(Gerry Furth-Sides) The professional division of the salsa competition introduced the first “taste” of festival excitement for this summer’s Salsa Festival in Oxnard. (photo credit Ken Jones) For the third year in a row, on a dusty and hot afternoon, the professional competition took place right across the parking lo...
(Gerry Furth-Sides) Exceptional Los Angeles Eastside restaurants usually stay a well-kept secret and so it was with La Casita Mexicana in Bell (all of about 3 miles from downtown L.A. ) for the bold, traditional dishes and the Latin hospitality of charismatic chefs Jaime Martin del Campo and Ramiro Arvizu (www.tienditamex.com...
(Gerry Furth-Sides) Rocio Camacho’s Oaxacan moles may have made the reputation at the year-old Aro Latin Restaurant for a year now (above Sopes de Certo stylishly hones together recently fashionable pork belly, orange marinade, achiote. trendy pork belly version above), but the outstanding fish plates (overseen by owner K...
Modo Mio in Pacific Palisades celebrates 30 years as a rustic Mediterranean dining room, intimate and friendly, serving familiar, refined, northern Italian dishes made from scratch from a loyal staff of almost as many decades. The culinary journey takes diners from Val d’Aosta and the famous Piemonte to Lombardia, Ven...
Sometimes you just need good old-fashioned Midwestern common sense to make a place work. Cameron Mitchell is the bigger-than-life, Ohio-based force behind the new Ocean Prime restaurant (former El Torito) restaurant at the “protected” Camden-Dayton signal on Wilshire – with no one-way Beverly Hills streets to negotiate. Th...
Gerry Furth-Sides 
Barbara Hansen 
Chef-owner Alain Cohen 
Roberta Deen 
Jose Martinez 
Nivedita Basu 