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 Have you ever gone out to a restaurant, had a fantastic (and pricey) meal and then, just as you're basking in the glory of your farmhouse cheese plate or your Tahitian vanilla panna cotta, been served a cup of java so mediocre that it wrecks the entire experience? These two men think that happens far too often -- and they want to do something about it.
On the left is Gino Ridoni, who often pulls the espresso at both of Gino Angelini's two Italian restaurants: Ridoni is a partner and manager at West Hollywood's La Terza and is maitre d' at Angelini Osteria on Melrose. When Ridoni isn't making a mean ristretto on the Bravo machine at the Osteria, he's working La Terza's Brasilia (Bravo beans at the former, Lillo at the latter). On the right is Larry Silverton, Encino lawyer -- and recent graduate of an intensive barista class at Intelligentsia Coffee's Chicago headquarters.
Larry is also the father of two daughters who, it must be noted, also take their espresso seriously (Nancy Silverton, of the two Mozzas, and Gail Silverton, of Gelato Bar in North Hollywood).
Larry and Gino met 20 years ago, when Larry was helping to set up Campanile and Gino was first over from Italy. It's been a friendship forged by many cappuccinos, like this one that Gino pulled at La Terza yesterday while Larry watched, admiring the stream of coffee ("it should be as thin as a mouse's tail," said Larry), the velvety crema and Gino's decorative skills. 
And the caffeine crusade is going multi-generational: Gail's son Nick is getting ready to open a coffee shop in Boston, in partnership with his highly caffeinated grandfather. When Larry's not behind Gail's gelato bar, where he likes to pull shots, he'll be in Boston, working on his latte art.
-- Amy Scattergood
Photos by Amy Scattergood
 I finally tried the much-raved-about chicken from Kyochon, a fried chicken chain that's more than 1,000 strong in South Korea. The 6th Street branch down the street from me in Koreatown recently opened (there's another in Torrance). The chicken is addictive -- twice-fried little chunks with paper-thin skin -- and it's cooked to order. (I waited about 20 minutes.) The "original series" is sweet and a little garlicky, and the "hot series" is really spicy. Especially tasty with beer or soju, but they don't yet have their beer-and-wine license -- we'll let you know when they do. It's takeout 'til then.
Kyochon, 3833 W. 6th St., Los Angeles; (213) 739-9292. 2515 Torrance Blvd., Torrance; (310) 320-9299.
-- Betty Hallock
Photos by Betty Hallock
 Behold ice cream, at the Thursday farmers market downtown next to City Hall. Beyond the eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes, rotisserie chicken, tamales and cobbler, there's an ice cream stall manned by Jessica Mortarotti, flavor developer and founder of Carmela Ice Cream. Four weeks ago, she plugged in her portable freezer and started selling little paper cups filled with her handmade ice cream and sorbet. I picked up a cup of the creamy, subtly spiced cardamom ice cream and the refreshing cucumber sorbet and tried not to melt.
Carmela Ice Cream, Thursday downtown farmers market, City Hall south lawn, 1st Street between Spring and Main streets, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
-- Betty Hallock
Photo by Betty Hallock
 A few months, ago Venice-based sausage king Jody Maroni introduced third-pound hot dogs made from "Kobe" beef (it's actually beef from Japanese Wagyu cattle raised in Australia). Now you can also buy Kobe dogs at the supermarket -- in a variety of sizes, from half-pounders down through the usual fifth-pound size to half-ounce Kobe cocktail franks (you might have to special-order them). And golf star Greg Norman has his brand on a line of 4-inch Kobe dogs, available mostly at golf course cafes.
Well, how about that? Hot dogs made from Kobe-style beef, the super-premium pride of fancy steakhouse menus! The mind reels. How do you deal with such a thing?
The only way is seriously and systematically. I steamed a 6-incher and tasted it; good and beefy, with bright garlic and paprika flavors, less impression of beef fat than I would have expected.
But what should you have with it? Probably not bright yellow baseball park mustard, right? Maybe Dijon? Steak sauce? Since it’s made from Kobe-type beef, maybe teriyaki sauce? How about wasabi?
Here are my tasting notes. Dijon mustard: passable, no real chemistry. Steak sauce: better, but a bit too sour and did not go well with the garlic flavor. Teriyaki: way too sweet; soy overwhelms the beef. Wasabi horseradish: sharp taste played well off the beef and garlic, and the vaguely alfalfa-like aroma seemed to speak to the very spirit of the cow.
So wasabi it is. Basically a Kobe dog tastes like a good beef hot dog, but it has all those Kobe beef bragging rights, so I say run with the Japanese motif.
Third-pound Kobe dogs are available at Jody Maroni locations; visit www.jodymaroni.com. All sizes can be ordered from Whole Foods meat sections. You can also get all sizes from Broadleaf Venison, 5600 S. Alameda St., Suite 100, Vernon; place your order by phone first, (323) 826-9890.
-- Charles Perry
Photo by Leslie Brenner
If you've ever lived or worked near a fast-food place, you know the heavy, greasy miasma that rises in the region, the unappetizing smell of ... well, no need to go into details. But imagine that you're minding your own business at your desk in your pod at your climate-controlled, air-conditioned office and a cloud that smells suspiciously like frying fat suddenly comes your way. Now imagine that your company has made a deal with some outside corporation to inflict this upon you. It's enough to make you wanna call HR.
An unspecified number of unlucky office workers in Washington, Chicago and Dallas will be subjected to a Kentucky Fried Chicken promotion that involves the placement of "a plated meal" on "actual mail carts," according to a news release received today. It's a "scent-focused" gimmick that apparently  doesn't involve feeding anyone, just sending smells that belong in strip malls down the hallways of corporate America. The promotion date isn't specified, so maybe workers in those cities should try to work from home until further notice -- or request a bubble dome for the cubicle.
-- Susan LaTempa
Photo courtesy of KFC
 It's a family joke that I spend hours during the summer sitting on the broken-down sofa on my back porch watching the tomatoes ripen, so I was naturally interested to hear that a gallery I like is doing an exhibition that makes music -- and a streaming wall projection -- of the tomato-ripening process. You can watch (and help) the tomatoes ripen in the Machine Project gallery on Alvarado Street on Thursday afternoon or attend the free performance event Friday at 8 p.m.
Artists Chris Chafe (music), Nikolaos Hanselmann (visuals) and Greg Niemeyer (cook) have collaborated on the project, a weirdly compelling piece that consists of five plastic cases that look a bit like old-fashioned covered cake stands with wires and tubes attached. In each case is a plate with a pile of tomatoes -- several varieties, sizes and colors. As the tomatoes ripen, they emit CO2 and the instruments measure the changing gas levels.
The changes are continuously graphed visually and sonically, so you see on the wall projection a flow of colored triangles from each of five circles representing the tomato cases. And you hear a musical soundtrack -- when I was there, a steady squeaky-hamster-wheel sound was the bass note, punctuated by erratic sharp pings and long, slow waves of a kind of wind-in-big-pipes moaning. You can blow oxygen into a tube attached to each case if you like, aiding and abetting the ripening.
The gallery handout says what we're witnessing is "climacteric respiration"; if you've ever sat in a forest or a garden and sensed the plants breathing, you'll appreciate how the exhibit heightens and celebrates this sensation. And if you come on Friday, you'll get to eat pasta with sauce made from the tomatoes in the work.
Tomato Quintet. Performance Friday, Aug. 31, 8 p.m. Machine Project, 1200-D N. Alvarado St. (near Sunset), Los Angeles, (213) 483-8761. More details at www.machineproject.com.
-- Susan LaTempa
Photo by Susan LaTempa
There's still no one answering the phone at Bastide. "Tomorrow the phone will be up," the restaurant's publicist, Joan Luther, assures us. It seems the restaurant management can't get the phone people to come in and change the mechanism until this afternoon. So why won't the phone be working then? Owner Joe Pytka, says Luther, "wants a certain woman's voice on the outgoing message, and she's not available until tomorrow." Luther guesses the lines will be open by 2 p.m.
-- Leslie Brenner
There's nothing better than tasting a $50 wine before you buy it. And it's getting easier to do. I've enjoyed sampling expensive wines at a couple of snazzy wine bars around town that have installed Italian wine dispensers. But I'm more interested in shopping where I expect to find competitively priced wines, which took me to the wine automat opened last week at Wine House in West L.A.
When I arrived late Saturday afternoon, the rectangular tasting room tucked in the middle of the store was overflowing with a raucous party of six who seemed to be trying each of the 32 wines available in the four refrigerated vending machines. Bill Knight, the store's owner, was the tasting room host on Saturday and suggested I try the Brown Cabernet/Zinfandel blend from Napa Valley ($8.20). Touched with the telltale tobacco of old vine Zin, the wine was weird and wonderful. The 1.25-ounce pour was really just a taste, and with 31 other pours priced $1 to $14 each, I decided to have some fun. A 2005 Schmitt Wagner Herrenberg Riesling Kabinett ($2.20) was off-dry with nice acidity; it reminded me to drink more German wines. After tasting the aromatic, bone-dry Boxler Edelzwicker Reserve from Alsace ($1.50), I pulled a bottle out from the shelf under the tasting machine to buy for $14.99. The prepaid plastic cards used to purchase pours are debited each time you punch a button above one of the wine spigots. So I didn't flinch at $4.90 for a taste of 2003 Parusso Barolo, then picked up a bottle for $48.99.
-- Corie Brown
 In summer, you can never have too much watermelon or too much granita. So a recipe for watermelon shaved ice with salt and pepper from former Jean Georges pastry chef Pichet Ong's new book, "The Sweet Spot," was too good to resist. It's frozen watermelon juice spiked with lime zest and salt and pepper. The perfect palate cleanser -- sweet and salty, fruity and icy. 
And it's really easy to make: Put a quarter-cup of sugar in a saucepan with a quarter-cup of water, bring it to a boil and cook until the sugar is dissolved, then cool. Remove the rind from a 3-pound watermelon and cut the fruit into chunks. Purée the chunks with the cooled sugar syrup in a blender, then strain and pour it into a large, wide glass dish. Sprinkle lime zest on top, cover it with plastic wrap and put it in the freezer. Stir and break up the ice crystals with a fork every 45 minutes. When completely frozen, stir in a teaspoon of fleur de sel and a half-teaspoon of pepper. Serve immediately.
-- Betty Hallock
Photos by Betty Hallock
 The heat and humidity over the weekend might have caused bad hair days for some, but for others it meant bad tomato days. A couple of pounds of gorgeous, fat Brandywines sitting on my counter suddenly went all overripe and oozy. Aha, I thought, I'll turn them into a tomato soup, remembering a fantastic one we'll be running in an upcoming issue of Food.
Perhaps because the recipe hadn't yet been put through its paces in The Times' Test Kitchen, something went wrong: Either the cooking time was too long or the oven temperature was too high. In any case, the tomatoes, which were cut in half, placed on a baking sheet, enhanced with a little sea salt, a few branches of thyme and a few cloves of garlic and roasted for two hours at 400 degrees, no longer had all the juices at the bottom of the pan they were supposed to; they were fairly dry-looking, and the juices on the bottom had turned black. I almost tossed them out, then I put them in a bowl and mashed them with a fork. Unbelievable -- it was like a tomato confit: thick, rich, incredibly sweet and almost perfectly seasoned. I turned them into bruschette, which were fabulous. But I couldn't stop thinking about the perfect use for it: on a burger, instead of ketchup.
And that soup recipe? Look for it in Food on Sept. 5. Meanwhile, have you ever had a kitchen disaster that turned into something great? Tell us about it!
-- Leslie Brenner
Photo by Leslie Brenner
Continue reading Amazing new substance discovered »
 Well, just a crack. But Bastide, in its new incarnation with Walter Manzke as chef and his wife, Margarita, as pastry chef, will open its doors for dinner Wednesday, Sept. 5. Call the reservation line right now and you'll still get a recording saying the restaurant is closed for maintenance and renovations, but publicist Joan Luther says the phone line should be open for business sometime today.
This is Bastide's third incarnation. It opened in late 2002 with Alain Giraud as chef; Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila gave the restaurant four stars when she reviewed it three months later. In the spring of 2004, Giraud left in a dispute with owner Joe Pytka, and Pytka brought in chef Ludovic Lefebvre to replace him. A one-star review followed in The Times. Lefrebvre resigned in September of last year, frustrated, he said, that Pytka wouldn't approve recipes he had been developing for months.
It remains to be seen what the menu will be like under Manzke. And although Pytka has said the restaurant will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, it's dinner only for the time being.
Bastide, 8475 Melrose Place, (323) 651-5950.
-- Leslie Brenner
Photo by Bryan Chan
 My Italian friend O had just been to Osteria Mozza and he couldn’t believe it. “They put butter on the cacio e pepe!” he complained. “The pasta is supposed be dry! No sauce involved. And nobody in Lazio would ever use butter!”
Believe me, I felt for him. Everyone in O’s hometown outside Rome (Lazio is where the dish originated) is so passionate about food that feuds can be started over the proper way to make pasta e fagioli or eggplant Parmesan.
Curious what his own cacio e pepe would be like, I invited him over to make the pasta dish for dinner. The name literally means pecorino cheese and pepper -- and those are the only two ingredients, aside from the spaghetti. After checking with me to make sure I had a piece of real pecorino Romano, not pecorino Toscano (the Roman sheep’s milk cheese is sharper and saltier then the Tuscan), he showed up bearing his own spaghetti, a super-long type from Naples. He set a big pot of water to boil, threw in some sea salt and got to work finely grating a tall pile of pecorino on a hand grater. He tried out the pepper grinder to make sure it gave the proper coarse grind. It should resemble peppercorns crushed in a mortar and pestle. When the pasta was cooked al dente, he drained it (no rinsing!), shaking the colander vigorously.
Now, he told me, the secret is to wait about one minute. If you add the cheese when the pasta is too hot, it will melt, and that’s not what you want. After one minute, he frantically ground lots of black pepper over the pasta, added the cheese and tossed with a three-pronged pasta fork until everything was mixed. The cheese and pepper should attach to and dot each strand of spaghetti to give a tweedy effect. Don’t add olive oil, or pasta water, and above all, no butter!
Serve immediately with a chilled white wine, usually a simple Frascati from the hills outside Rome. The combination of the salty cheese with the sharp blast of pepper and the pasta is lusty and delicious. It’s one of the simplest dishes you can make, says O, and very fast. It’s something you make when you have nothing else in the house.
I’m convinced. Who needs butter?
-- S. Irene Virbila
Photo by S. Irene Virbila
 Of all the high-profile upcoming openings around town, Alain Giraud's Santa Monica brasserie, to open in the Clocktower building in Santa Monica, is one of the most exciting. When Giraud's deal with the owners of Falcon was announced back in January, Giraud hoped to open late summer, and he planned to serve lunch and dinner.
Just returned from vacation in France, Giraud filled us in on the brasserie's progress. The look, he says, will be classic brasserie, "brass, with wood, copper, banquettes, mirrors on the columns, et cetera. The restuarant will have to look as good at lunchtime as at dinnertime." It'll need to look good early in the morning too -- Giraud plans to open at 7 a.m. for breakfast.
As for the menu, "I'm still working on it," he says. "I want to base part of the menu with everything from the farmers market, to follow the seasons. I expect it to be a little bit traditional, plat du jour, appetizer, easy to understand." Dishes like steak tartare and poulet de la rôtisserie come to mind, he says, for the traditional offerings. "A brasserie menu never changes," he says, "and to add seasonal dishes has to be done very carefully." He'd like people to try things, though -- "sweetbreads, kidney. But I have to see how many we'll be selling."
While in Lyon lately, Giraud says, he was impressed by a couple of brasseries. He loved the vegetables at the one at Hotel Centrale. "All the vegetables were perfectly cooked, amazing." Did he glean any ideas he might use? "The steak tartare at Brasserie Georges," he says. "They make it tableside, but because it's so crowded, they do it right on the table, which was nice."
Late-summer opening plans turned to mid-October. But now it seems the Clocktower won't be turned over to the team until mid-November. "What it means is we have Thanksgiving, then after that December. The problem will be the staff. If they work in a nice place, you don't leave a place during the holidays. So that means January." Giraud plans to be at the restaurant "six months, eight months, all the time." After that he plans to open his own signature restaurant.
And finally: What will be the brasserie's name? "Ahem, ahem! Deadline for the name is soon!" says Giraud. "I think we give a different name to the restaurant each week. It's an embarrassing question. We have maybe 200 names. I like 'Brasserie du Marché,' but the accent on the E is a problem. I love 'the Clocktower,' but nobody likes it. 'Clocktower Brasserie!' 'Brasserie Brasserie!' If you think of a good name, call me!"
-- Leslie Brenner
Photo by Brian Vander Brug
 With August's soaring temperatures comes a bonanza: fabulous summer produce -- especially tomatoes. Yesterday at the market, farmers displayed them like county fair prize specimens. Red ones, purple ones, yellow ones, fat ones, tiny ones, gigantic ones -- all looking plump and juicy and altogether irresistible.
So what's the difference between that striped green zebra and that purple and red brandywine? How do you choose the best ones? And what are the most delicious ways to make use of them when you get them in your kitchen? Is there an easy way to make a quick, cold summer soup?
Just ask the California Cook, Russ Parsons. He'll be talking tomatoes -- and zucchini and Romano beans and peaches and melons and anything else you want to know about -- during his live chat at 1 p.m. today at latimes.com.
-- Leslie Brenner
Photo by Robert Gauthier
 Whenever someone offers to bring me back something from Paris, I hand them the card of Izrael, the épicerie (spice shop) in the Marais not far from the St.-Paul Metro stop. Forget Fauchon; this funky, crowded spice shop is the place some of Paris’ best chefs go for their piment d’espelette (powdered espelette pepper from the Basque country), fleur de sel (250-gram packages with a label trimmed in lavender), herb-infused vinegar, lavender honey and stony green lentils from Puy. I always stock up on fleur de sel and hand-picked, salted capers from Pantelleria, an island off the coast of Sicily.
Imagine my surprise then when I was poking around the website of Formaggio Kitchen, a cheese and spice purveyor in Boston, and came across 1-kilo (2.2-pound) bags of Capp’Aris capers from Pantelleria for $17.95, about what I remember paying in Paris. Ground shipping from Formaggio Kitchen starts, however, at around $10, so it’s worth your while to see what else you can order on the site. When I clicked on "salts," I found that they had the very same fleur de sel de Guérande -- Le Paludier brand -- I used to carry home from Paris too. The prized salt is from Brittany and it’s $14.95 for 250 grams, which is a little over half a pound. That’s what some stores charge for a tiny jar. Use it as a finishing salt, sprinkled on top of a dish.
For cooking and the pasta pot, I also added some sel gris (gray sea salt) from Brittany to my shopping cart. It’s called Sel de Noirmoutier and costs $5.95 for a kilo. Last but not least, Formaggio Kitchen sells Flour Tipo “00” from Mulino Marino in Italy, which is what you need to make egg pasta and pizza dough. However, it’s currently out of stock. No problem, they’ll send you an e-mail when they get it back in.
Formaggio Kitchen, 244 Huron Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138; (888) 212-3224. Izrael, L’Epicerie du Monde, 30 rue Francois Miron, Paris 75004; 011-33-1-4272-6623.
-- S. Irene Virbila
Photo by S. Irene Virbila
 At lunchtime I like to walk over to Kinokuniya Bookstore in Little Tokyo and poke around in the food and fashion magazines and books. They also sell wonderful Japanese notebooks with smooth paper for fountain pens and erasers that look like miniature sushi. The other day I turned up a little book titled "Food Knit" (Toho Shuppan, $21) in the crafts section. It's mostly in Japanese with a few English subtitles. Doesn't matter, there's nothing to read. Just feast your eyes on these insanely intricate knitting projects -- a knitted hamburger with frilly mohair lettuce, a fruit tart with a fluted crust, a whole steamed fish, pasta with squid rings, bento boxes, dim sum and, my favorite, a tray of nigiri sushi with knitted nori and tiny faux salmon roe. It's not really a pattern book, though there are instructions (in Japanese) for a few simple items. 
Kinokuniya Bookstore, Weller Court, 123 Astronaut Ellison S. Onizuka St., Suite 205, Los Angeles, (213) 687-4480.
-- S. Irene Virbila
Illustrations from "Food Knit"
 Just published, "The Cheese Lover's Companion" is one of my new favorite books, from first entry (Abbaye de Belloc) to last (Ziegenkase -- that's German for "goat cheese"). In between are entries for hundreds of cheeses and cheesemaking terms interspersed with occasional quotes from food luminaries and literary figures ("Never commit yourself to a cheese without having first examined it." -- T.S. Eliot).
Each cheese entry includes origin, milk, type, appearance, texture and flavor, followed by plenty of additional information: Constant Bliss is made with evening milk, Cashel Blue is made with milk from Friesian cows, and Sottocenere is not only mixed with bits of black truffle but has an ash coating blended with cinnamon, cloves, coriander, fennel, licorice and nutmeg.
There are tips for cooking with cheese at the beginning of the book. In the back, I love the glossary of cheese descriptors such as "grassy", "mushroomy" -- though I wish there were even more. Indexes are arranged by country of origin, milk type (cow, water buffalo, etc.) or cheese type (semisoft, blue, pasta filata, etc.). One of its best features is the pronuncations. If you don't know how to say Vacherin Fribourgeois, it's [vash-RAN free-boor-ZHWAH].
-- Betty Hallock
Photo courtesy of William Morrow
 The ancient Romans made a sausage called lucanica. It spread everywhere in the Mediterranean back in the day, giving rise to modern sausages from Greece (loukanikes) to Portugal (linguica).
So what was it like?
The lucanica recipe in a 2nd century Roman cookbook reads pretty exotic. It calls for 1) rue (a bitter herb with a sweet aroma like fresh plums); 2) bay laurel seeds (which taste of bay, natch); and 3) salty, smelly fish sauce. You're supposed to mix ground meat and fat with these flavorings, along with cumin, parsley, savory, salt and whole pine nuts and peppercorns, then loosely fill sausage casings and smoke them.
Well, I happen to have a bay tree in my yard, where its mighty roots are slowly destroying a fence, and I have a smoker. Say no more. On the eve of a trip to Montana, I made a couple of pounds of authentic lucanica and smoked it lightly on apple wood. Trusting in south-central Montana's devotion to classical antiquity (I may have been misinformed about this), I took it with me to go with a Roman meal of pork shoulder stewed with apricots, chicken glazed with extreme wine reduction, etc.
People went crazy for it. And here's why: It's salty, fatty, a little pungent and very smoky. It tastes like ... Slim Jims. ("Juicy Slim Jims," one Montanan insisted.)
So now we know why lucanica spread like wildfire 2,000 years ago. It's just darned snackable.
-- Charles Perry
Photo by Charles Perry
 After months of construction, the high-end Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea opened last night at Sunset Junction in Silver Lake. And it looks as if they’ve just barely managed to fling open the doors. At 9 this morning (they open at 6), the sleepy-headed neighborhood was out in force, ordering up caffe lattes with pretty patterned foam, espresso and coffee brewed cup by cup in a Clover machine. Outside on the shaded patio in front, yappy little dogs snarled under the tables while their owners got a caffeine fix. Inside, you can sit at stools along the marble counter, and shop for bags of the Chicago coffee roaster’s renowned direct-trade and organic beans.
Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea, 3922 W. Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake; (323) 663-6173. Open daily from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.
-- S. Irene Virbila
Photo by S. Irene Virbila
 We're well-positioned for BLT season at our house this year. Way back in June, well before the first heirloom tomatoes came in, I was walking through Central Park in New York City on my way to see the Richard Serra show at the Museum of Modern Art. But I’d lost my husband. I looked back and there he was in the middle of a path making a cellphone call at the one serendipitous spot that got a signal. Nine o’clock in the morning and he’s ordering bacon! Not just any bacon, but hickory-smoked country bacon from Benton’s in Tennessee. This is fantastic stuff, smoked in a small wood stove smokehouse since 1947 and redolent of hickory and wood smoke. For this season, I laid in 6 pounds. (I did give some of it away to friends.) And instead of getting it thick-sliced, the way it normally comes, I asked for slab bacon, which they vacuum-sealed in 2-pound packages.
A no-mess, no-fuss way to cook the bacon is to lay the slices on a cookie sheet and bake them in a 375-degree oven until crisp, turning them over when the tops begin to brown.
Benton’s smoked country bacon, $5 per pound (minimum order 4 pounds), (423) 442-5003; www.bentonshams.com. I see from the website that orders are backed up several weeks. Not to worry -- Benton’s bacon is also available by mail from the Grateful Palate in Oxnard; $8.95 for 14 oz, (888) 472-5283, www.gratefulpalate.com.
-- S. Irene Virbila
Illustration by S. Irene Virbila
After picking about 4 pounds of incredibly ripe, sweet-oozing figs from a tree in the alley behind my house this morning, I was glad to hear that the food tree lovers at Fallen Fruit are holding another Public Fruit Jam this Sunday.
Fallen Fruit is a collaborative project that maps sources of fruit on public land, encourages cities to landscape with fruit trees, and facilitates bartering and sharing among home orchardists. The afternoon includes a discussion of the basics of jam making and a pooling of participants' home-grown or foraged fruit and herbs for what organizers hope will be some creative and unusual jams. Bring any clean, empty glass jars you have on hand too. The fruit you go home with will have a whole different personality from the fruit you came in with.
Public Fruit Jam 2007, noon to 3 p.m. Aug. 19 at Machine Project, 1200-D N. Alvarado St., Los Angeles, (213) 483-8761. More details at www.machineproject.com.
-- Susan LaTempa
I stopped in at Surfas, the cooking supply store in Culver City, to shop for goodies for a convalescing friend. The first thing I saw as I stepped in the door  wouldn't fit in my care package, but it surely belongs on some committed cook's kitchen-remodeling wish list: a custom-made stockpot stool.
Store vice president Diane Surfas was inspired to have employees assemble the prototype from materials the warehouse had on hand. It's a surprisingly comfortable sit and seems super-sturdy. The stools aren't listed on the store's website (surfasonline.com) yet but can be custom-ordered via the customer service department (310) 559-4770, ext. 301 (Mitch) or customerservice@surfasonline.com.
The price is $179 for either of two sizes (short, to pull up to a table, or bar-stool-size for higher counter-top seating).
-- Susan LaTempa
Photo by Susan LaTempa
I must get more letters complaining about the noise level at various restaurants than I get on any other subject. We all expect bistros and trattorias and burger joints to be boisterous and loud. Observe the crowd at any Italian restaurant -- enoteca, trattoria, osteria or ristorante. It’s not just the Dino singing “Amore” that ratchets up the decibels. Caught up in the spirit of la bella Italia, everybody is knocking back Sangiovese or Nebbiolo, talking up a storm and waving their hands, like, well, Italians. And as the exuberant folks at each table strain to make themselves heard over the crowd, the room gets louder and louder.
Add in a pulsing rock music track, such as that at Pizzeria Mozza, and you may as well give up on any real conversation. The music is meant to give the room some energy. (It also deters diners from lingering.) Turn off the soundtrack for a few minutes though, and the room feels oddly hollow, and lonely. It needs the music. Maybe just not so loud.
Silence is deadly. Or so most restaurateurs must think. It’s not as if most restaurant-goers would be put off their food without the constant assault of that wall of sound. The fancier places used to be exempt, except for the occasional pianist tinkling out standards, but no more. With the demise of the tablecloth, which used to help dampen the sound, and bare walls and windows everywhere, it can be just as hard to have a conversation at an expensive restaurant as anywhere else. Even hotel dining rooms, once morosely silent, are amped up now. Think Simon L.A. at the Sofitel or Whist at the Viceroy. Or, shudder, the restaurant at the W.
Often I find myself, after dinner, standing outside a restaurant having the conversation I wanted to have with my friends inside if we'd only been able to hear each other. It's crazy.
Funny thing, I can’t remember any meal in France or Italy where I ever felt the restaurant was too loud. (I do remember having lunch at a two-star restaurant where people were whispering. The atmosphere was so funereal, we asked to eat outside on the terrace.) Part of the difference is that European restaurants tend to have a more traditional design. Curtains, tablecloths, upholstered chairs, rugs, all help to absorb sound. Restaurants tend to be smaller too. And frankly, I think Americans are louder.
Lately, when someone writes in asking for a recommendation for a quiet restaurant, I’m stymied. I can only offer the advice to go on a quieter weeknight, or else early or very late, banking that the dining room won’t be full up at either time.
Any other ideas?
-- S. Irene Virbila
 I haven't yet recovered my emotional equilibrium after failing to win the cooking contest for best vintage American dish (with an emphasis on suburban-rural classics) at Noelle and Val's backyard crawfish boil last weekend. Clearly, I had been overconfident. It all started when I noticed a picture on the invitation of last year's entries. I spotted a legendary dish that I'd read about but never seen: Undescended Twinkies. It's a dessert casserole of Twinkies cunningly suspended in jello that was created by Jan and Michael Stern for their seminal 1984 "Square Meals" cookbook. (I asked around at this year's crawfish boil and found two people who remembered the dish. One said it tasted like a Creamsicle; the other remembered an orange baby-aspirin flavor.) With that level of Americana sophistication on the part of the entrants, I figured I'd surely win with something sweet, subtle ... understated.
My entry was a batch of -- well, I guess you could call them cookies. Or butterscotch clusters. They're made by combining melted butterscotch morsels, canned crisp chow mein noodles and salted peanuts. (I can't share the recipe here as it would violate Food section policy of publishing only recipes that have been blessed by the Times Test Kitchen, which won't be sanctioning my butterscotch clusters any time soon.) I found the recipe in "Talk About Good," a cookbook published in1967 by the Junior League of Lafayette, Louisiana. It took about 10 minutes and I had a couple dozen orangey-beige thingies that were joltingly sweet with the kind of addictive salty crunch that makes chocolate-covered pretzels popular. When I presented them, the crowd went wild. The clusters were consumed in seconds. Fans begged for my recipe. But the judges weren't impressed.
Instead, the prize went to Chris, whose Tennessee Pride Hash Brown Casserole is from a recipe in his wife Carol's "Duckworth Family Cookbook" (she's a Duckworth; they're from southern Illinois). It calls for sausage, cheddar cheese, canned chicken soup, sour cream, French onion dip, chopped onion, chopped red and green pepper and frozen hash browns. The crowd went wilder.
-- Susan LaTempa
Photo by Chris Kendrick
 Every week it seems I see a new kind of potato at Weiser Family Farms' stall: Purple Peruvian, Red Thumb, Rose Finn or the lovely Peewee Russian Banana fingerlings I picked up last Friday at the Venice farmers market. But what to do with them? They were too pretty to mash, and I was tired of boiling potatoes. Then I remembered the potatoes my garde-manger chef at culinary school used to make. Every time we made duck confit, she would slowly brown halved potatoes in the extra rendered duck fat. Sprinkled liberally with kosher salt or sometimes even fleur de sel, they were simple -- and about as delicious as a potato can be. (I cooked mine in a covered cast-iron pan, over low heat, for about 40 minutes, turning them now and again for even cooking.) Imagine French fries if they were truly French, cooked in a farmhouse in the Southwest, where duck fat is practically a condiment. No wonder Johnny Depp relocated.
Peewee Russian Banana fingerling potatoes, $3.50 per pound from Weiser Family Farms. Rendered duck fat, $12.99 for 2 lbs. at Surfas, 8824 National Blvd., Culver City; (310) 559-4770.
-- Amy Scattergood
Photo by Amy Scattergood
 After a tip-off at the Wednesday Santa Monica farmers market, I went to Rustic Canyon last night to check out the new dessert menu, courtesy of the new pastry chef. (Pastry chefs seem to play musical kitchens more than most chefs.) Until two weeks ago, Rustic Canyon had not had a full-time pastry chef; it had been relying on the expert services of Roxana Jullapat (Campanile, Lucques), who had been consulting on the dessert menu. With Jullapat moving to Oregon, the restaurant now has a new in-house pastry chef: Zoe Nathan, who spent the last year at BLD and the two years prior to that at San Francisco's Tartine. You can tell Nathan's training is as a baker: Her Valrhona chocolate espresso pudding comes with a house-made mini croissant as well as market berries. I also had the fig and blackberry crostata with crème fraîche, along with a bowl of assorted ice creams and sorbets (mint-chip, cinnamon and espresso for the ice creams; mixed berry-peach and lemon-buttermilk for the sorbets). And alongside my double cappuccino came a tiny cocoa-nib meringue. Good thing I didn't eat dinner first.  (Apologies to Chef Mohajer.)
Rustic Canyon Wine Bar and Seasonal Kitchen, 1119 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica; (310) 393-7050.
-- Amy Scattergood
Photos by Amy Scattergood
 I’ve always been a fan of "Pasta Fresca" and "Cucina Rustica," the two cookbooks KCRW "Good Food" host Evan Kleiman wrote with Viana La Place, so when I saw that La Place had written a new book called "My Italian Garden," I picked it up. My garden is running riot with everything Italian right now, and this wonderfully zesty compendium of simple dishes from the garden is just what I need. Flipping through the book, with recipes for barley soup with summer herbs, risotto with pink radicchio and golden beets, broccoli rabe with black olives and fresh bay leaves, I came across one for whole sage leaves in pastella.
The recipe called up a vision of a wonderful long-ago meal at the Montevertine wine estate in Tuscany when the soulful and erudite founder, Sergio Manetti, was still alive. Birds were roasting in the open fireplace. Good smells and the banging of pots came from the kitchen, and someone passed little plates of crisp, fried sage leaves with glasses of wine before we sat down to lunch at a long table in the garden.
Since I go out at least six nights a week, my refrigerator is often half empty. When someone shows up unexpectedly, I’m always casting about for something to serve with a glass of wine. I've got sage growing right outside the kitchen door, so why not try this?
Basically, you just pick some sage leaves (the bigger the better). To make the pastella, or batter, add water to a little flour until it’s the consistency of cream. I had to experiment a little, starting with 1/4 cup of flour and adding a little more than 1/4 cup water. (La Place uses 2/3 cup flour to about 1 cup water, but I didn't want to make that much batter.) You want the batter to barely coat the leaves.
Pour olive oil into a small skillet to come a half-inch up the sides. Actually, I tried to get away with less, about a third of an inch in an 8-inch skillet, which is plenty big to fry four or five sage leaves at a time.
Heat the oil to hot, but not smoking, and dip several leaves in the batter, letting the excess run off. As you finish frying the leaves, La Place recommends keeping them warm in a 200-degree oven. Good idea, but I found myself gobbling up my test leaves so fast I didn’t need to do that.
Oh, also, don’t use your best extra-virgin olive oil for this. The olive oil you use for normal cooking, like the moderately priced Spanish brand I keep in a bottle with a pour spout near the stove, will do just fine. Don’t substitute canola or another oil: You really need the flavor of the olive oil.
Cook each whole sage leaf until golden, picking it up with a slotted spoon. Drain on a paper towel, sprinkle with sea salt and serve hot, with a glass of Orvieto or Vermentino. Four sage leaves per person is about right.
"My Italian Garden," by Viana La Place, Broadway Books (2007), paper, $19.95.
-- S. Irene Virbila
Photo by S. Irene Virbila
 Johnny Rebs', North Long Beach's landmark roadhouse repository of barbecue, fried catfish and hillbilly kitsch, has closed following a kitchen fire early Friday morning. The restaurant had gained equal renown for its delicious down-home cooking and its unflagging appreciation for all things Southern and Elvis. The walls were hung with license plates and bumper stickers from various Southern states and one corner was a shrine to the King, featuring a life-sized cardboard cutout. A blackboard glossary translated such "Southern" phrases as "Jeet jet?" ("Did you eat yet?"). The floors were covered in peanut shells and the waiters dressed in red gingham and overalls and called customers "hon." Yet even the stuffiest Son of the South couldn't hold a grudge given the quality of their fried green tomatoes, Cumberland stew, collard greens, grits, fried catfish and Carolina-style pulled pork sandwiches. Management is predicting a four-month rebuilding period. The building, now boarded up, has a sign across the front reading, "Looks like it's time to remodel; we'll be back!" Sister restaurants in Bellflower, Garden Grove and Victorville are still open.
Johnny Rebs', 4663 Long Beach Blvd., Long Beach (562) 423-7327; 16639 Bellflower Blvd., Bellflower (562) 866-6455; 2940 E. Chapman Ave., Orange (714) 633-3369; 15051 7th St., Victorville (760) 955-3700.
-- Russ Parsons
Photo by Russ Parsons
 Small girls love teatime just as much as Brits do, especially if it's outside in a sun-dappled patio next to a gurgling fountain -- further evidence, in their minds, of mermaid ecosystems. Jin Patisserie is pretty good at indulging adults, with Kristy Choo's menu of sweets, cakes, sandwiches and chocolates. But as I discovered on Friday, the Venice pastry shop also caters to children, with a child's tea, including egg salad finger sandwiches, a scone, a butter cake, fresh strawberries with powdered sugar and a glass of milk or juice. Now while you pamper yourself with a pot of sencha ariake tea and a lavender gâteau, your kids can have a proper teatime. And, if they're like my daughters, they'll want to follow their tea with a box of Choo's assorted macaroons. (They adored the rose and the lavender, appreciated the green tea, and handed me the white sesame; I'll give them another five years on that one.)
Jin Patisserie, 1202 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice. (310) 399-8801. Child's tea, $10.00; box of 8 assorted macaroons, $12.00.
-- Amy Scattergood
Photos by Amy Scattergood
 For 20 years, we've all considered the weekend food court at the North Hollywood Thai Temple a basic part of the Valley's food scene. But as food blogs have been reporting -- and a petition soliciting signatures at last weekend's food court made clear -- the sociable, inexpensive gathering may be doomed. After Sunday, it will close as the result of of neighbors' complaints. It's unclear whether the closure has been forced or whether the temple made the decision on its own.
The closure may not be permanent. The temple's food court committee says it's seeking a way to save the institution, which benefits a Thai school for preteens on the temple grounds. It has plenty of supporters -- food court manager Somkuan Watchinda says more than 1,000 people have signed the petition of support.
The problem is that some residents charge that temple diners litter the streets and cause unacceptable parking congestion. Watchinda disputes the first charge but acknowledges the parking situation -- sometimes adjacent streets are lined with cars for a block or more on weekends.
There's no way for the temple to park all customers on its own grounds, which have room for only about 75 cars. A good deal of potential parking is available under the power poles across the street from the temple, but Watchinda says the city would require the temple to do a minimum of $50,000 worth of landscaping, which it can't afford.
Wat Thai, 8225 Coldwater Canyon Ave., North Hollywood
-- Charles Perry
Photo by Lawrence K. Ho
 I used to think my 8-inch chef's knife was indispensable in the kitchen. But I have small hands (I can barely reach a full octave on the piano), and always found that big a knife unwieldy. This year a friend gave me a 150-millimeter (about 6-inch) Misono UX10 for Valentine's Day (romantic, no?), and I have been in love ever since. With the knife. I love it for chopping vegetables, for boning chicken, for slicing meat. The blade is thin and its shape elegant; it fits in my hand comfortably and it's light -- I don't have to work to raise the knife. The UX10 series is made from Swedish stainless steel, and I'm not sure what exactly it is that's so special about Swedish stainless steel, but the claim is that it retains its sharp edge for longer ... mine's still sharp. And every time I see a carrot, I want to brunoise -- or at least dice.
-- Betty Hallock
Photo courtesy of Misono
 On Tuesday, my 10-year-old son, Wylie, and I went fishing. Amy Scattergood tipped us off about the boat -- the New Del Mar -- and we boarded midday out of Marina del Rey. First we caught lots of mackerel -- which the fishermen wanted as bait for bass and barracuda, but looks more like dinner to friends of Russ Parsons.
Farther out, the crew filleted some of the mackerel and cut it up for bait (it's a fish-eat-fish world out there). Before long, one of the fishermen pulled up a sculpin -- a.k.a. scorpionfish. Bouillabaisse fish! I remembered a February 2004 story Daniel Young wrote for the Food section about the famous seafood stew from Marseilles. Bouillabaisse is notoriously difficult to approximate outside of the Mediterranean because it depends on a fish called rascasse to yield the deep, rich broth. But Southern California, he wrote, is home to the ideal substitute -- a cousin of rascasse called sculpin. "Are you guys eating fish tonight?" asked the fisherman, and gleefully I said yes. We wound up catching two sand bass, and the fishermen gifted us two more sculpin.
 That night, we grilled one mackerel and one bass (fantastic dinner, with grilled corn), then with the idea of a bouillabaisse dinner for Wednesday night, I made a bouillabaisse broth, using Young's recipe (which you'll find by clicking below on the "Read more 'Fishing for bouillabaisse' link). Since I only had three sculpin and the bones of the grilled bass, I halved the recipe. Yesterday I had to buy more fish to supplement the stew, so I picked up a couple of pounds of red snapper fillets, along with a dozen mussels. It all came together surprisingly quickly -- just about a half-hour to make the stew, rouille and croutons. My husband, Thierry, just back from New York, didn't mind waiting -- we had a glass of Ricard while it finished cooking.
It was all so wonderful (my favorite part is the crouton spread with rouille soaked in the broth) I can't wait to go fishing again. And this time, I'm going for the sculpin.
Marina del Rey Sportfishing, Dock 52, Fiji Way, Marina del Rey; (310) 822-3625.
-- Leslie Brenner
Photos by Leslie Brenner
Continue reading Fishing for bouillabaisse »
 The last day of a vacation during which I didn't want to set foot outside Southern California. What more fitting finale than a relaxed late-morning visit to the Santa Monica farmers market? The chanterelles at David West's mushroom stand were gorgeous, so I bought a bunch of tiny ones. Josiah Citrin was there, too, buying some for his restaurant, Mélisse (that's him shown in the photo). What was he planning to do with them? "Dover sole," he said, with corn, almonds, the chanterelles and brown butter. Sounds fantastic. "I do it every year," he pointed out. 
As for me, I'll just sauté them with some shallots in a little butter, maybe swirl in a touch of crème fraîche, and toss it with fresh egg pasta. Or maybe fold them into an omelet.
-- Leslie Brenner
Photos by Leslie Brenner
 Driving up the San Gabriel foothills into Altadena for a fix of Bulgarini Gelato has been well worth the trek since the outpost opened in April. And now you can pull up a folding chair and stay awhile: Owners Leo Bulgarini and his wife, Elizabeth, recently instituted movie nights. Every other Friday night, after the sun (and the lines snaking out the door) goes down, at about 9:30, you can watch an Italian movie free of charge in the open courtyard outside their shop. Eat a bowl of pistachio gelato or spoon up an affogato (a scoop of gelato topped by a shot of espresso) while you wait for the same stars watched by the nearby Mt. Wilson Observatory to come out. Last Friday, the third movie night so far this summer, it was a showing of "Mediterraneo," the Italian flick that won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1992. Come early, save a seat and get dinner too: for $9 you can get a huge plate of homemade lasagne or ravioli and a salad at the table they set up outside. Or get back in line for a second bowl of plum sorbetto or chocolate-orange gelato while you brush up on your Italian. Not that it's required; the films are subtitled, even if the occasional shouts from the back of the house aren't.
Bulgarini Gelato, 749 E. Altadena Drive, Altadena; (626) 441-2319.
-- Amy Scattergood
Photo by Stefano Paltera for The Times
 Persian mulberry season lasts only a few heavenly weeks, but when it comes it's easy to find the astonishingly flavored, deep-purple berries: Just follow the crowds at the Wednesday Santa Monica farmers market. Be prepared to scramble to get them, and to shell out as much as $10 for a little plastic box. But it's worth it. If you do get your hands on them -- and they'll only be around for another week or so -- you'll want to eat them as soon as you can. (Not that this should be a problem.) And to take a minimalist's approach. At Lucques and Campanile, you'll find the berries accompanied only by a bowlful of cream. Mélisse chef Josiah Citrin says he doesn't even put them on his menu; when he finds mulberries, he just takes them home and gives them to his kids. If you do manage to get them home without eating them, just tumble the delicate, juicy berries into a bowl and top with a spoonful of crème fraîche whipped cream (crème fraîche lightened up with a little whipped cream). And plan on getting in line again next week.
Persian mulberries, $8 to $10 a box, from Garcia Organic Farm and Weiser Family Farms.
-- Amy Scattergood
Photo by Amy Scattergood
 Who could resist? As I went to rinse this morning's backyard harvest of golden tomatoes (my red varieties are between-times at the moment) and the first of our 5-year-old apple tree's fruit, I noticed that each matched a bowl in the dish drainer. For now. The apples, a low-chill variety called Beverly Hills, turn from this apple green to a russety red-streaked yellow. But they never make it to that shade at our house -- we prefer their McIntosh-like bright-white flesh when it's firm and crisp.
P.S. The oregano's in bloom.
-- Susan LaTempa
Photo by Susan LaTempa
There’s already the Seafood Choices Alliance and the Seafood Watch program sponsored by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and now the federal government is getting involved. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the main government organization for overseeing marine science, has developed a FishWatch website to help consumers research their seafood choices. At this point, there are only a couple of dozen species listed, but the pages are rich in links to other information for the fish geeks among us. However, don’t expect any advice nearly as cut and dried as the “Best Choices,” “Good Alternatives” and “Avoid” categories from Monterey Bay. And the NOAA site tends to be more optimistic about seafood populations than either Monterey Bay or Seafood Choices. Only six species have warnings that they are either being or have been overfished — Atlantic cod, summer flounder, some red groupers, haddock, red snapper and yellowfin tuna.
-- Russ Parsons
 Plastic bags, almost as much a part of the farmers market experience as fresh fruits and vegetables, may be on their way out. California Certified Farmers Markets says that over the next year it'll be phasing out plastic bags in favor of paper at its 10 Southern California markets. But fear not for the trees -- these bags will be made from recycled paper from consumer and industrial uses. CCFM is a nonprofit that works with the group Raw Inspiration to manage markets at Century City, Larchmont, Melrose Place, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, La Canada-Flintridge, Calabasas, Park View and two markets in downtown Los Angeles. Of course, the best choice is still the reusable canvas, mesh or string bags that have become a badge of honor for so many marketgoers.
-- Russ Parsons
Photo by Leslie Brenner
 Infrared radiation cooks fast, up to 50% faster than flame. That's why the jazzier barbecues have long featured gas-fired infrared heating elements, and why a lot of restaurants have electric infrared grills. But for the home kitchen, infrared has so far been concentrated in either super-pricey high-end equipment or gimmicky as-seen-on-TV gadgets. Black & Decker is positioning its new InfraWave Countertop Oven in the middle of this gap.
For convenience and space-age aura, the InfraWave includes scores of programmed food settings. I decided to take this baby out on the road and see what it could do, so I tried cooking a hot dog, a potato, a rising-crust pizza and a whole chicken. For most of them, I can report that the InfraWave did cook much faster than a regular oven. It's sort of like a microwave that can brown food.
But those programmed settings were flaky. The potato took 40 minutes, five minutes longer than the setting (but hey, still 30% less than it would have taken in a conventional oven), while the pizza and the hot dog cooked faster than their settings -- 6 and 11 minutes, respectively, though the settings were 12 and 15. Go figure. The chicken was supposed to take 40 minutes but still wasn't done at 75.
Long story short: It cooks impressively fast, but don't blindly trust those settings, and I get the feeling you basically shouldn't try anything as big as a whole chicken. But enjoy the hot dogs -- it's terrific on dogs.
Black & Decker InfraWave Countertop Oven, $119.99-$149.99 at Bed Bath & Beyond, Target and Wal-Mart stores and at various Internet shopping sites.
-- Charles Perry
Photo by Charles Perry
 At the Venice farmers market, I saw a crate full of interesting greens I thought I'd never seen before -- they looked like bunches of enormous, somewhat coarse dill. The folks at Polito Family Farms said it was agretti (also called monk's beard), an Italian vegetable native to the wetlands around the Adriatic Sea. It tastes rather like a blend of spinach and chives, and they suggested blanching it and sauteeing it with garlic and olive oil, or even using it raw in salads. Then I remembered where I'd seen it: just the night before, on the menu at Campanile. (Campanile gets its agretti from Polito, as do Mozza and Wilshire.) Chef Mark Peel had prepared a plate of thinly sliced raw albacore, dressed with a little olive oil and lemon juice, and topped with firm peaches and some beautiful feathery leaves of agretti, which at first I'd taken to be unusually large dill. But I'd been so engrossed in the rest of my meal (it was grilled cheese night, after all) that I'd forgotten to ask about it.
At the market, I bought a bunch, took it home and, since I didn't have any raw tuna in my refrigerator, blanched and sauteed it with olive oil, sea salt, garlic and onion, as recommended. I did, however, have some La Quercia pancetta and some trofiette, tiny, cone-shaped pasta I'd picked up the last time I was at Cube. A little grated Parmesan and some cracked black pepper, and 20 minutes later I had a pretty great dinner. And another word in my food vocabulary.
Agretti, $3.50 for a large bunch; available from Polito Family Farms.
-- Amy Scattergood
Photo by Amy Scattergood
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