Royal/T in Culver City closes this month

Royal/T, the Japanese maid cafe, eatery and art space in Culver City, is closing at the end of July.

Opened in 2007, Royal/T brought Los Angeles weekly Tokyo Nouveau Champagne brunches, waitresses dressed in playful maid uniforms and the cafe's signature milk tea, among many culinary- and art-related workshops, exhibitions and events.

The shop bids farewell with final events held at its space beginning this weekend. Saturday, from 10 a.m. to noon, Royal/T hosts a tea workshop with Paper Architect. Learn tips and tricks for planning an ultimate tea party from Nancy Caldwell while munching on an assortment of sandwiches, scones, desserts and freshly brewed tea. Purchase tickets online at www.royaltworkshop.eventbrite.com.

A closing brunch will mark the final cafe service at Royal/T on Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., with live music featured throughout the afternoon. The cafe's last scheduled shindig is a pop-up dinner in collaboration with Cordero Negro from 6 to 9 p.m. July 26 and 27. The evening's 12-course tapas tasting menu is $45 per person and will include dishes like chorizo sausage with succotash and saffron corn veloute, herbed goat cheese, stuffed pequillo peppers with basil infused olive oil, and Spanish flan. Make reservations online at www.corderonegro.com/popup.

What's next? Royal/T's owner Susan Hancock plans to take the brand on the road with various events and pop-ups.

8910 Washington Blvd., Culver City, (310) 559-6300, royal-t.org.

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Photo: Royal/T storefront. Credit: Royal/T

Bon Appétit Grub Crawl is set for July 13-15

After experiencing many a pub crawl abroad, the founders of Grub Crawl came back to the States with a business venture: to lead guided tours--not of bars--but restaurants. The company has been taking groups of foodies on a series of grub crawls around the Bay Area since 2009 and now brings the idea of food "crawling" to L.A.

The Los Angeles edition of the Bon Appétit Grub Crawl will be hitting up three delicious neighborhoods to dine July 13-15.

The tour starts on Friday in downtown L.A. with stops at Cole's, Umamicatessen, Las Perlas and Seven Grand. Next up on the tour, continued on Saturday, is Hollywood and West Hollywood with Mozza, Scuola Di Pizza, Pour Vous, Street, the Spare Room and Night + Market on the itinerary. Saturday's crawl will conclude with a live music performance by Vacationer at the Roxy. The final leg of the tour will include eateries on the Westside with visits to Father's Office, Sotto, Picca and Lukshon. Yum...

Attend the entire three-day event for $200 per person or pick one of the three-neighborhood food crawls for $80-$100. Tickets can be purchased online.

Bagrubcrawl.com.

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'Food and Food Systems in the 21st Century' at UCLA's Fowler Museum

On Aug. 11, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., TedxLA Miracle Mile presents "Food and Food Systems in the 21st Century" at UCLA's Fowler Museum.

Spawned from the nonprofit organization TED, TEDx is a program of independently organized events that bring together people from the worlds of technology, entertainment and design (hence the name TED) to engage in the sharing and spreading of ideas. Next month's TEDx gathering at the Fowler will examine food and food production on a local and globalized scale. Speakers will address what is obsolete and what is up to par -- politically, socially, economically and culturally -- in the context of today's rapidly growing human population.

The event will be a merging of minds with guest speakers such as Jason Kelly Johnson and Nataly Gattegno of Future Cities Lab and Jonathan Todd of John Todd Ecological Design. Also joining in on the discussion of food will be Tara Kolla of Silver Lake Farms, Ken and Kathy Lindner of Lindner Bison, Laura Avery of Santa Monica Farmers Market and "Righteous Porkchop" author Nicolette Hahn Niman, among others.

The daylong event includes a pre-event mixer with access to the museum, a catered box lunch by Auntie Em's Kitchen and a post-event wine and cheese reception. Tickets are $60 for general admission or $48 for students, seniors and Fowler Museum members.

308 Charles E. Young Drive North, L.A., (310) 825-4361, fowler.ucla.edu.

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Photos: From left, Tara Kolla, Ken and Kathy Lindner, Laura Avery.

Credit: Tedxaltavistala.com

Test Kitchen tips: St. Louis-style ribs

A couple of years ago, we ran a Culinary SOS recipe for the spice-braised pork ribs from Urban Tavern in San Francisco. The recipe calls for St. Louis-style pork ribs. If you've never heard of these before, St. Louis-style ribs are spare ribs that have been trimmed to give them a clean, mock baby-back look.

You can have your butcher trim the ribs for you, but it's just as easy to do at home (plus, you can cook up all the trimmings along with the ribs for some extra nibbles). Continue reading below for a quick tutorial on trimming the ribs yourself.

If you have any kitchen tips or questions you'd like us to explore, leave a comment below or email us at noelle.carter@latimes.com.

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Photo credit: Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times

Object of Desire: Frosted Lime

If you grew up in the San Gabriel Valley and are of a certain age, your memories of summer probably include a visit or 10 to Twohey's, on the corner where South Pasadena, San Marino and Alhambra collide, which was the great drive-in in this part of town.

Generations of local kids thronged Twohey's for bittersweet hot-fudge sundaes as good as anything this side of C.C. Brown's, for gargantuan onion rings, and for the Little Stinko, which presumably got its name at a time when the presence of raw onions on a burger might be considered risque.

Twohey's still packs them in, even decades after the magnificent drive-in was torn down and the operation moved into something resembling a suburban savings and loan.

Ironically, the bank to which Twohey's surrendered much of its lot was itself torn down, and an In-N-Out Burger now occupies the acreage -- it turns out that it was a good place to put a drive-in after all.

But when the days grow hotter, the evenings longer, and the urge to jump into the family car becomes the most important thing in the world, there may be no more powerful magnet than Twohey's Frosted Lime, a simple concoction of vanilla ice cream, fresh lime juice and a splash of soda water for spritz; barely tart; a chilled milkshake-glassful of pure, gleaming summer, as full of possibilities as a cool slab of the whitest Carrera marble. A Frosted Lime is, it goes without saying, the perfect accompaniment to a Little Stinko.

1224 N. Atlantic Blvd., Alhambra. (626) 284-7387

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The apéritif hour: Sardines on toast

While I was in Seattle some months ago shopping at the Spanish Table, the Spanish import store, I picked up some sardines from Galicia. The northwest corner of Spain is renowned for its seafood and these sardines may be the best I’ve ever had from a tin. Plump and meaty, they’re sweet-fleshed and delicious. The brand is Matiz Gallego and they’re hand-packed in olive oil.

Since then, I spotted the characteristic blue-and-white package at Sur La Table, $2.95 for a 4.2-ounce tin, and have been serving them with a glass of wine as an aperitif. They’re great because you can always have them on hand.

Inspired by Octavio Becerra’s sardines on toast at the late great Palate Food + Wine, here’s how I do it. Take a thin slice of baguette, toast it, spread with sweet butter, lay the sardine on top and finish it off with  a squeeze of lime and a sprinkling of chives or a little red onion. Sometimes I use pumpernickel as the bread.

Serve with a glass of Albariño from Galicia, a crisp Sauvignon Blanc, or a dry rosé.

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Photos: Sardines in tin; sardines on toast. Credit: S. Irene Virbila / Los Angeles Times

The modernists are coming! The modernists are coming!

Rene Redzepi, David Chang, Nathan Myhrvold, Bill Yosses, Sherry Yard, Jimmy Shaw ... some of the most talked-about and forward-thinking cooks and chefs in the world today are heading to UCLA this spring for the first "Science and Food" public lecture series.

Offered under the direction of Integrative Biology and Physiology professor Amy Rowat, who started the series at Harvard when she was doing her post-doctoral work there, the series features four nights of lectures, running from early April through early June. Tickets are $20 and will go on sale next week. The series is free for UCLA students.

Redzepi, the highly praised chef of Noma in Copenhagen, will kick off the series April 2, appearing with Lars Williams of the Nordic Food Lab. On April 25, Myhrvold, lead author of the landmark cookbook "Modernist Cuisine," will take the stage. David Chang of Momofuku and Peter Meehan of Lucky Peach magazine will speak May 24. And White House chef Yosses, Spago pastry chef Yard and Loteria Grill chef Shaw will wrap up the series June 9.

Registration begins March 20.

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Photo: Rene Redzepi addresses his staff at Noma. Credit: Betty Hallock/Los Angeles Times

5 Questions for Chris Cosentino

Chris Cosentino is executive chef of Pigg, the all-things-pork stand opening inside Umamicatessen downtown. Since his first executive chef position at Incanto in San Francisco, Cosentino has co-created Boccalone Salumeria, gained recognition for his expertise in offal cookery, appeared on the Food Network's "Next Iron Chef America" and even started a line of clothing and shoes.

What’s coming next on your menu? There are so many things at Pigg that I'm excited about,  including a selection of cured hams that are not typically available here. My favorite is Broadbent from Kentucky, which has a smooth, buttery texture with subtle flavors of maple and apple. We're also making brainaise, which is aioli with cooked and blended pig brains, served with fries and crispy pig ears. 

Latest ingredient obsession? This is not an ingredient you’ll see at Pigg ... but lately it has been sea urchin bottarga, which has so much depth of flavor. I serve a cold salad of beef tendon, Meyer lemon, soft herbs and then I grate the sea urchin bottarga over the top. It's my version of surf 'n' turf.    

What restaurant do you find yourself going to again and again and what do you order? I've been consistently eating at Bäco Mercat for both lunch and dinner. I really like everything, but the bazole is such a great lunch with the al dente noodles, delicate herbs and a combo of pork and beef topped with a sizzled egg. For dinner, I love the chicken liver and foie gras mousse with kumquat marmalade.

The one piece of kitchen equipment you can’t live without, other than your knives? My spoons for tasting. I have an obsession with collecting them and I have so many I even have names for them. Big Bertha is one, and I also have a spoon called the Palladin, since it was given to me by Jean-Louis Palladin back when we did an event together ... he spooned me.   

What’s your favorite breakfast? I am a sucker for a great bagel, cream cheese and some smoked fish.  For everyday, I have multigrain toast with peanut butter, a piece of fruit that is in season and an Americano coffee. I always have to have an Americano.

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Photo: Chris Cosentino

3 Events: L.A. Beerathon; Westside Connections; wines at LACMA

Beer, beer, beer: $55 will get you into the first L.A. Beerathon happening throughout downtown Los Angeles on March 31. The route featuring 26 bars, which means 26 beers, won't be released until the week of the event and the names of the venues will be released one at a time starting 26 days beforehand. Stay updated on the event's details by checking out www.labeerathon.com. 

LACO + foodies: The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra teams up with Jonathan Gold, Susan Feniger and Michael Ruhlman for Westside Connections, a chamber music series exploring the relationship between music and food at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica. Gold, Feniger and Ruhlman will discuss food-themed music in the three-concert Thursday-night series starting March 1. Ruhlman takes on the first event of the series with the music of Rossini, Puccini, Falla and Paul Schoenfield; Gold joins the program on March 22 with music by Bach, Bernstein, William Bolcom, Timothy Andres and Dohnányi; and Feniger will lead the discussion April 5 with the music of Saint-Saëns, Martinů and Ravel. Tickets are $45 per person or $120 for a three-concert subscription. 1310 11th St., Santa Monica, (213) 622-7001, laco.org.

California living: Paying homage to LACMA's California Design, 1930-1965: "Living in a Modern Way" exhibit, Ray's & Stark Bar is serving a custom wine flight featuring California wines from Sonoma and Mendocino counties. Sommelier Paul Sanguinetti has selected the featured vintages including J Vineyards' Brut Cuvée 20, Medlock Ames' Sauvignon Blanc and Balance's Red Field Blend. The tasting costs $18 for 3-ounce pours of the three featured wines. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., (323) 857-6180, raysandstarkbar.com.

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Photo: Ray's & Stark Bar at LACMA. Credit: Dustin Downing

Pop-ups in Venice: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, Alma and Kali Dining

Lately, pop-up dining central might be the neighborhood of Venice. Maybe it's the by-the-beach location or its bobo residents. Whatever the reason, here are a few to check out:

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing took over the old Capri space on Abbot Kinney Boulevard late last year. The pop-up kitchen is managed by chefs Brian Dunsmoor of Axe and Kris Tominaga of Joe’s Restaurant. The restaurant was due to end its stint this month but is now in negotiations to extend the operation in the same space for an additional six months while a permanent space is secured; good news for all those who have yet to try the restaurant's reasonably priced, market-driven dishes. The restaurant is open for dinner Tuesday through Sunday. 1616 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, wolfinsheepsclothingrestaurant.com.

Chef Kevin Meehan of Cafe Pinot started hosting dinner parties in Culver City earlier this month through his new project, Kali Dining. The pop-up dining experience features a frequently changing menu and location. Meehan prepares and serves a four-course prix-fixe meal for guests in a casual, intimate environment. The dinner series, which costs $65 per person and currently runs Wednesday to Sunday, is on in Venice through early March. And did we mention that he hunts his own hogs too? Kalidining.com.

Another pop-up restaurant new to the scene in Venice is Alma. With only a couple of weeks under its belt, the eatery serves weekly changing three- and five-course prix-fixe dinners ($35 and $55,  respectively) Wednesday through Saturday. Housed inside cafe Flake on Rose Avenue, Alma is the brainchild of Dinelle Lucchesi, a former director of an underground social club in San Francisco, and Ari Taymor of San Francisco's Bar Tartine and Flour + Water. Taymor's creations will highlight American cuisine with dishes such as garlic and oyster stew; smoked lentils, carrot, milk skin and nettle; and popcorn with chocolate and soy caramel. 513 Rose Ave., Venice, almafoodandwine.tumblr.com.

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Top photo: Kevin Meehan of Kali Dining; bottom photo: braised wild hog with smoked potato puree, peas and prosciutto. Credit: Mike Sanfratello.