Park Bench Café
Everything about the Park Bench Café is friendly: a simple eatery in the middle of Huntington Central Park (the biggest one in town) that serves easy meals for breakfast, lunch and those hungry times in between. You’re not going to find anything unexpected at the café, but it’s hard to find something you [...]

Lola’s and Number Nine
Retro Row has always served the eyes more than anything else, but Fourth Street can now look beyond wallets and into some stomachs, thanks to Lola’s and Number Nine. Together, the two restaurants mark a new moment for the vintage drag, and one that expands the local palate beyond Portfolio and the [...]

A.R. Supermarket
Whether you’re hungry or not, shopping at A.R. Supermarket will chew up at least an hour of your time. But that’s part of the market’s strategy. If A.R. actually meant for its customers to make it out in less than an hour, it wouldn’t force them to pass by jewelry displays, a shoe store [...]

Belmont Grill
Belmont Grill is impossible to miss, a loud place that occupies the same space on Second Street where Los Alamitos import Paul’s once cooked its burgers. And unless you made a habit out of Paul’s, chances are you won’t be able to tell the two apart—the menu is practically identical, the tiny interior space [...]

Mitsuwa’s cherry blossom mochi
Head to Mitsuwa hungry and you’re bound to walk out with a week’s worth of food, pulled in first by the market’s perfect produce then lured back for a second spin by the inevitable impulse buys. On top of all that, there’s a full food court that supplies everything from restaurant-bettering ramen [...]

Coco Reno’s Taco Salad
Everyone in Long Beach probably already knows about the tofu tacos and mushroom tacos at Coco Reno’s. Those who don’t are bound to sound about as ignorant as someone who can’t find the Pacific Ocean. But the restaurant’s vegetarian taco salad is a different story, an equally tasty meal that sometimes goes [...]

Breakfast at Natraj
Most Sundays it’s eggs Florentine and coffee—Bloody Mary, too, if you’re living on the edge—but sometimes having breakfast for breakfast just doesn’t sound so good, especially if brekkie gets rolling around 1 in the afternoon. So. What to eat—pizza? Burgers? Soup? How about tandoori chicken with a side of champagne? It’s certainly not [...]

Yogurtland
Some say that trends cycle through our minds every 17 years or so, and with Southern California locked in yet another frozen yogurt fad, that calculation seems just about right. But due to Pinkberry and all the other fruit-related spinoffs, it’s hard to figure out which places are actually good and which are just trendy [...]

Burrito Factory’s bean burrito
It takes cojones to name a restaurant Burrito Factory. This is Southern California, after all, not some Mexican-food-free land like Nebraska. We know our burritos like we know our traffic and smog. But although Burrito Factory isn’t as industrial as it sounds (no conveyor belts, no gargantuan burrito machines), the restaurant more [...]

Mama Ocllo’s Peruvian cookies
Simple as it is, Mama Ocllo’s advertising hits square in the stomach: photos of burger-sized alfajores (dusted in sugar and stuffed with only the darkest dulce de leche) that look like they could end any meal. Thankfully, the buttery Peruvian cookies, which best most of Europe’s multinational treasures, can end any meal. [...]