Recipe: How to make harira
When you learn to make traditional Moroccan harira from Meme Suissa, you're not learning to make harira from Meme Suissa. You're learning to make harira from her mother, from her grandmother, and so on. You're learning a recipe that goes back centuries. But of course Meme uses no recipe. Her daughter Kathy Shapiro stood by […]
Koreatown Lunch
At night Koreatown is Manhattan– packed restaurants, backed up valet stands, lines out the doors to even the diviest BBqs. By day, it's a different story. You might be the only customer. You'll see the families behind these family-run places. You'll see the servers plucking the stems off a haystack of sweet peas piled on […]
Why Ditmas Kitchen and Cocktails on Pico Will Succeed
High-end kosher restaurants in LA last about as long as an American Idol’s singing career. Every few months, one arrives in a blaze of publicity and expectation—Prime Grill, La Seine, etc.— and a captive audience of people who keep kosher and are wealthy enough to drop a couple hundred bucks on a bottle of Castel […]
The Kosher Bacon Donut
Harry Ben-Zvi, the founder and owner of something called The Glazed Donut Bistro, had a problem. He opened a new donut shop, and as a strongly-identified Jew, he wanted to post a mezuzah, the ritual amulet marking the entrance to a Jewish home or business, on his door. The problem was … well, I should […]
My lunch with a Los Angeles Tea Partier
Of the 3,977 angry e-mails I received last week, one stood out. “I am a Jew, a member of Temple Emanuel in Los Angeles, and the founder of the largest local, grass-roots Tea Party group in Los Angeles called the Hancock Park Patriots,” Mark Sonnenklar wrote.
People of the Vine: Rob Eshman talks Jews, wine and history with Jeff Morgan
Jeff Morgan is winemaker and co-owner of Covenant Wines, based in Napa Valley, where he makes kosher wine under the Covenant, RED C and Landsman labels. Rob Eshman: To start, let’s put aside, for a moment, the distinction between kosher and non-kosher wine and pose a more fundamental question: Why is wine so critical to […]
5 Steps to the Best Nicoise Salad
This story by Judy Zeidler about cooking for an empty nest really hit me hard. Judy is a glass-half-full bundle of enthusiasm, and I suppose her children follow suit. Their brood departs, they adjust their recipes, move on. I find myself not so… adjustable. Our son left for college two years ago and I […]
Katsuji Tanabe takes 'Chopped!'
Katsuji Tanabe is the onion of kosher chefs– every time you think you've figured him out, you find there;'s a whole other layer. Tonight Katsuji held a party at the Mexican Consulate near downtown Los Angeles to screen the episode of the Food Network show, “Chopped!” on which he appears as a contestant. I first […]
World of Flavor
Every two years, the Culinary Institute of America hosts its World of Flavors conference in its castle-like Napa Valley compound. Some of the planet’s best chefs show up, along with food purveyors from across the globe, and the endless meals, spread out in a massive hall lined with wine casks the size of Spanish galleons, […]
Lenny's Deli steps in to fill the Juniors void
Last night after seeing a movie at what seems to be the cultural center of West Los Angeles Jewish life — the Landmark Theatres at the Westside Pavilion — we walked over to the new Lenny's Deli. Lenny's filled the void left by Juniors — and I'm talking about a literal void. Juniors was 11,000 […]