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Los Angeles Times
27-07-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
4 homemade dog recipes fit for a canine king or queen
My dog's name is Milady — as you'd refer to an English noblewoman — and she lives up to it. She declines to go out in the rain, all 22 pounds of her holding strong as I lightly tug her leash in encouragement. Whenever someone comes over, she perches on their lap as if it's a throne. And despite my best efforts to break this habit, whenever I make a meal or order in, she hovers around my feet waiting for a treat of her own. After I've made my plate and if I deign to sit down and eat, she'll stubbornly stand in the kitchen and stare at me until I acquiesce. But Milady is the closest thing I have to a child, and as recipe developer Carolynn Carreño wrote about her dog Rufus, 'I felt it was my responsibility that Rufus lived as long as caninely possible, and to make sure that Rufus' every day on Earth was as good as I could make it.' For Carreño, that meant adopting the progressive-at-the-time task of making Rufus' food from scratch, especially after learning from a friend that many store-bought formulas contain corn and wheat — potential allergens for dogs. Instead, she purchased made-just-for-your-pet meat blends at Huntington Meats and mixed in steamed or baked sweet potatoes, fresh broccoli, ground beef and bone meal for a concoction she called Rufus' hash. While Milady typically eats vet-approved kibble and I don't make her food daily, during the summer her treats turn from dehydrated slices of sweet potato to bone broth that I freeze into cubes with blueberries, cucumbers or raspberries. And who knows? Maybe I'll start following Carreño's example and eventually devise a homemade meal plan for Milady. In the meantime, I'll be gauging her tastes with the following recipes. Eating out this week? Sign up for Tasting Notes to get our restaurant experts' insights and off-the-cuff takes on where they're dining right now. Carreño recommends using her recipe for Rufus as a 'jumping-off point' and adjusting based on what your pup likes. She recommends making the mixture in big batches, freezing it and stirring in boiling bone broth or water before the recipe. Cook time: 25 minutes. Makes about 3 quarts. Novelist and food writer Michelle Huneven rescued a dog — Tatty Jane — that had previously suffered from a bad diet. Determined to rectify that, she began researching homemade dog food and eventually landed on a blend of the following recipe with a topping of vet-approved kibble to ensure Tatty Jane got all of her recommended trace vitamins and the recipe. Cook time: 1 hour. Makes about 5 quarts. Former Food editor Amy Scattergood scored this recipe for dog biscuits from chef Lincoln Carson of now-shuttered Bon Temps restaurant. Carson once sold these treats alongside his famous French pastries. The recipe is perfect for vegetarians who prefer not to handle the recipe. Cook time: 2 hours 30 minutes. Makes about 2 dozen cookies. This gluten-free dog biscuit recipe was crafted by former Lincoln Cafe and Flower Candy Co. chef Cecilia Leung, with peanut butter as the main ingredient, along with grains and flours you might already have in your pantry. Get the recipe. Cook time: 1 hour. Makes about 3 dozen biscuits.
Los Angeles Times
26-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Their dream kitchens burned in the Eaton fire. What got them cooking again
Two cooks talk about loss and recovery. Plus, our summer cook-along with 'Chef That!' Also, advice on cooking for dogs and eating with dogs, taquito comfort and fan-service restaurants (or what Day 1 was like at the Tesla Diner). I'm Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week's Tasting Notes. The most beautiful kitchen I ever cooked in was far from perfect. It was built into one of six Pasadena apartments that in the 1920s had been carved out of a Victorian mansion designed by Frederick Roehrig, the architect behind Old Town Pasadena's Hotel Green and its surviving annex, Castle Green. The dining room and kitchen had once been a grand parlor room with a fireplace at one end and most of the original wood details still on the walls and ceiling. The kitchen's counter curved with the arc of several windows set into the bend of one wall, with soft sunlight filtering in through the greenery planted outside. But the stove, relocated and updated since the days Jonathan Gold and I occupied that apartment, was a finicky old thing. And the counter, so attractively placed, was too low for serious cooking. Our backs would often ache if there were too many vegetables to chop or dishes to wash. It was a dreamy kitchen, but it wasn't a dream kitchen. And yet, we made some of our happiest meals there. There are cooks I know who have had dream kitchens, spaces that were designed just for them and functioned according to their specific cooking needs. Ruth Reichl, author and former restaurant critic and editor, says she designed her U-shaped kitchen to fit her body and the open floor plan of the home she and her husband, Michael Singer, share in New York's Columbia County. With expansive views of the upper Hudson Valley, it's inviting but also intimate in its footprint; no more than two or three steps are required to reach most of her appliances and tools. During parties, Reichl is easily able to roll out pie dough while catching up with early-arriving guests and there is lots of counter space around the U for setting out platters of food that always tempt some hungry person before it's officially time to eat. Closer to home, I was lucky enough to be invited many times to the Altadena home of Michelle Huneven, novelist and food writer (often for this paper), and Jim Potter, an attorney specializing in environmental law and an accomplished bread baker. From big, crowded Seders at Passover to weekday soup meals, always with something wonderfully sweet at the end, I watched their modest cooking space expand and evolve into a beautiful, functional and comfortable modern space with a dining table at the center of the room that allowed guests to watch the interplay of two excellent cooks at work. 'I had a little 1,000-square-foot house, and when Jim and I married, that was fine for a while,' Huneven said recently in the Times Test Kitchen. 'Then he began to bake bread. And very shortly, everything in my little kitchen was covered with bread glue. I was like, 'We need a bigger kitchen.' Before we knew it, we'd designed a great big freestanding kitchen. I'm short, so in the place of overhead cabinets, we had windows out to our garden. He had his breadmaking area; I had my cooking area. We each had a sink. He had his own oven. And he had his own dishwasher. Praise the Lord.' Cookbook author Molly Baz's dream kitchen in Altadena was one I never saw in person but I interacted with it virtually through her 'Hit the Kitch' video series and Instagram feed. 'My home kitchen was also my place of work,' Baz said, sitting alongside Huneven in the Times Test Kitchen. 'My husband, [Ben Willett], designed the space as the heart of the home. It was an expansive space that was a hanging-out living room, lounge, bar, kitchen, all in this one large room. We designed the kitchen very intentionally to be the anchor of like everything I do, the place where I would shoot my cookbooks and all of my content, where I would develop all of my recipes. So we decided to do it all butter-colored, and it was just this beautiful monochromatic, creamy butter-yellow-colored dream.' As you've undoubtedly surmised by now, both Huneven and Baz lost their Altadena homes — and their dream kitchens — in the Eaton fire. 'We evacuated to a friend's house about 4:30 in the morning with another couple who lived much closer to Eaton Canyon,' Huneven said. 'When they learned that their house had burned, I found that so shocking that I just sat there with my hands over my mouth for about, I don't know, 15 minutes. I just couldn't absorb it. Then, at about 8 o'clock, Jim decided to drive up to our house. He later told me he'd known even before he drove up because he controlled the sprinklers and the solar panels from his phone, and nothing was responding. When he called me to say it was gone, he sent a picture of the house on the corner still burning with flames coming out of the windows, not a fire truck in sight. I was preconditioned for the loss, because I'd already reacted to one home burning down. I didn't cry until 48 hours later.' Baz's story is similar. 'I evacuated earlier, at 7:30 p.m., because some friends and neighbors had seen the fire, and it was creeping closer and closer,' she said. 'We never got a notice, but we decided, let's get out of here. Throughout the night, we were refreshing our phones, watching the map get populated with new homes that had burned. But the whole night, I was under the impression that my house had somehow by the grace of God gotten skipped because of this map. In the morning, my husband wanted to go to the house just to triple check and so, he got in the car and drove nervously up there. I got a call about 30 minutes later and he was just in tears. He was like, 'There's nothing left.' ' Huneven, whose newest, highly praised novel, 'Bug Hollow,' is anchored in Altadena, her longtime home, and Baz, who came to Altadena from Brooklyn in 2020 and started the mayo/sando sauce brand Ayoh! last year, are both terrific cooks with very different styles. When Baz came into Te Times to record a video demonstration of the highly craveable pistachio halva chocolate chunk cookie recipe she created for her second cook book 'More Is More,' I thought Huneven and Baz might want to meet each other. During their conversation about their experiences of loss and recovery, recorded by video producer Mark E. Potts, they immediately found things in common. 'One of the things that I wanted in the kitchen was a sofa,' Huneven said, 'so we had this beautiful, long window seat with big welted cushions. Every morning we would wake up and drink our tea and coffee there with the dog and look out into the garden and get ready for the day.' 'We also had a sitting area where we would start the day,' Baz said. 'We had a built-in couch that my husband designed, the first coffee table he ever made, and a chaise longue, which didn't really have a use until I had my son 10 months ago. It became the perfect place to nurse. I would have my coffee and nurse him on the chaise longue every morning. It was just kind of a perfect place.' After the fire, neither Huneven nor Baz felt much like cooking. 'I rebelled,' Huneven said. 'I didn't cook for two months. Or, rather, I cooked like two dinners, and it was the same dinner where I stuck a bunch of cherry tomatoes on a sheet pan, boiled some pasta and that was it, with maybe some burrata. I don't even remember how we ate. I mean, I say I wasn't traumatized, but it really was a blur.' 'I didn't cook for a while either,' Baz said. 'I got back into the kitchen to finish a recipe I was working on the day of the fire. It was a savory egg quiche, but treated like a burnt Basque cheesecake, cooked at a really high heat, a crustless quiche. I thought about taking it with me when we evacuated, but I expected I'd be back the next day. One of the the last things I said before I left was, 'Damn, I just wish the quiche was a little more burnt.' Because I had this vision of a really burnished exterior. And so later the quiche got burnt. Once I pulled myself together enough to think about food, that's the next thing I made. It was really comforting and cathartic. I made everyone leave the kitchen and was like, 'I'm cooking. I need to be alone.' So it was a bit of a therapy session for myself. And yeah, the quiche was delicious.' Both Baz and Huneven are living in different rental homes in Echo Park while they figure out the logistics of rebuilding. 'So much of cooking is a graceful dance,' Baz said, 'and I felt so ungraceful for the first three weeks that it made me not want to cook. I've gotten over that hump, and I think I'm regaining my muscle memory in this new space now. I feel like I can cook and not fumble around.' 'We moved into a completely empty house, nothing in the drawers. We had a couple of camping pans that had been in the trunk of our our truck. But one of the things that was so amazing is that we landed in a sea of generosity. I'm not wearing any clothes that I bought. They're all gifts. And people furnished our kitchen with a house-warming party, but it was really a kitchen warming. 'The incredible kindness and generosity of people, that's a gift I never anticipated,' Huneven continued. 'It's also really lessened the trauma. Because, you know, it's stuff, and it can be replaced. Houses can be rebuilt. Somebody said to me, 'This is the worst thing that's ever happened to you.' And I'm like, 'No, it's not.' You know, the loss of people that I've loved, some bad breakups in my youth. Now those were bad. This was bad too, but it's not the worst thing.' 'We lost all of the physical things,' Baz said, agreeing with Huneven. 'But it highlights what you do have, which is your relationships and your community. And that becomes the most important thing in the world. My friends and my family, the people who are holding me together in all of this, are everything to me right now. All of the bulls— just washes away. You learn and understand like that living is actually about humanity and people. The rest can burn down, and you're going to be OK.' Baz is just one of the cooks and chefs who have been to the Times Test Kitchen in recent weeks to meet our 'Chef That!' challenge: Come up with a recipe that demonstrates chef skills and creativity but is still simple enough for an average home cook to make. Our 'Chef That!' video series is ongoing, but this Sunday we're publishing a special cook-along recipe section full of summer recipes from the chef series plus a few from cookbook authors in our 'Book to Cook' video series. Among the recipes to look for, home-oven-cooked beef ribs with outdoor smoker flavor from Andrew and Michelle Muñoz of Moo's Craft Barbecue, spicy cold mung bean noodles from 88 Club's Mei Lin, Hailee Catalano's 'mean, green' turkey sandwich, the egg salad sando that Father's Office founder Sang Yoon serves at his Helm's Bakery complex in Culver City and an incredible grapefruit cream pie from Quarter Sheets' dessert guru Hannah Ziskin. Los Angeles, says senior Food editor Danielle Dorsey, is ranked the nation's most popular city to own a dog. It's also a very good city for eating out with a dog. Dorsey put together a guide to the best dog-friendly patios to take your pup as part of our 'Dog Days of Summer' collaboration with our features team. Regular contributor Carolynn Carreño explored the evolution toward human-grade dog food over the last 15 years and provides a recipe for Rufus hash, a raw dog food blend she used to make for her late dog, Rufus. It's made with ground beef, turkey or chicken, organ meat, bone meal, steamed broccoli and steamed sweet potato. Novelist Michelle Huneven (see above) also shares her recipe for the homemade hash she feeds her rescue dog, Tatty Jane. Like Carreño, she uses ground meat and broccoli (or spinach) but also includes peas, brown or white rice, fish oil or sardines, finely ground baked eggshells for bone health and, for the antioxidants, frozen-fresh cranberries. Chef Wes Avila's father, Jose Luis Avila, is a legal resident of the U.S. But he felt so fearful of being caught up in the ICE raids happening all over California that after more than 50 years in this country he recently moved to Mexico. Avila told Food reporter Stephanie Breijo that when he's missing his father he makes a version of the Durango-style caldillo, or stew, that his father used to cook. 'It connects me to him,' said Avila, who leads the kitchens at MXO and Ka'teen. 'I talk to him every other day. We have a very close relationship.' And when he's missing his mother, who died in 1995, he makes beef taquitos, which he thinks was her favorite dish — or at least, he says, 'our favorite dish for her to make when my brother, my sister and I were kids.' He shared recipes for both dishes. And Dee-Ann Durbin reports on Coca-Cola's decision to 'add a cane-sugar version of its trademark cola to its U.S. lineup this fall, confirming a recent announcement by President Trump. ... Coke currently sells Mexican Coke, which is made with cane sugar, in the U.S.'
Los Angeles Times
19-07-2025
- Los Angeles Times
The passion and wild herbs of a Tuscan chef
A meal in Tuscany's Valdichiana. Plus, L.A.'s best new Armenian restaurant. Avner Levi's cherry-topped hamachi crudo. The chicken Caesar wrap comeback. And the best wedding gifts for restaurant lovers. I'm Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week's Tasting Notes. Most of the time we travel to escape our everyday lives, to experience something new. But sometimes we travel to return to something familiar. I've been returning to the same part of Italy, an Umbrian town where it's easy to slip across the A1 into Tuscany, for more than 20 years. For many of those years I've made my way to Osteria La Vecchia Rota in Marciano della Chiana, a small fortress town between Arezzo and Siena. Two things bring me back. Certainly, there is the food, intensely local pastas and roasted meats you are unlikely to find in any of the thousands of Italian restaurants that exist in the U.S. And then there is the proprietor, Massimo Giavannini, who appears before you in a burgundy-red chef's apron and matching chef's hat that, in contrast to the stiff toques favored by classically trained French chefs, flops jauntily to the side — a sign of friendliness and approachability. You can order from a printed menu, but most of the time, if he is not handling a rush of orders in the kitchen, Giavannini — who has called himself 'the innkeeper with a passion for organic produce' — prefers to describe the dishes for you in his distinctive raspy voice. These are the moments you realize you have found yourself in the hands of a passionate cook, one who wants you to understand what is special about the ingredients that will go into your food. 'You know pesto,' he said on one visit, 'but our grandmother and grandfather made another pesto. We make it with selvatica mint [or wild mint], good garlic, good oil, pine nuts and walnuts.' He explains that the portulaca, or purslane, which sauces his tortelli, is critical to the region in summer — for people and for animals — 'because inside the leaf it's like water ... it's important for energy, to cool off.' Of the black truffle-topped ricotta gnudi I always order, he says, 'Ours are green because they are made with ... ' He struggles with the English word and then smiles big when I ask, 'nettles?' 'Yes!' he says. We have done this information exchange before and I love it every time. Often, I'll learn something new, but mostly I like being in his now-familiar presence. Of course, it was my late husband and this paper's previous restaurant critic, Jonathan Gold, who first brought me and our kids — and then our friends — to La Vecchia Rota thanks to his obsession with trying as many places in the guidebook Osterie d'Italia, put out by Italy's Slow Food organization. I didn't see it in this year's guide, but at one point La Vecchia Rota — specializing, as its website says, in 'the now-forgotten cuisine of the Valdichiana' — was awarded a 'snail,' the guide's highest ranking for restaurants that epitomize Slow Food's cook-local ethos. Last month, a big group of us gathered in the piazza outside the restaurant, where tables are set out in the summer for al fresco dinners. Plates of our favorite pastas were passed around, including one of hand-cut squares of dough sauced with pears and Pecorino cheese and another made with Tuscany's big-bulbed garlic known as aglione di Valdichiana, then platters of chicken 'made the way it used to be,' roast pork, onions cooked in the ashes of the wood-fired oven and some of the best potatoes I've ever eaten. We may have been a group of outsiders with no actual roots in this land, but after being fed here by Giavannini year after year, this corner of Tuscany has started to feel a bit like home. Ever since I shared a meal with critic Bill Addison early in his research for this week's review of Tun Lahmajo in Burbank, I haven't stopped craving the Armenian restaurant's many meaty and cheesy breads, stews and roasted potatoes hand-mashed at the table. Since then, I've tried to get other people to come try what Addison calls 'L.A.'s best new Armenian restaurant' — in part because Tun Lahmajo serves dishes that go beyond the classic repertoire of charcoal-grilled meats and sides we've come to love in Southern California. I wasn't always successful. Maybe now, with Addison's official blessing on the place, I can persuade my friends to come along. 'A trio of friends — all from L.A.'s Armenian community, and all high school dropouts — scraped together $900 in 2017 because they believed that their Nashville-style fried chicken stand was the future,' writes Food's reporter Stephanie Breijo. 'Now Dave's Hot Chicken is worth $1 billion.' Breijo describes how Arman Oganesyan, Tommy Rubenyan and Dave Kopushyan (a former line cook at Thomas Keller's now-closed Bouchon Bistro in Beverly Hills) went from an unpermitted pop-up in an East Hollywood parking lot to the central figures in 'one of L.A.'s most astounding small-business success stories' after being acquired in June by private equity firm Roark Capital. It's a classic L.A. story — one more national fast-food chain born in Southern California. Of course, Dave's is not the L.A. restaurant that popularized hot chicken in Southern California. That would be Howlin' Ray's started in 2015 by Johnny Ray Zone. He gives full credit to the Black cooks of Nashville, who started bringing the fire to fried chicken, especially the family behind Prince's Hot Chicken, started in the 1930s by Thornton Prince after an angry lover tried to get her revenge on the philandering entrepreneur with an overdose of spice on his fried chicken. (The name of the woman who made that first fuming batch seems to have been lost to history.) Angelenos have access to the Prince legacy through Kim Prince, who partnered with Dulan's on Crenshaw owner Greg Dulan to start the Dulanville Food Truck. Back in 2020, columnist Jenn Harris made hot fried chicken with Prince and Zone for her Bucket List video series. It still makes good watching. Cento Raw Bar has become one of L.A.'s hottest new restaurants of 2025. Its chef, Avner Levi, came to the Times Test Kitchen recently for our 'Chef That!' video series to show us how he makes hamachi crudo, fresh jalapeños and an unusual but delicious addition of sweet cherries. Watch Levi break down half of a hamachi into two filets and then transform the fish into a perfect summer appetizer in this video. Then try the recipe for yourself. It's a wonderful summer dish. Reporter Lauren Ng talked with Shibumi chef-owner David Schlosser about his decision to close the Kappo omakase-style restaurant on Saturday. 'In the end of 2023 to 2024, things really flattened out,' he said. 'The staff is the same, the recipes were the same. The only thing that wasn't the same was people just weren't coming in.' And in another loss for downtown L.A., Verve Coffee Roasters has closed its Spring Street location, the first shop it opened in Southern California. 'Like many businesses in downtown L.A., we saw lasting changes in foot traffic patterns that deeply affected day-to-day operations,' a Verve spokesperson told Ng in an email. 'The level of consistent foot traffic simply didn't support what is needed to sustain the cafe in a high-overhead environment like downtown.' Its other L.A. locations remain open. Chef Michael Mina's Mother Tongue in Hollywood has also closed, and Cabra, the Peruvian-inspired restaurant from Girl & the Goat chef Stephanie Izard at downtown L.A.'s Hoxton hotel is closing on July 31.
Los Angeles Times
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Why a Mexican restaurant is among the first places you should eat in Copenhagen
Finding great Mexican food in unexpected places. Losing the city of L.A.'s oldest restaurant. A guide to the vegan ice cream boom. The Italian potatoes that changed Jenn Harris' mind about fat fries. And 'some guy on Tripadvisor.' I'm Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week's Tasting Notes. As Angelenos, we don't think twice about eating Mexican food one day, Thai food the next and Korean food the day after that. Weekend breakfast with friends is as likely to be Chinese rice porridge as it is a plate of buckwheat pancakes or chilaquiles. In fact, we rarely bother to break down our dining choices by cuisine. It's more, let's go get some ramen or birria or boat noodles. But when we travel, we tend to eat more conservatively. With limited time in a new place, we usually stick to what we perceive as the food of the country we're visiting. Trying to find decent Mexican food in Italy, for instance, while not impossible, isn't easy in a country that prizes the joys of hyper-regionality. You take a risk ordering pasta alla carbonara (a seemingly simple dish that's hard to perfect if you don't take your time with the guanciale) outside of Rome or tortellini en brodo in any Italian region other than Emilia-Romagna. And yet, when I landed in Copenhagen late last month, with all the glories of smørrebrød and cutting-edge Nordic cuisine to explore — including two places in the city (Noma and Geranium) named at different points the No. 1 restaurant in the world on the World's 50 Best list — the first place I headed was a Mexican restaurant. Of course, the restaurant, Sanchez, is no ordinary Mexican spot. The owner, Rosio Sanchez, was the head pastry chef for Rene Redzepi at Noma for five years before opening her first Copenhagen taqueria, Hija de Sanchez, in 2015. She briefly returned to collaborate with Redzepi on Noma's 2017 Mexico pop-up in Tulum. If a real-life version of 'The Bear' character Marcus (Lionel Boyce) had been sent to Copenhagen for pastry chef training at the world's best restaurant in 2014, Sanchez likely would have been his mentor, not Will Poulter's character Luca. Indeed, Sanchez appears in the series' chef-packed Season 3 finale talking about why she loves to cook. And one of Sanchez's former chefs, Laura Cabrera, has risen to lead her own kitchen at the zero-waste restaurant Baldío in Mexico City. When I first ate Sanchez's Mexican cooking in 2016 at Hija de Sanchez, I was immediately struck by the skill of her tortilla making, not easy in a place where masa is not readily available, and the way she was able make food that felt completely Mexican while incorporating Danish ingredients — a fjord shrimp taco, for instance, or gooseberry salsa. Never mind that as she told Margy Rochlin in this paper during a 2017 guest chef appearance at the L.A. Times Food Bowl with Sqirl's Jessica Koslow, some of her first customers in Copenhagen called tortillas 'pancakes.' Or that when she saw Danes eating tacos with a fork and knife she had an illustrated and nonjudgmental 'how to eat your taco' poster made. Since those early days, Copenhagen eaters have taken to her tacos. There are now five Hija de Sanchez taquerias across the city. But Sanchez was not solely interested in exploring tacos. At the end of 2017 she opened Sanchez, a restaurant that elevates Mexican cuisine while still keeping it approachable. In its current form, the restaurant offers a five-course tasting menu for the rough equivalent of $82 with the option of an even more affordable three-course meal for about $59. If you want still more, you can add extra courses — such as an oyster with a sauce of habanero and sea buckthorn, or a slender bean, sheep cheese and cured egg burrito. The oyster was a good, bracing start. And lime-cured langoustine ceviche, served aguachile style, with a verde sauce and fermented tomato water, kept the freshness going. But it was the salbute, with a jolt of intense corn from the puffed fried tortilla and layers of deep, complex flavors from chicken cooked in recado negro sauce, made with charred chiles, plus grilled bladderwrack seaweed in place of lettuce, a quail egg and a drizzle of habanero-árbol chile oil that showed how Sanchez is combining tradition, local ingredients and her own new way of approaching Mexican food. Monkfish cheek, marinated al pastor style, beautifully charred and served with herbs on a lightly charred lettuce leaf came next. It all led to carnitas tacos that we assembled ourselves with freshly made tortillas, herbs, salsa, pickled jalapeño and onion, plus, because this is Copenhagen, green sea buckthorn. The night's most memorable dish, however, was dessert. The menu's description was understated: chocolate mousse. But what is usually a satisfying but unexciting dish came out with a ring of salsa macha, crunchy with pumpkin seeds and preserved ancho chiles, a layer of whipped cream and, for good measure, roasted kelp and drips of olive oil. The mousse itself was made chocolate from Chiapas and hid a nugget of more chiles underneath. The spicy and sweet flavors felt both old and new. It's the kind of dish that shows that Mexican cuisine even thousands of miles away from Mexico itself is still evolving. Now if only we could get Sanchez to open a branch of her restaurant here in L.A. It's been a tough week for L.A. restaurants. Karla Marie Sanford reports that Cole's French Dip, which opened in 1908, making it the city's oldest restaurant, will close its doors on Aug. 2. 'By the time the Olympics get here, all these mom and pops will be gone,' said Brian Lenzo, senior vice president of operations for Cedd Moses' Pouring With Heart, which took over the downtown L.A. restaurant in 2008. 'Hopefully it's a wakeup call for the right people to step up and figure out a plan.' Another downtown loss: David Schlosser announced that his rigorous Japanese-focused restaurant Shibumi — last year he recreated a 1789 Japanese banquet — will permanently close on July 19. Senior food editor Danielle Dorsey reports that Alisa Reynolds' soul food bistro My 2 Cents, on The Times' 101 Best Restaurants in L.A. list, will close on July 31 after 12 years on Pico Boulevard. Reynolds plans to focus on catering, pop-ups and collaborations. And Lauren Ng reports that Melody, the Virgil Village natural wine bar that hosted many pop-ups during its nearly 10 years in business, will close this weekend, though owner Eric Tucker will open a temporary 'Bar Band-Aid' pizza spot on July 16 until the Craftsman bungalow space can be sold. But there are some signs of resilience even in this tough climate. Ng spent time at the recently reopened El Gato Night Market, which shut down for two weeks after ICE raids heated up in Los Angeles. Though more than half of the market's 70 to 80 vendors had not returned in the first days of the reopening and business was slow at first, the crowds started to return after a few days. 'Vendors, many of whom worry for their safety and the future of their businesses, show up for work out of necessity,' Ng writes, 'but also to provide comfort and familiarity for customers, most of whom are Latino and often bring their young children.' Meanwhile, when Maria Sanchez, known on social media as 'Maria la de los Burritos,' was asked to leave her usual burrito-selling spot outside a Home Depot after ICE raids started happening, she was undeterred. She packed her gold-foil-wrapped burritos in the trunk of her car and found eager customers at construction sites. Her carne asada burritos typically sell out in 30 minutes. Contributor Madeleine Connors profiles the maker of these internet-viral burritos that are also doing some good for L.A. workers. Restaurants handle negative customer feedback in different ways. Some, as this sign seen outside the burger bar Sliders in Copenhagen, embrace it. The invitation: 'Try the worst sliders some guy on Tripadvisor has ever had in his entire life alongside enjoying our 'terrible service.' ' It certainly got my attention. If I hadn't already filled up on smørrebrød, I would have stopped in for a 'lamb za'atar spectacular' or 'decadent Dane' (beef patty, melted Danish cheese, caramelized onions and pickled apple) slider.
Eater
10-07-2025
- Business
- Eater
High-End Halal Chain Meat Moot Is Coming to Seattle
South Lake Union will soon be home to a swanky new spot specializing in smoked meat and fire. Meat Moot is a chain that was founded in Istanbul in 2021 before spreading across the Middle East and planting locations in Miami and the Chicago suburbs. In August, its 3,200-square-foot 'West Coast flagship' restaurant will debut on the corner of Fairview Avenue and Republican Street, says spokesperson Pria Dalrymple, serving an 'upscale' menu of smoked lamb and beef, plus rice and side salads. Meat Moot is obviously centered around its meats, which are slowly smoked on wood and then chopped and seasoned by line chefs who perform made-for-Instagram flourishes with knives and blowtorches (they got training at the Chicago location, says Dalyrmple). The cuts of lamb and beef will sell for around $47 a pound, according to a menu on the Seattle Meat Moot website. What sets Meat Moot apart from some of the other high-end international chains that have shown up in the Seattle metro area recently is that it is entirely halal. That means no pork and no alcohol — Dalrymple says that there will be a bar with nonalcoholic drinks, which is what a growing number of diners seem to prefer over cocktails anyway. A Green Lake dive is fighting to stay open The Little Red Hen, a 92-year-old bar known for hosting live country music and line dancing, may soon have to close because of a dispute with its landlord, reports the Seattle Times. According to the paper, the disagreement stems from landlord Ruoxi Zhang's ending an informal agreement between Hen owner Dominic Shim and a neighboring bar that allowed the two businesses to split trash collection costs. In response to this change, which Shim said would cost the Hen $40,000 a year, Shim fired off a late-night 'emotional' email to Zhang, who then issued a notice to terminate the month-to-month lease. Shim wants to stay, and Zhang told the Times that 'I remain hopeful that the situation can be resolved peacefully — including if the tenant is willing to discuss a future lease respectfully and in good faith.' If an agreement isn't reached, the Hen will have to leave at the end of July. Voodoo Doughnut is expanding to the Eastside Less than a year after opening a Seattle location, the quirky Portland-based chain Voodoo Doughnut is already expanding across Lake Washington. The Puget Sound Business Journal reports that Voodoo has started work converting a former Rudy's Barbershop in downtown Bellevue into its latest shop. 'We're excited to bring Voodoo to Bellevue' Voodoo CEO Chris Schultz said in a press release. 'The city has a great energy and a strong sense of community that fits perfectly with our brand. We can't wait to share our doughnuts and a little bit of magic with everyone in the area.' Food with a side of violin The Tasting Notes series from the Seattle Chamber Music Society is back for a second year. This is an event hosted by violinist James Ehnes and James Beard Award–winning author-slash-overall-food-guy J. Kenji López-Alt. For one night only (July 25), guests can watch some of Seattle's top chefs silently prepare dishes while listening to live classical music. This year the chefs include boldfaced names like Renee Erickson (the Walrus and the Carpenter, among other restaurants), Lee Kindell (Moto Pizza), Kelly Van Arsdale (Spinnaker Chocolate), Kevin Smith (Beast and Cleaver), and Food Network star Shota Nakajima. Tickets are $65, and include access to a Spinnaker 'chocolate experience' and an afterparty with Moto pizza. For more information, go here. Eater Seattle All your essential food and restaurant intel delivered to you Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
