• Shophouse (The New Chipotle)

    Shophouse (The New Chipotle)

    You should’ve seen the crowd at Shophouse on Hollywood & Vine, where I went to meet Zach Brooks (of Midtown Lunch and Food Is The New Rock fame) for lunch last week. The place was his suggestion because, apparently, he’s addicted to it. It’s a new concept from the folks that brought you Chipotle; whatever…

  • Malted Waffles

    Malted Waffles

    Wow, what a morning. I went to sleep last night slightly anxious: would the Supreme Court continue its conservative streak, this week, and uphold DOMA? Would Prop 8 remain in place? Then, at 6 AM, I woke up and checked my phone, going straight to Twitter to see if there were any relevant updates. There…

  • The Art of the Cheese Plate

    The Art of the Cheese Plate

    Bar Covell is one of L.A.’s (and the country’s) most celebrated wine bars and it’s quickly becoming one of my favorite places to go in the early evening to meet a friend before grabbing dinner. The wine is always interesting and carefully selected and, if you’re hungry, they make a cheese plate that pretty much…

  • The Salty Turnip and Egg at Ruen Pair

    The Salty Turnip and Egg at Ruen Pair

    Jon Shook, of L.A.’s Animal and Son of a Gun, once told L.A. Weekly his favorite places to eat in L.A. One of them is one of my favorite places to eat in L.A., Ruen Pair, where I almost always get the same thing: the Prik King (see #9 on the list of my favorite…

  • Diana’s Butter-Roasted Potatoes

    Diana’s Butter-Roasted Potatoes

    Now we all know the concept of the student beating the master and I don’t want to imply that my friend Diana was ever my student or that I was ever her master (though I was her roommate, which is kind of the same thing with me); what I’d like to imply, however, is that…

  • Got A Fat Tush? Make Fattoush

    Got A Fat Tush? Make Fattoush

    Sometimes recipes take you by surprise; you think they’re going to taste one way, they wind up tasting another way and you wind up liking that other way better. With the fattoush recipe from Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem, I was expecting crispy pieces of pita bread tossed with pretty typical Israeli salad vegetables (cucumbers, tomatoes, etc.), yogurt,…

  • The Case of the Cat and the Water Glass

    The Case of the Cat and the Water Glass

    In the middle of the night, a few weeks ago, I heard a noise that sounded like the sound you make when you’re licking your chops after eating a big piece of cake. Only the chop-licking wasn’t chop-licking, it was water-lapping and it was happening on my nightstand at 3:30 in the morning. Lolita, everyone’s…

  • Sneak Peek: Our New Kitchen

    Sneak Peek: Our New Kitchen

    Hey, check out the kitchen above…I hope you like it because that’s our new kitchen! After a frantic search that lasted three weeks (ugh) my friend Nick e-mailed me a link to an apartment in Atwater Village on Wednesday morning. The funny thing about that is each morning I would wake up and the first…

  • Reader Mail: How To Entertain?

    Reader Mail: How To Entertain?

    Here’s a question from a reader that I thought might be best answered on the blog. (Note: I edited the letter for brevity’s sake.) Dear Adam, I’ve been reading your blog now for six or seven years, though I’ve never commented. I really enjoy your humor and down to earth advice about cooking. I started…

  • No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

    No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

    This is a week of recipes where the finished dish doesn’t look good, but tastes really good, so I lead with a picture of something else. Yesterday it was Kachin Chicken Curry with a picture of a mortar and pestle, today it’s No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies from Baked Explorations with an image of peanut…