Leave your wallet open at At Last Café

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
There is something vaguely un-American (or at the very least un-Californian) about the interior of At Last Café—could be the number of tables (six), or the space between them (not much), or the separation between the dining room and the kitchen (there is none). For [...]

Sunnin stands apart from Second Street’s Lebanese trio

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Sunnin is a restaurant turned outside-in, an alleyway of a place where fake balconies bulge out of the wall and decorative shutters stay permanently sealed. In that faux courtyard, the restaurant feels as though it has an open-air café stuck inside, lights streaming off the [...]

Ikko’s superior spectacle

PHOTO by RICK POON
Ikko hums with the tiniest vibration. It’s there in everything from the low tones of the restaurant’s jazz fusion to the clanging sounds of conversations from its six small tables. And that makes for a definite pulse about the place, a gentle resonance that shakes the chairs and plates before [...]

Digging through the details at Nosh Café

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Susan McKenna rolls up words with the kind of ease only an Australian accent can produce, tying together quick jumps of the tongue that sound through most of her tiny Nosh Café. She’s there most days (the place closes down when McKenna heads out of town) [...]

Silk Thai The Redeemer

PHOTO by RICK POON
Silk Thai is a place of pure color. Beyond its nautical façade, the restaurant opens up like an orchid: leaves of green, petals of red, bulbs of golden yellow. On the table, plates burst with patches of purple and orange. Even the sun seems colored here, refracted past the [...]

Inside! Free million-dollar Indian breakfast idea!

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
My Indian friend M brought me to Kamal Palace on a spectacular July weekday, noon sun slanting through the restaurant’s nearly floor-to-ceiling windows, boats like a SoCal still-life in the adjacent Marina Pacifica, waiters in actual ties drifting silently up to the table with just mounds of [...]

Charlie Palmer takes his first Pacific steps at South Coast Plaza

PHOTO by RICK POON
Charlie Palmer at Bloomingdale’s feels like fall. Past all its glass are fading shades of yellow and brown and a staff barely brightened in mild tans and rusted oranges. At the center of the restaurant, a near-leafless tree is stained into slabs [...]

Lola’s brings (most of) Guadalajara to Long Beach

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Lola brought her recipes to Retro Row from Guadalajara, and it took awhile—the “We’re Finally Open” sign that’s hanging directly across the street from where the rejuvenated Art Theater will soon reopen is no joke, although by now she can laugh about all the hoops [...]

Believe in the meatless meals of Veggie Grill

PHOTO by RICK POON
Veggie Grill has meat on its mind. It’s a topic that makes for awkward thoughts, no doubt, as the restaurant definitely isn’t dreaming about the usual fantasies of flesh. Instead, the place is far more focused on mulling over the finer points of taste and [...]

Michael’s on Naples storms the island

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
At first, the servers at Michael’s on Naples seem stuck together, waiting in the back of the place in a single khaki clump. It’s not until the night wears on that the staff is pulled apart, each member running routes with baskets of bread and quartinos of [...]