Past Stories
The Wow Factor
Talk about an abundance of riches. Entering the SportsWatch Bar and Grill to watch a game, have a beer or enjoy some food is a slightly overwhelming, at times even dizzying cornucopia of sports bar accoutrements. Like a plethor...
Slice of El Salvador
Pupusa—say it with me slowly kids—pu-pu-sa. It’s a fun word, a sexy word and, yes, a delicious one. Hell, I’ll say it again, pu-pu-sa. It’s a word designed to screw up spell-checks, confound those looking for macho-co...
Poetic Justice for the Senses
If something about Rumi’s Restaurant sings songs of the familiar, think back to Darya Fine Persian Cuisine in Orange County. Owner Bashir Hassanzadi has brought much of the same elegance and sophisticated refinement of a Dary...
Not Just Any Pub
If you’ve ever heard those clever little five-lined poems that have a similar rhyming scheme akin to “There once was a man from Nantucket” then you know already know what a limerick is. However funny and clever these rhym...
Homecoming at the Pinoy Greasy Spoon
Nanay Gloria opened eight months ago at the Fiesta Food Market on La Sierra and Magnolia, it was like a homecoming. You see, the thing about a restaurant located in an ethnically-owned market is that luring aromas of mother’s...
From The Top Of The Bun To The Bottom
We often indulge in the instant gratification of immediate food placed in our hands via fast food but we all know that if the burger is created quickly (or if we suspect that it’s been sitting in a food heater…
More Than Meets the Eye
From strip malls and dark alleys to lush gardens and sea-side seating, good eats are found virtually anywhere and everywhere. We’ve reviewed places hidden in between laundromats and water stores, behind trees and gardens and,...
101 Ways to Pleasure the Gut
Back when I was a young lass climbing the corporate ladder, a trip down to the Tummy Stuffer meant more than just satisfying the hunger pangs that would announce itself long before the lunch hour. It meant pleasuring the boss...
Bamboo Isn’t Just For Pandas
Imagine a European restaurant—that’s right, an enterprise dedicated to providing the entire European dining experience, from paella to Shepherd’s pie, from foie-gras to schnitzel with a dash of sturgeon on the side. Whate...
Simply Fresh
I like Chef Freddy Rieger, the executive chef at the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio. It’s hard not to enjoy a guy who ran restaurants for Trump and Steve Wynn and has the stories to go along with it,…
Pub Crawl
Let’s keep it real here, pubs are great places to hang out, grab some food, watch a game or just drink with friends— this is what it’s about. Normally the focus is more on drinks than meals but at McAlan’s…
Dining Fine
Buzz Cuccia talks and thinks fast, unflappable in demeanor even while he’s spooning soup and breaking garlic bread with me at one of the wooden benches that abound at Vince’s Spaghetti. Despite owning a pasta-serving machin...
Making All the Right Moves
Alter your current expectations of Mexican food with Sal & Limon, which is here to mix up your reality of how good a gourmet Mexican meal can taste.
The location is small, the shopping center is quiet, and the name…
Worth the Trip
I recently spent a quality two hours at the Newark airport, my first foray into New Jersey since I was 9, and while nothing about the experience was especially appetizing, I left with a vague sense that Jersey was more…
Don’t Cry Over Wilted Lettuce
There will always be that terrible place you dined at years ago that still haunts you in the back of your mind, reminding you of abominable service and dare I say . . . horrible meals. However most restaurants can…
Bargain Bites
The restaurants of University Village must often compete for customer’s business, especially the budget-afflicted students of the nearby university. Many restaurants have come and gone in this shopping center due to failure b...
British Invasion
The Bulldog Pub lies hidden in the corner of a shopping center, sitting back from view of the busy street, and because of this it’s difficult for the casual passerby to spot. Should you get close enough on almost any…
Aloo Out There!
I have a confession to make: I have never had Indian cuisine prior to my visit to Curry and Kabab. Rest assured however that now I am plagued by cravings for the dishes I consumed on my visit that fateful…
A Tip of the Hat
Nothing feels more comforting than a well-constructed sandwich. Every mouthful contains the right proportion of bread, meat and vegetable that stomachs churn happily and faces glow in utter fulfillment; yielding bite of warm, t...
Kimchi Obsessed? Burrito Crazed?
Cart envy? I’m not talking about Mario-Kart for the Wii, and I’m not talking Go-Kart racing off the 60 freeway. No, I’m discussing the phenomenon that plagues us Inland folk when the subject of food trucks and cart cookin...
What’s in a Name?
I’ve got no serious beef with chain bar/restaurants like BJ’s and the like; they generally offer a pleasant place to watch a game while gulping down a drink and an appetizer or two, usually with a “zany” dipping sauce o...
Beware of Burgers
You’re not supposed to be able to mess up a burger. Really, you’re not.
Steven’s Place—a divey, diner-y burger joint in Corona—proves that belief wrong. Dead wrong.
And that makes me a bit sad and disappointed. Trul...
Quality vs. Quantity
In the book A Cook’s Tour by Anthony Bourdain, the noted chef eats bird nest soup, which contains, amazingly enough, birds’ nests. On his show Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern travels the globe searching out strange and se...
This Ain’t No Buffet
When I was growing up, casino food had a certain bletch factor, a stale buffet and smoke-filled diner ambiance that suggested overly-fried meats, portly men from the Midwest smoking cigars and mushy apples. Or at least that’s...
Trippin’ on the Fu Man Choo Choo
Since it would be much too easy to make an Orient Express joke about a Chinese restaurant housed inside real train cars on real tracks, I opted for the much cleverer headline above. Still, there’s something appropriate about ...
Middle of the Road
Where’s the beef? Well . . . it’s here at Bravo Burgers . . . but that’s it. That’s all you get. Just the beef. No sizzle. No flash. No pizzazz. No “x factor” to the food or dining experience…
Smells Like Weiner Nirvana
The Chicago dog—the hot dog specifically—is a much-mythologized piece of Americana; a slightly mysterious meat product that reminds us of the Windy City as much as Al Capone, shady politics and Da Bears. It is normally serv...
Papi Knows Best
Not to go all Minutemen on anyone, but at times it seems as if there are too many Mexican restaurants in California these days. They’re everywhere; on every street, on every corner, so ubiquitous we hardly notice the latest p...
