Yucatán Grill keeps on

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Even with more than a decade of dishes behind it, Yucatán Grill remains stuffed, turning over tables with a speed usually reserved only for the most youthful restaurants. It never takes long to be squeezed into a booth, but while you wait—steadily sucking in the nearby sea air—you can’t [...]

Pâtisserie Chantilly’s creamy dreams

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Most of Pâtisserie Chantilly’s pastries are a matter of memory, classic concoctions of culinary history so baked into our collective consciousness they’ve become monuments to the French tradition. Some were born between the walls of stately palaces; others received simpler, less immaculate conceptions hundreds of years ago. But centuries-old [...]

Porky’s BBQ brings the meat

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
There’s no shelter from the elements at Porky’s BBQ—even with a smearing of sunscreen, those with sensitive skin are bound to get cooked while waiting for their meals. And the air off Redondo Avenue only speeds up the process, thanks to a low-lying heat that gets kicked up [...]

Letting go at Formosan

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
It starts with the menu, Formosan’s bilingual list of meats so long it leaves you susceptible to almost any suggestion. Then, after a quick pick, you wait, watching with an anxious appetite as steaming meals are sent to every corner of the dining room. Finally, it ends when a [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]