Good Food

Going garden-to-table and how immigration raids are impacting LA's restaurant workers

• Canning evangelist Kevin West puts his home garden to work in the kitchen
• Journalist Andrew Lopez reports on how ICE raids are impacting Boyle Heights
• Rudy Espinoza shares how Inclusive Action supports communities affected by the immigration raids
• Journalist Kim Severson explores the creation of the perfect peanut
• Vannak Tan serves Cambodian-style seafood at A&J Seafood from a shack in San Pedro
• Alvaro Bautista brings dates from Mecca to the farmers market in Santa Monica

Is America any healthier, yet?

• Mother and son Jyoti and Auyon Mukharji stay rooted in their Indian heritage while living in the Midwest.
• Journalist Lisa Held sorts through the details of the recently leaked draft of the MAHA strategy report, a year after Make America Healthy Again debuted.
• Public health advocate Marion Nestle was cautiously optimistic in the early days of MAHA. What's her perspective now?
• Lior Lev Sercarz explores the many varieties of peppercorns.
• The weekly market report features chef Zach Pollack's use of sweet peppers.

• Elizabeth Mateo expands her family's 40-year-old paletas business.
• Filmmaker Eddie Schmidt weaves together scenes of the men and women who drive ice cream trucks from in his documentary, Popsicle Culture.
• Adrienne Borlongan of Wanderlust Creamery makes ice cream inspired by travel and adventure.
• On a stroll, David Owen uncovered the remnants of Berkshire Ice Company, a century-old business which shipped ice around the world. His curiosity sent him on a journey investigating the history of refrigeration and cooling technologies, which along with convenience, harbor harsh impacts on the environment.
• Bee Wilson embraces room temp dishes while acclimatizing food temperatures to the weather.

The protein powder boom, anchovies, ancient Roman recipes, and more!

• Whey, the liquid byproduct of cheese making, was once considered waste. It's now a key ingredient in the protein powders that dieters and weightlifters are downing in ever-greater amounts — and that means big changes for the dairy industry, reports Kevin Draper.
• Horror film producer turned food historian Christopher Beckman chronicles the anchovy's place in the European cooking canon.
• Sally Grainger reinterprets Roman recipes taken from Latin texts.
• As students head back to school, we catch up with Jack Bobo, Executive Director of the UCLA Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies.

You better bee-lieve it, we're talking about honeybee headaches.

• Former beekeeper Adam Novicki explains the causes of this year's historic honeybee die-off
• Sawdust covered floors, free peanuts, and stiff martinis are hallmarks of Chez Jay, which celebrates 66 years along Route 66
• Jenny Linford explores cooking, eating, and drinking through objects in the British Museum's collection
• Chef Katie Reicher of legendary San Francisco restaurant Greens shares vegetarian recipes from her repertoire
• Baker Nicole Rucker adopts a fruit tree and sets her sights on a glazed peach pie

When everything falls apart, food is sometimes all we can cling to.

Although Good Food loves pie, we're also Team Galette!

• Podcaster Ben Naddaff-Hafrey dives into the legal tussle hidden in the nooks and crannies of Thomas' English muffins
• Artist and cook Linda Dangoor leaves a trail of recipes from Baghdad and Beirut to Ibiza and Paris
• Fátima Juárez and Conrado Rivera of Komal explain that the secret to great masa starts with great corn
• It's peak summer fruit season, which means it's time for recipe developer and stylist Rebecca Firkser to explore the art of the galette
• With all the recent closures of classic LA restaurants, reporter Jennifer Swann explains why crowds are lining up around the block to get one last taste of the past
• At Lucia, chef Adrian Forte shares how he uses shado beni (aka culantro, not to be confused with culantro) in his Caribbean dishes
  
  

Good Food explores the Golden State!

• LA Times restaurant critic Bill Addison drove up and down the state to determine California's 101 best places to eat
• Chef Scott Clark left the pressure cooker of Michelin-starred restaurants to cook in a train caboose on the side of Highway 1
• Chef and fisherman Conner Mitchell says "yes" to locally caught bluefin tuna
• Bernadette Berterretche Helton preserves Basque food and traditions at Centro Basco in Chino
• Coming from a family of dairy operators, Vivian Straus honors Northern California's agricultural roots with the Cheese Trail

How one man's fruity side hustle became a cash cow

• There are many ways to look at the Louvre but writer Elaine Sciolino invites us to view the largest museum in the world through the lens of food 
• Journalist Lisa Held documents the power and influence of the pesticide industry
• Since stress for farmers is deeply intertwined with the land, social worker Kaila Anderson developed a tool to treat depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues among farmers
• Omar Vaid didn't set out to be one of Southern California's most prolific mango dealers — he had greatness thrust upon him
• At SoCal farmers markets, no one has better or more interesting melons than Alex Weiser

Three cheers for these James Beard winners!

• LA Times restaurant critic Bill Addison visits Kato in its new location at the Row DTLA
• Pastry chef Nicola Lamb sifts through the essential ingredients of baking — flour, sugar, eggs, and butter
• Chef Ashleigh Shanti goes beyond fried chicken and cornbread to reconsider Southern cuisine
• Bartender Jim Meehan considers cocktails from a culinary perspective
• Adam Reiner takes a closer look at the products behind the tongue-in-cheek labels on Trader Joe's shelves

Bottoms up for vino?

• Between declining alcohol consumption and increasing tariffs, Esther Mobley updates us on how California's wine industry is meeting this moment
• Olivia Haver loves cheese so much, she has devoted her career to babysitting it
• Exploring her roots, recipe developer Noor Murad dives into the food of Bahrain
• At RVR in Venice, chefs Travis Lett and Ian Robinson blend Japanese influences with Southern California produce

From the latest on ICE raids in Los Angeles to the legacy of Creole cuisine:

• Memo Torres reports on how immigration raids are impacting local food businesses
• Hawa Hassan, who escaped civil war in Mogadishu, shares stories of displacement in eight other regions of the world
• Nina Compton makes a case for New Orleans and the Caribbean sharing a similar "self of being"
• Journalist Christina Cooke visits Patrick Brown on his farm in North Carolina, where he is reclaiming his family's history and land

When the going gets tough, the tough go for pozole.

• Tony Ramirez dusts off the barbecue for summer grilling and adds Filipino flair to live fire
• TikTok darling Claire Dinhut has a thing for condiments and finds creative ways to use them
• Casey Elsass helps you decide what to bring to the party based on what type of guest you are
• Memo Torres discovers a pozole palace in the San Fernando Valley
• Charlotte Biltekoff explores how the public's mistrust of processed foods and the food industry's misunderstanding of these concerns

This week, we take physical and historical journeys to East Africa and South America.

• John Birdsall traces the evolution of queer food through the 20th century
• In her new series Panamericana, Pati Jinich travels the roads and highways linking North and South America, connecting with people along the way
• As a child of East African immigrants, Zaynab Issa uses her suburban childhood to create a cooking style all her own
• Humberto Raygoza took his family's chorizo recipe and built a business, one link at a time
• At the farmers market, chef Ed Cornell prepares for summer with apricots and soft serve

It's time to get grlling! And sipping!

• Men of barbeque loom large in America but Toni Tipton Martin and Morgan Bolling remind us that women also know their way around the pit
• Cathy Park rounds up the best matcha lattes in Los Angeles. Zach Mangan of Kettl in Los Feliz considers the downside to the matcha boom
• Lila Seidman reports on the tricky process of removing rare steelhead trout from the Palisades Fire burn area
• At the farmers market, chef Viktoriya Campos gets an early start, stalking seasonal asparagus.

Bottoms up! We're all about the tipple this week.

• Historian Hadley Meares looks at how Hollywood sips cocktails on the big screen
• Aaron Goldfarb follows collectors hunting for vintage spirits
• Sociologist Nicola Nice takes a look at how women brought the cocktail home
• Lesley Jacobs Solmonson explains how liqueurs went from the hands of the apothecary to those of the mixologist
• Evan Rail plays detective, looking back on an absinthe enthusiast who became a con artist

The joy of cooking with Roy Choi...

• Kogi king Roy Choi has health on his mind in a new collection of recipes
• How do you become a restaurant critic? Besha Rodell explains in her memoir
• Marie Mitchell shares dishes from the Caribbean and its diaspora
• It's cherry season at the farmers market and which means the lines are long at the Murray Family Farm stand

It's Mother's Day weekend and we head to the sea

• Sarah Ahn's viral food videos of her mom have captivated millions of viewers with their behind-the-scenes look at Korean cooking and multigenerational life
• Environmental photographer Arati Kumar-Rao goes night fishing alongside dolphins on the Brahmaputra River
• Tyler Harper dons a wetsuit, often during storms, and heads out into the turbulent surf to fish for striped bass in the secretive and dangerous sport known as "wetsuiting"
• Ari Kolender of Found Oyster and Queen St. Raw Bar & Grill has tips for cooking fish and shellfish with confidence
• The Santa Monica Farmers Market says goodbye to longtime vendor Kandarian Organic Farms

It's a perfect party trifecta of tequila, margaritas, and salsa. Plus, we dig into the latest on food dyes.

• Ted Genoways considers José Cuervo's colorful history, from eluding Pancho Villa's death threats to bringing tequila north of the Mexican border
• Caroline Pardilla serves up 60 recipes for your next batch of margaritas
• Rick Martinez chops, blends, and crushes more than tomatoes for endless variations of salsa
• Dr. Jessica Knurick deciphers fact from fiction in the MAHA agenda.
• Although they're available year-round, blueberries actually have a season and they're ripe for the picking.

What baking beliefs can you do without?

• Nicole Rucker rekindled her love for baking by tinkering with her favorite recipes and eliminating the fuss
• Gabriela Glueck visits the "Torture Orchard," where California's nut trees are pushed to the brink so they can withstand the curveballs thrown by climate change
• Nasim Alikhani spent decades working various jobs before realizing her calling — opening a restaurant to showcase the food of Iran
• Evan Kleiman recalls the crazy ride of the 1980s LA restaurant scene with Francis Lam, host of The Splendid Table
• Often overlooked among springtime greens, chef Dashiell Nathanson is anything but sorry to use sorrel in his cafe dishes

What do we buy? And what does that say about us?

• Emily Mester examines what happens when consumption begins to consume you
• Journalist Ada Tseng visits Costco twice a week for gas, deals, and hidden Asian treasures
• Benjamin Lorr explores how the sliding doors at American grocery stores stay open
• Patty Civalleri tells us about the man who created Trader Joe's, which started in Pasadena in 1967
• Gustavo Arellano recalls the legacy of Frieda Caplan, who introduced Angelenos to all sorts of exotic produce
• LA transplant Vanessa Anderson, aka The Grocery Goblin on Tiktok, documents the city by visiting its markets.

Passover and Easter are here — and we have food ideas for both holidays.

• Hèléne Jawhara Piñer unravels the thread connecting the Spanish Inquisition to modern Jewish food practices
• In a new memoir, Joan Nathan reflects on her life through the lens of food
• Jeff Chu abandoned his career as a journalist to work the land and attend seminary, tilling up life lessons as well as a sense of calm
• Great British Bake Off alum Giuseppe dell-Anno celebrates a sweet Easter with Italian desserts
• Chef Nestor Silva plucks leaves from the fava plant for a new dish at French Japanese bistro Camélia

From takeout boxes to feeling boxed in, growing up as a "restaurant kid" is a unique experience.

• Curtis Chin and Rachel Phan share memories of growing up in their parents' Chinese restaurants
• Cookbook author Irina Georgescu finds inspiration east of the Danube River in Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria
• Jeremy Salamon reconnects with his Hungarian Jewish heritage and the charming childhood created by his grandmother
• Chef Harry Posner takes advantage of the short window for green almonds