though she was handicapped by the egg theft. The sharp edges and head games almost feel retro, closer to the template set 25 years ago this month when 'Survivor' first aired and popularized the whole 'I'm not here to make friends' trope that was common in sports and then became emblematic of reality TV posturing. We'll see as the season progresses whether the chefs can turn around the bad attitudes and insecurities that led to them being cast on the show. I certainly hope Andrés and Stewart are given more time to guide the chefs toward their better selves in future episodes. But if you want to watch a show where the chefs are modeling kitchen behavior we'd like to see more of in our star chefs, may I suggest the current season of Bravo's 'Top Chef.' Both 'Yes, Chef!' and 'Top Chef' are made by the production company Magical Elves, but 'Top Chef,' now in its 22nd season, is showcasing a group of chefs who actually seem to care about each other. Yes, there are big personalities on the show, notably Massimo Piedimonte, who often generates eye rolls by the other chefs when his bravado goes overboard. But he is seen in quieter moments trying to tame his impulses and become a better person. And there is genuine emotion displayed when chef Tristen Epps gets word right before a big challenge that his father-in-law has died and his mother encourages him to continue competing. The entire show, from the production staffer who takes him off the set to his fellow competitors seem to support him. There is even camaraderie among the losing contestants who try to work their way back into the competition through the spin-off 'Last Chance Kitchen,' judged solo by Colicchio showing his mentoring skills. When Chicago's North Pond chef César Murillo is pitted against three-time 'Last Chance' winner Katianna Hong, co-owner of the recently closed Arts District restaurant Yangban, there is support and respect shown for both talented competitors by the eliminated chefs watching the proceedings, including chef Kat Turner of L.A.'s Highly Likely. 'Top Chef' used to have a lot more hotheads. 'I'm not your bitch, bitch,' was a catchphrase in the show's early years when one chef pushed another too far. But the new season, which has just a few more episodes to go, is proving that you can cool down the temperature in the kitchen and still entertain. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the motel — the first use of the word is credited to the 1925 opening of the Milestone Mo-Tel in San Luis Obispo — Food's writers and editors joined our colleagues in Features to put together Motel California, a story series that includes a guide to the state's '34 coolest, kitschiest, most fascinating motels' and our team's picks for the best roadside diners and restaurants. Also in the package: Christopher Reynolds' account of his 2,500-mile search for California's greatest motels, a roadside attractions guide and Marah Eakin's profile of Barkev Msrlyan, creator of the Merch Motel brand of retro souvenirs. Food's Stephanie Breijo spent time at the very pink San Luis Obispo landmark, the Madonna Inn, and says that the 'maze-like, kaleidoscopic lair of chroma and whimsy is home to some of the most iconic food on the Central Coast.' She came away with insider knowledge of the red oak grills at Alex Madonna's Gold Rush Steak House and of the Inn's famed pink Champagne cakes — made in the hundreds each week. But the pink cake recipe remains a secret. Breijo did, however, get the recipe for the Inn's Pink Cloud cocktail — topped with whipped cream and a cherry. Plus: Julie Wolfson guides us to some great coffee shops along the Santa Barbara coast. This week, the paper introduced a new feature, L.A. Timeless, which highlights stories from our archives. The first two stories this week come from former L.A. Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl, who wrote about learning to shop for fish at L.A. supermarkets with Jon Rowley, the man Julia Child once called 'the fish missionary.' I got to go along on that reporting trip all those years ago and I'll never forget the lessons Rowley taught us. Her companion story on Rowley went into one of his obsessions: '[T]hat fish can be too fresh ... a fish coming out of rigor mortis five or six days after harvest (in ice, of course) can be far better eating than a fish less than one day out of the water.' Tickets are on sale for our second-annual Great Australian Bite. Last year, we were on the Malibu Pier. This year, chef Curtis Stone is hosting the event with Tourism Australia on his Four Stones Farm. He's partnering with chef Clare Falzon of the restaurant Staġuni in South Australia's Barossa. Read more about the event and how to get tickets here.
Los Angeles Times
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Top Chef's' Kristen Kish doesn't hesitate to talk about kitchen sexism in her new memoir
Here's Looking at You's Lien Ta talks about the death of chef Jonathan Whitener, chef Jonathan Gil talks about running a restaurant with Stage IV cancer, and the chef trying to get as many Angelenos as possible to try Sri Lankan food. Also, our nominees for the James Beard Media Awards. I'm Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week's Tasting Notes. Nearly every female chef I've met hates to talk about being a female chef. Just, chef, please. It's a stance that Dominique Crenn asserted when she won the World's 50 Best Restaurants' award for 'world's best female chef' in 2016. 'She famously called it 'stupid,'' Heather Platt wrote last year in this paper of Crenn's feelings about her award. ''A chef is a chef.'' Even with the stories of yelling, groping and much worse behavior emerging since the #MeToo reckoning, the knowledge that the stresses of the industry also take a toll on men has conditioned some of us to believe that while women may not have an easy time in the business, they can still advance in the industry if they are tough enough. Here in Los Angeles, after all, it's not hard to name female chefs who lead their own restaurants, including Socalo's Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken, n/naka's Niki Nakayama and Carole Iida-Nakayama, A.O.C.'s Suzanne Goin, Mozza's Nancy Silverton, Playa Provision's Brooke Williamson, Jar's Suzanne Tract, Kismet's Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson, Highly Likely's Kat Turner and many, many more than the handful of veterans who were making their way to the top during the 1970s, '80s and '90s. Indeed, some of the war stories we've frequently heard about women in restaurant kitchens have a quaint quality. In 1983, Ruth Reichl wrote a feature story for California magazine that began with the story of Milliken's first attempt (ultimately successful) to work at Chicago's Le Perroquet. 'Jovan Trboyevic, the owner, said he would never hire a pretty girl like me — it would cause chaos in the kitchen,' Milliken told Reichl. 'He offered me a job as a hat check girl instead.' By the time current 'Top Chef' host Kristen Kish was establishing herself in Chicago and Boston restaurants, 'hat check girl' was a job associated with black-and-white movies, not actual restaurant work. So I took notice when Kish, in her new memoir 'Accidentally On Purpose,' devoted the better part of a chapter to the disrespect she received in a male-dominated kitchen after she won Season 10 of 'Top Chef' in 2013. It was so bad that less than a year after attaining what she'd thought of as her dream job — chef de cuisine at a fine-dining destination restaurant, Boston's now-closed Menton — she quit. We're talking about a chef who proved to be the epitome of calm and unflappability in the midst of reality TV drama during her season as a 'Top Chef' contestant and the ultimate team player when she declined to blame a fellow contestant for the dish that led to Kish being eliminated from the competition. (Kish worked her way back into the game she ultimately won thanks to her cooking on 'Last Chance Kitchen.') She's also rappelled down a waterfall to harvest watercress in Panama for the National Geographic series 'Restaurants at the End of the World.' The irony is that Menton, Boston's first Relais & Châteaux restaurant, was a woman-owned restaurant. It was one of several businesses overseen by the hospitality company founded by Barbara Lynch, who was forced to close all of her restaurants last year because of a number of factors, including the fallout from a 2023 investigation of workplace abuse by New York Times reporter Julia Moskin. In her book, Kish does not question any of the accounts of employees who shared their stories with Moskin and others in the press about their boss (the incidents detailed appear to have happened after Kish left the company in 2014). Still, she views Lynch as a supportive mentor who gave her credit for dishes she created and was the one to suggest her as a contestant to 'Top Chef's' producers. Instead, Kish blames her issues in Menton's kitchen on the ungenerous attitudes of her male colleagues (while emphasizing that she has 'worked with many wonderful men over the years') and on a corporate decision to give her the top job at Menton without the power to make menu changes and subjecting her to a 'training period.' 'Barbara, along with the company's director of operations and its wine director — both of whom were women — were pulling for me to have the job' after 'Top Chef,' she wrote in the book. 'But there were also two men in the upper echelon of the organization who were not in agreement and didn't buy that I was ready for it.' The experience was the opposite of what Kish had experienced at another of Lynch's restaurants, the 10-seat Stir, where the menu changed nightly with the seasons and the chefs cooked as they talked and joked with customers across the counter — great training for her 'Top Chef' run. Yet at Menton, without the full support of the company, 'the team, mostly men,' Kish writes, felt free to be 'recalcitrant at best and more often perniciously undermining. ... Sometimes I was disregarded or ignored. ... Later, on my rare days off or when I was traveling ... they were changing dishes without my knowledge. ... It was a sort of psychological warfare for which I wasn't prepared. Not a single cell in my body wanted to engage in this kind of ... conflict.' Among the untrue rumors she heard about herself was that the only reason she had the Menton job was because she was having an affair with Lynch. 'I don't know if one of the male chefs from the company would have walked back into something like that,' Kish told me onstage when I interviewed her and 'Top Chef' head judge Tom Colicchio at last month's L.A. Times Festival of Books. 'They probably would have been praised and celebrated. There were people who wanted my position and my job. And I don't think [many] at the top echelon of the restaurant actually thought I was going to do well.' Then there was the time she and Lynch went to a gathering in London for Relais & Châteaux restaurants and encountered a male chef who bluntly told Kish, 'You're too pretty to be a chef.' Suddenly, the gulf between Kish and Milliken decades earlier wasn't so vast. Kish writes that Lynch instantly scolded the male chef for his insult: 'She told him in no uncertain terms to get ... out of there and leave us alone. And while I felt protected, it also made me sad. It was very clear that this was something Barbara had probably been dealing with her whole career. There was almost a rote reaction that many women in many fields would likely recognize — one they needed to cultivate in order to survive and succeed. Always playing defense, working harder, stirring up responses to pull out when some entitled overbearing dude shows up, seeming to think he matters more.' Of course, Kish's story has a happy ending. Leaving Menton could have ended her career as a chef since she was getting so many offers to appear on television ('Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend,' 'Fast Foodies' and 'Restaurants at the End of the World'), something she is very good at. But she now oversees the restaurant Arlo Grey by Kristen Kish in Austin, while balancing life with her wife, Bianca Dusic, and hosting duties on Bravo's 'Top Chef.' I'll have more to share from my conversation with Kish and Colicchio in next week's newsletter. Meanwhile, here's what else has been happening ... During a wide-ranging interview with Food's Stephanie Breijo, restaurateur Lien Ta, the founder of Here's Looking at You, shared how mentally exhausting the restaurant business can be after revealing this week that she is closing her Koreatown restaurant on June 13. Of course, the slow pandemic recovery and erratic business after the recent fires factored into her decision, but it was the sudden death last year of her co-founder, the chef Jonathan Whitener, that weighed most on Ta. 'Eating his food,' Ta told Breijo, 'lifted my soul. ... The truth is that I created this restaurant with Jonathan, and he's eternally my collaborator. The remaining team are all in agreement that we want this to remain Jonathan's restaurant. We are missing our leader. Signing on for another five-year lease doesn't make sense when your leader is gone.' Ta also talked about the 'horrible dread' she felt at times 'wondering if anyone was going to book a reservation or come in at all, and who we were going to cut [from service].' 'I was definitely buried in a lot of grief,' she added. 'Sometimes I wasn't really sure what to focus on this last year, to be honest … a lot of restaurant owners are sort of programmed to always find solutions, to get through the day or the week or whatever your metric is. I've been doing that for a long time.' Breijo also had an intense conversation with chef Joshua Gil, who has Stage IV cancer and is in a contract dispute with his his former Mírame and Mírate business partner, but still recently was able to transform a strip-mall Mongolian barbecue restaurant into a Baja-style seafood spot called Three Flames with 'tacos, burgers, loaded fries and some of the city's most creative new tostadas and specials' while keeping the Mongolian barbecue. 'I'm a very stubborn a—,' Gil told Breijo. 'I like telling people, 'I'm Mexican. I don't know how to give up.'' One concession to his illness is that he is leaning hard on Anthony Rodriguez, who worked with Gil at Mírame and Mírate. 'These days he sees Rodriguez as the chef,' Breijo wrote, 'and himself as a cook who sometimes creates recipes.' 'I've been sitting with our identities: who we are, our images of who we are,' Gil said. 'I haven't donned the [chef's] whites in a long time, and yet I'm still referred to as 'chef.' We never lose that. It doesn't matter how away from the kitchen you are. You're constantly being called 'chef' by those that know you as such, and it's [hard] holding on to that livelihood, that lifestyle.' Nominations for the James Beard Media Awards, covering books, broadcast media and journalism, were announced on Wednesday. Among the many excellent cookbooks and broadcast, video and audio shows nominated is 'The SalviSoul Cookbook: Salvadoran Recipes and the Women Who Preserve Them' by L.A.'s Karla Tatiana Vasquez. As former Food reporter Cindy Carcamo wrote in her profile of Vasquez last year, 'SalviSoul' is 'the first-ever Salvadoran cookbook to appear on a Big Five imprint.' Food editor Daniel Hernandez talked with Vasquez after news of the nomination came out for our Cooking newsletter, which will publish tomorrow. (Subscribe for free here.) We also received the happy news that three of our own Food journalists are nominated for Beard awards. Restaurant critic Bill Addison is nominated in the dining and travel category for his recent guide to dining in San Francisco. Food's senior editor Danielle Dorsey is nominated in the home cooking category for her story 'The warmth of Black traditions around the Thanksgiving table.' And columnist Jenn Harris is up for the Craig Claiborne Distinguished Criticism Award. Her nominated stories are reviews of Sophy's Cambodian restaurant in Long Beach and Star Leaf in Pasadena, plus a column on why chili crisp and chili crunch are terms that should not be trademarked. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in Chicago on June 14.
Los Angeles Times
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Do you love or hate brunch?
The meal with a slice of cantaloupe at the end. Plus, breakfast burritos, Issa Rae's new pizzeria, remembering the Napa Valley icon at the middle of the 'Apostrophe War' and 'the art world's strange relationship with food.' I'm Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week's Tasting Notes. Chefs famously hate brunch. It's not considered a 'serious' meal. All that day drinking. All that hollandaise sauce. And, in recent years, plate after plate of avocado toast. Would their Blood Mary-soused customers even notice if the food wasn't as sharp at brunch as at dinner? And yet, here in Los Angeles some of our best chefs are making brunch a meal to take seriously. As senior Food editor Danielle Dorsey points out in our newly released guide to 32 great L.A. brunch spots, the same scallop tostada, crudo and lobster bisque roll you find at dinner at Ari Kolender's Found Oyster, is served at brunch. Jenn Harris says 'Top Chef' star Brooke Williamson is serving elevated versions of brunch classics at Playa Provisions. Betty Hallock loves the Japanese breakfast picks at Azay, in Little Tokyo (where I'm also a regular). And at Neal Fraser's Redbird I love the tender biscuits with strawberry-rhubarb jam, duck confit chilaquiles plus shrimp and grits. Then there is the excess of Baltaire in Brentwood, 'with tableside mimosas, a Champagne cart, a Bloody Mary cart, caviar bumps and a raw bar,' Harris writes, as well as prime filet Benedict and a 'Wagyu cheeseburger stacked on a buttery brioche bun with truffle mayonnaise.' The whole thing 'feels like a lavish party, with music from a DJ and a crowd that arrives dressed for the occasion.' It all fits with what Dorsey says in the guide's introduction: 'Weekend brunch invites us to suspend belief. It's easy to pretend that eggs don't run $10 for a dozen as we order forearm-length breakfast burritos and plate-sized scrambles. Furthermore, it's an excuse to say yes — yes to adding avocado, bacon and another round of drinks.' Of course, 'The Simpsons' nailed the idea of brunch back in 1990 when Marge's bowling instructor Jacques (voiced with a full sitcom French accent by Albert Brooks) tried to seduce her with a brunch invitation: 'You'll love it. It's not quite breakfast, it's not quite lunch, but it comes with a slice of cantaloupe at the end. You don't get completely what you would at breakfast, but you get a good meal.' Columnist Jenn Harris focused this week on the breakfast burritos of Pasadena. Namely, those of the storefront spot BBAD (her current favorite) at the Pasadena Hotel and Pool lobby and content creator Josh Elkin's breakfast chimichanga available this month at Dog Haus, with special mentions for Lucky Boy Burgers and Wake and Lake. Plus, she throws in the West L.A. spot Sobuneh for good measure. 'What makes a great breakfast burrito great,' she writes, 'is the insides, the way the melted cheese fuses with the crispy potatoes on a cushion of fluffy eggs. And the construction accounts for half of the burrito's appeal.' I knew Carl Doumani only from afar, through one of his daughters, Lissa Doumani, who ran one of Napa Valley's great now-gone restaurants, Terra, with her husband, Hiro Sone. (The two fell in love when they were young chefs in the kitchen at the original Spago in West Hollywood.) At Terra, Sone was known for his exquisite fish dishes, though I was most drawn to his earthier tripe stew, which at one point he made with Rancho Gordo beans and topped with Hokkaido scallops. I also once had the chance to stay in a guest house on Doumani's Stags' Leap Winery estate (now owned by Treasury Wine Estates) when Jonathan Gold and I were asked to speak at a food writers' conference with a few other journalists, including Ruth Reichl and the Atlantic magazine's Corby Kummer at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena. I remember a brigade of Weber grills set up on the grounds near the main house as the sun set over the vineyards for a wine-and-barbecue dinner that we attended as workshop participants. When I heard that Doumani had died last week at 92, I thought about the beauty of the land he once owned and understood one of the reasons the Los Angeles-born developer uprooted his family and moved to the Napa Valley. Food contributor Patrick Comiskey met Doumani when he was researching the Petite Sirah chapter of his book 'American Rhône.' In his obit and appreciation of Doumani, he writes about the confusion between Stags' Leap Winery and Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, which was founded by the late Warren Winiarski and won the famed Judgment of Paris. Winiarski sued Doumani when the dormant Stags' Leap Winery was revived, leading to what became as the 'Apostrophe War' when Doumani didn't back down. (Both names were allowed to stand.) Doumani's 'general obstreperousness,' as Comiskey put it, attracted other 'like-minded winery owners' who 'came to be known as the GONADS, or, the Gastronomical Order for Nonsensical and Dissipatory [sic] Society.' The wine icon 'lived the life of a bon vivant and raconteur that amounts to a fading breed in the Valley.' We loved talking with so many readers this past weekend at our Food x Now Serving booth at the L.A. Times Festival of Books. We'll have more on the authors who appeared next week. Meanwhile, Stephanie Breijo wrote about the new initiative launched this week by cookbook store Now Serving to help those who lost their homes in the Eaton and Palisades fires rebuild their cookbook collections. You can help by either buying requested cookbooks or participating in a series of raffles to raise money to replace the books that burned. Last week's Cooking newsletter, which is sent out on Sundays — here's a link if you don't subscribe to the free newsletter — came from Food contributor Carolynn Carreño, who wrote about 'the simple and decadent combination of bread and chocolate' and included four recipes from the Times archives: Nancy Silverton's Bittersweet Chocolate Tartufo With Olive Oil-Fried Croutons, Ray Garcia's Chocolate and Banana Bread Pudding and Pinot Bistro's Chocolate Croissant Pudding and Emily Alben's Chocolate Gelt Babka With Hazelnut Amaretti Filling and Chocolate Espresso Glaze. Thanks to the sorely missed Carolina Miranda, who used to write this paper's Essential Arts newsletter (plus many more essential stories), for sending me this essay from ArtReview by Chris Fite-Wassilak, which looks at 'the art world's strange relationship with food.' 'Food is art, great,' Fite-Wassilak writes. 'So why does it need to be constantly reframed as something transgressive or new to art?'
