We're still kind of obsessed with the cooking videos over at imcooked, especially the oddly soothing clips of Thai street vendors cooking their wares: in the video above, check out a fried mussel dish prepared in less than four minutes. The LA Times heads north this week to seek out culinary finds in Ventura and Santa Barbara, respectively: first at new vegan restaurant, Mary's Secret Garden, and then at the Santa Barbara outpost of......

What are your favorite food memoirs? Ruth Reichl shares her picks with NPR, and we definitely agree that these are must-reads, especially Jeffrey Steingarten's hilarious and informative essays. Still haven't taken the $20 Farmer's Market Challenge? Now Slashfood and the Washington Post are polling readers to see how much loot they can get at their local markets for only twenty bucks. Jonathan Gold and Pat Saperstein over at EatingLA are both reporting on Jitlada......

We were delighted to find out that one of our favorite folks who talks about food was named this weekend as the recipient of the LA Press Club Award for Best Individual Blog. Congrats to Pat Saperstein and Eating LA! According to Saperstein, the judges summed up her site as follows: Writer does a great job of merging personality and topic, producing an engaging voice. Well-informed without coming across as elitist. Great showcasing of......

Dear LAist, I could've sworn when I randomly popped into the Library Bar last night I saw you carousing with a bunch of people who all had name tags and were drinking free beer. What's up with that? How do I get in on the free beer action? And who was that dude with the bandana?! Love, Little Jimmy From Pasadena Good eye, Little Jimmy! You did indeed spot us at the Library Bar last......

- According to Pat Saperstein of Eating LA, the LA Times is starting a food blog…ooooh, how 2005 of them! - Jonathan Gold checks out ChiliMySoul. Damn him. Now we've got to go to Encino. - EaterLA finally gives a shout-out to LAist's fabulous food reporting, and mentions Callie Miller's excellent expose of bakery Sweet Lady Jane (more like Pissy Lady Jane). - There's beer in Santa Barbara??? No! You'll never make us believe......

One of our favorite Food TV shows is Throwdown, which involves Celeb Chef Bobby Flay trying to master someone else's culinary specialty and springing a spontaneous cook-off challenge (hence, Throwdown) on them. (Our favorite part of the intro sequence is Flay saying: "I might win. I might even lose.") Every time we watch it, though, we wish that we could run out and taste the competition, like we did when we were craving fish......

One of our favorite local food blogs is Eating LA, which is helmed by Pat Saperstein, a senior editor at Variety. LAist asked her to put together her own Best of 2006, which she has so kindly shared with us; we can't help but notice that she likes pork and--if we may interpret--dislikes the deluge of Pinkberry frozen yogurt shops. Is it coincidence, we wonder, that she, too links the year to the pig, like......

A news tidbit last week spotlighted the shocking revelation that Surfas, the globally revered restaurant and cook's supply mecca in Culver City, is being forced to closed down after over sixty years of operation. Foodies, fans, and even some foes of the longstanding retailer hashed out the known details peppered with speculation on the net, springboarded by a news piece on the Surfas website that has since been pulled. It seems that Culver City......

It's been a while since LAist shared the dish on local food events, so we're doing our best to recoup and serve up a tasty mouthful of food tidbits today. Speaking of today, Planned Parenthood's Los Angeles Guild is hosting Food Fare 2006 today, and attendees will sample an assortment of local food and wines from 150 wineries, restaurants, and catering outfits to benefit PPLA’s Campaign for the Advancement of Reproductive Health. We're a......

Gosh, it's warm out. Just 2 wet weeks ago all we craved was soup and now our thoughts have suddenly turned to ice cream. Pat Saperstein's blog, Eating LA, gives us the (er) scoop on recent ice cream developments in LA : Beautiful downtown Glendale has two new ice cream operations, but I can only recommend one. The new branch of venerable Persian ice cream parlor Mashti Malone's has opened a gleaming, clean shop......