For as long as I can remember the corner of Arizona Avenue and Second Street was home to The Lighthouse Seafood Buffet. For me, all you can eat seafood lost its luster somewhere between a bad experience at the Tropicana buffet table, and the documentary “The Cove.
It is certainly a nice compliment to get invited to the grand opening of a new Hollywood hot spot. Either that, or an e-mail went out to me as well as 100,000 other people.
I am interrupting my series on old-time restaurants in Santa Monica because of a very different experience I had the other day. My wife and I were staying with friends in a small town near Montpellier, France.
The breakfast burrito: quick, convenient, and quintessential. While the burrito is inherently Mexican, the bacon, egg, cheese variety is as American as the hard shell taco, or the sizzling fajita platter.
In the 1950s and ‘60s, fine dining in Los Angeles was centered in Hollywood. There was Chasen’s, La Rue, Scandia, Ma Maison (if you were lucky enough to have the unlisted telephone number) and a few other fine restaurants, usually in the French mode.
The one restaurant most closely associated with fine dining in Santa Monica is still Michael’s. While it has not followed the many fads into more modern or experimental foods, it has maintained the same level of quality and consistency since it opened in 1979.
What is there left to possibly say about the most critically reviewed, dissected, and highly acclaimed burger in Los Angeles? A mouthful, if you are one of the people like myself that are late in the game to scratch this contemporary hot spot off your burger bucket list.
If you want to invoke change in others, you shouldn’t be a food snob. This weekend the Good Food Festival is being held in Santa Monica. The festival offers everything you could want to learn about good, healthy food; how to get it and the policies surrounding it.
In an area jam packed with restaurants it is easy for a simple diner to get overlooked, even if that diner is the biggest, brightest building on the block.
DOWNTOWN — The Santa Monica Farmers’ Market is celebrating its 30th anniversary by partnering with Family Farmed, which is nationally recognized for working with many of the country’s largest buyers of local and sustainably grown food and “growing the market” for local and sustainable food.
PICO NEIGHBORHOOD — “We buy ‘em, we roast ‘em and we sell ‘em!” barked Ted Galvan, manager of the Saturday Pico Farmers’ Market, as he stood near a cast iron barrel loaded with green peppers being roasted by vendor Chili Asado.
The passing of Labor Day in Santa Monica means many changes but no more noticeable than down by the Santa Monica Pier. The Twilight Dance Series has come to a close, the beaches are much less crowded, and the leaves on the palm trees started to turn (well not really).
