A truly great burger, whatever its proportions and however tidy its construction, is a perilous proposition. That this sandwich-in-the-round sits not only on a bun but also on the brink of greasy collapse is fundamental to its gratification. ___________________ The...
LA
At London’s Pizza East, love is in the air pockets
Who knows why an April breeze never remains? Why stars in the trees hide when it rains? Love comes along, casting a spell Will it sing you a song? Will it say a farewell? Who can tell? Could the great lyricist Johnny Mercer have had pizza in mind when he matched these...
Does anyone know what rare is anymore?
When I ordered my bespoke burger rare at the Santa Monica  (California) location of The Counter, my waitress asked, "Do you know what rare is?" Odd question, I thought, to be asking a native English speaker fluent in basic menu vocabulary. I nodded yes, missing my...
A siphon coffee at LAMILL COFFEE in 4 minutes & 15 images
The world’s best New York pastrami is still not in New York
How much heat did I, a native New Yorker and food critic for the hometown Daily News, take for insisting that the pastrami at the LA delicatessen Langer's was superior to anything in New York? Â My sanity, as much as my judgment, was called into question when LA Times...
Spared the disgrace of a cow’s milk cappuccino
Caffe Luxxe pulls some of LA's best espresso shots and, situated amid the casual-chic shops of Santa Monica's moneyed Montana Ave, it also pulls in a sizable share of holistic mommies and bohemian millionaires.  There were in fact no empty tables for my brother Roy,...