Tag: Food Column

It's a little shocking how sushi has wiggled its way into the heart of America. The most expensive restaurant in the country is a sushi bar in New York; celebrities flock to hip L.A. spots where the actresses at the tables are thinner than the slices of hamachi. The most

Our college town has certainly grown up. In Claremont, home to some 7,000 or so college students, there are two wine bars, one gourmet cheese shop, a jazz and fondue club, and a dream gastropub for a Belgian beer connoisseur. A dive bar for cheap PBR or Coors Light? Not

Marie-Anne Cantin, arguably the queen of the cheese world, runs a fromagerie palace in Paris that smells of the most pungent rocquefort—and is situated in a cave made of cheese. It is impossible to leave Chez Cantin without ten pounds of Brie and chevre in your grasp and reeking of

While I was studying in Paris last spring, a French friend of mine asked if we should get a group together for brunch at Le Pain Quotidien. Normally, with chain restaurants so ubiquitous that their websites have a “choose a country” option, I would stick up my nose in disgust

Texas barbeque is all about the beef. Beef brisket or beef ribs, it doesn’t matter: your beef is grilled with the sauce on the side, because the beef is the focus of your meal. An outstanding barbequed brisket can be so tender, a plastic spoon could cut through it. While

For a small city like Claremont, the number of Italian restaurants—none of them named the Olive Garden!—we have to choose from is fairly astounding. We could be in San Gimignano for the sheer quantity of Italian food, except the freeways and Indian Hill don’t look much like medieval walls and

The moment diners set foot in the Bazaar by Jose Andres at the impossibly hip SLS Hotel in West Hollywood, an ordinary evening becomes surreal. The taste of liquefied olives mingles with an Alice in Wonderland-esque décor of mismatched chairs and vibrant colors, exuding a too-cool-for-you vibe created by a

Sandwiched between a New York pizzeria and a Shell gas station, most people probably miss Inka Trails unless they’re driving at a bumper-to-bumper crawl. This is a shame. There on Foothill Boulevard, just shy of the westernmost border of Claremont, resides the home to the narrowest parking lot known to

I have never dined at a restaurant suffering from more of an identity crisis than the year-old Christophe’s in downtown Upland. Far, far away from that In-N-Out-laden and Tropical Lei’d stretch of Foothill Boulevard that 5C students know as Upland, there is such a place as downtown, which strangely resembles

There is certainly no shortage of places around L.A. County to sample Mexican cuisine. Trucks roam the valley by the hundreds, dispensing al pastor tacos sliced freshly off the trampo spit, Mom-and-Pop, hole-in-the-wall institutions fill diners with carne asada burritos and chicken enchiladas, and little gems from Santa Monica to