A grand jury report released today (.pdf) said that Orange County patrons of food institutions are hardly notified of the conditions inside the restaurant. Unlike Los Angeles County where A-B-C grades are posted in the front window, Orange County restaurants only have to display placards saying they are either "in substantial compliance" with food-safety standards, or awaiting a re-inspection, according to the OC Register. The report says that the public is "almost universally unaware" of......

LAist absolutely loves the Redwood Bar & Grill, a pirate-themed hangout close to Disney Hall and the Civic Center downtown -- not only is it a lovely place to wander into on a cold and lonely winter night, but it serves our Editor's Choice for Best Mac N' Cheese in the city. I know, right! So you'll be thrilled to hear that the Redwood is now open for brunch! Beginning this weekend from 11am......

The Mexican/Spanish restaurant-lounge Senor Fred has cemented its reputation as a Ventura Blvd. hot spot for drinks, but it's also a nice lunch destination for those of you trawling the Sherman Oaks area. The place fulfills at least two requirements of a good Mexican restaurant: spicy salsa that tastes homemade (their version has a nice smoky flavor to it), and strong, simple margaritas. The food is far superior to Mexicali's questionable menu, but about......

Photo of Next Door Tapas interior by Zach Behrens for LAist Next Door Tapas is a swanky and intimate little lounge in Studio City, perfect for a weekend or late evening bite -- just don't plan on being there before 6pm. Despite the 5pm opening that's advertised on most review websites, we showed up at 5:30 only to find half-dressed tables and an unready staff. The wine menu was quick to arrive once we......

Tonight you can dine out at some of L.A.'s top restaurants and support a worthy cause at the same time: it's time again for Dine Out LA 2008, a city-wide event that raises money for the organization Aid for AIDS. Check out the list of participating restaurants, which are donating 20% of all profits to the charity, which helps prevent homelessness and hunger for individuals and families impoverished and disabled by HIV/AIDS. There are......

Restaurants and Institutions' released their list of the top 100 highest-grossing independent (non-chain) restaurants in the United States. Totaling $1.53 billion, all restaurants on the list at least grossed $11.3 million. The Los Angeles region really didn't make an impact, but San Francisco made away with four and Chicago with seven. The top two cities are New York and its 32 restaurants and Las Vegas, which came out with 24, one of them grossing the......

Photo by _ gianni's_ photography _ AKA *Prime Imagery* via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr In part to honor the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr and in part to "increase the peace" a 40-hour moratorium on violence goes into effect for the City of Los Angeles starting at 6:01 p.m. tonight. Do your part! Because "You can't fire me...I QUIT!" lacks that certain je-ne-sais-quoi, perhaps? An employee in......

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Who knew a simple little Hollywood diner, The Waffle, would somehow become the most controversial restaurant in Los Angeles right now? First there was the barrage of "meh" to "terrible" reviews from the Chowhounders, most of whom complained about overpriced entrees and slow, forgetful service (definitely my #1 pet peeve when it comes to restaurants). Then Lesley at EaterLA revealed that bad reviews might have been coming from "a Hollywood contingency......

For Long Beach, scroll down | View Larger Map Despite what the rest of the world seems to think about the Los Angeles dining scene, chances are that most of you reading this live pretty close to an awesome stretch of restaurants. Even if you're not in the vicinity of La Cienega's fabled "Restaurant Row," there are still many pockets of that range from the Valley to the South Bay and beyond. This morning's ABC7......

EaterLA is on a "Trendwatch" and finds a USA Today article where three Food Network chefs/personalities are asked to give their predictions on the next big food trend. Morimoto, executive chef at Nobu in New York and who competes as an Iron Chef, sticks with Asian foods. EaterLA says he sounds legit telling the masses to look out for more "izakayas, Korean food and shochu." LAist says give the new Little Tokyo vegan Japanese restaurant......

In all the many, many years I have been trolling Santa Monica's Promenade, in search of shopping and people-watching and places to eat, it had never occured to me to stop in at Locanda del Lago, an Italian restaurant right in the thick of Santa Monica's shopping mecca. I was invited out to try some of their house specialties; it's Italian cuisine in the Lombardy style, which emphasizes ingredients like fish from Lake Como,......

Photo by highervision via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr This evening a public viewing will be held for slain LA High football star Jamiel Shaw, with funeral services to follow tomorrow. Shaw's tragic murder has prompted many LA residents to refocus on the senselessness of gang-related violence. Go, stop, go, stop: Commuters northbound on the 57 and the 605 transitioning to the 210 westbound this morning were greeted by the new traffic......

Photo by ~db~ via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr It's official: Police have identified the Green Skeleton Bandit who was fatally shot earlier this week when he was caught in the act of robbing the AutoZone in NoHo by a US Marshal. He was 24-year-old Lawrence Dean Smith Jr. of Palmdale who used a knife and wore a skeleton-themed sweatsuit in his robberies. Fight for the right to ficus! Local activists in......

Fallout from the massive Westland/Hallmark meat recall scandal continues to affect Southland restaurants, stretching from San Diego to Ventura County. The California Department of Public Health has released a document listing every food purveyor which has purchased the recalled beef -- and at 59+ pages, it's a doozy. Chances are very good you have purchased or ingested some of Westland/Hallmark's product at some point, since markets and restaurants across the city are represented. My......

Hey, you know what's great? Hot dogs! You know what's even better? A new hot dog stand in a college neighborhood! Encino favorite The Stand has just opened a new location in Westwood, bringing a new flavor to UCLA's backyard. As a former Westwood resident, I can definitely tell you that there's always room for another cheap, unique, and fast eatery in town, and The Stand looks like it will deliver the hot doggy......

Santee Village Apartments | Photo by atomicshakespeares via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr It's not the same thrill as being singled out as a draft pick when it's the police who want you: "An arrest warrant has been issued by the Irvine Police Department for St. Louis Cardinals utilityman Scott Spiezio on six charges stemming from a Dec. 30 incident." Police in Burbank are investigating the mysterious death of 47-year-old Glen Giles,......

If you've been enjoying our Wake Up LA: Breakfast Series this month, you're sure to be excited about the latest restaurant opening up in Hollywood: The Waffle. This new comfort-food "hipster" diner, with a menu by chef Scooter Kanfer-Cartmill, is already receiving fairly positive reviews only a few days in. It's open 22 hours a day on weekends (convenient for the Cahuenga party-goer), serving up a hearty diner menu that is, yes, heavy on......

Tonight is the night to break out that special bottle of vino and head over to one of more than 20 LA-area restaurants that are obliterating the corkage fee in honor of "Open That Bottle Night." The foodie-minded folks over at EaterLA asked around and came up with a list of dining spots who are willing to forgo their usual $20-$35 fee for one night only so that diners could have a special meal to......

Restaurants have no love for dogs, but dogs sure do love their owners | Photo by Tom Andrews via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr Steve Poizner has no love for Allianz: The state Insurance Commissioner announced a $10 million settlement with Allianz Life Insurance Company, the biggest seller of annuities in California, today in Burbank. Allianz swindled hundreds of 84 and 85 into bad deals that cost them thousands of dollars. David......

Many of LAist's contributors have been checking out L.A.'s dineLA Restaurant Week -- and we've discovered that some experiences definitely offered more value than others. I decided to close out my own Restaurant Week experience with a casual lunch and a more upscale dinner: for the former, I took LAist editor Zach out to lunch at eat. on sunset, while I saved the fancy hotel dinner at Circa 55 for my special guy. Both......

So the big V-Day is only a week away -- and if you're anything like me, you're making reservations for a fabulous spot and forcing your boyfriend to take you out to dinner. He's gonna take me out, he's gonna express his undying love for me through the purchase of an expensive meal of my choosing, and he's gonna like it.* Thankfully, there are a lot of great Valentine's dinner options in L.A. --......

What are your favorite breakfast spots in Los Angeles? Who's got the best cup of coffee? The yummiest pancakes? The thickest slabs of bacon? Who's overrated and who's overlooked? We're determined to find out -- so wake up with us, won't you? Enjoy L.A.'s Best Breakfasts!!!...

There's some great news for pizza fans coming from Pizza Fusion, an all-organic, environmentally friendly pizza franchise: they're setting out to expand throughout California this year, starting with an LEED-certified location in San Diego and moving up through Santa Monica and Thousand Oaks. Why is this cool? Well, the company is setting trends and blazing trails in the sustainability business: Pizza Fusion, whose motto is 'Saving the Earth, One Pizza at a Time,' practices......

DINE dineLA Restaurant Week starts today. The event "unites restaurants from the traditional to the trendy to promote the extraordinary diversity and culinary expertise found throughout LA’s restaurant scene. Restaurants in two dining categories will serve a selection of three-course menus at special prices." Nab a reservation for tonight, and eat up this amazing event! (Previously on LAist: Restaurant Week Coming to LA this Month; dineLA Restaurant Week's Big Kickoff) January 27th-February 8th, lunch &......

Food bloggers Potatomato must have their Foodie Batphone connected to my psyche: after finishing a delightful and surprisingly inexpensive lunch at the new Phillip Starck-designed Katsuya in Hollywood, I jumped on the Internet to see what the bloggers had to say about this upscale sushi restaurant/bar/lounge. And what do you know, but those intrepid foodies had cased the joint only days before me. Katsuya is one of those places that I would normally consider......

Last Friday night at Bordello, Elite Yelpers gathered for drinks and music to wish Stephy S, Community Manager of Yelp.com for Los Angeles (she's like Tom of MySpace, but goddess style), a farewell adieu as she takes on a larger responsibility for the website up at its San Francisco HQ (sister site SFist should feel so lucky). Since May 2006, Stephy has been leading the way for Yelp.com, bringing in the energy for a site......

Photo by Elise Thompson/LAist The King's Head is arguably home to the best fish and chips in Los Angeles. Sadly, the fish and chips get so much attention that the clam chowder is not given its rightful due. Let me make up for that now. The King's Head Pub in Santa Monica serves the chowder of the gods. All other chowders should bow down before it. Other chowders dare not speak its name. I......

Orange County's fast-food favored son, Carl Karcher, died yesterday at the age of 90. It started as a hot dog cart, and grew to eventually become a ubiquitous fast-food mega-chain with the trademarked happy star. We all know Carl's Jr. as the place to get big burgers for a few bucks, but for Ohio-born Carl Karcher, things really kicked off in Anaheim in 1945 when he and his wife Margaret opened Carl's Drive-In Barbecue, which......

I've got great news for Los Angeles dining connoisseurs: DineLA Restaurant Week, a new restaurant-showcase event, begins this month and runs from January 27th through February 8th. Participating diners will be able to feast on prix-fixe three-course meals from such fine establishments as Crustacean, Simon LA, BLD, Katsuya, and many many others. The event aims to [Unite] restaurants from the traditional to the ultra trendy, dineLA Restaurant Week will promote the extraordinary diversity and......

Ed LaDou, the father of modern California-style pizza, has died of cancer at age 52 in Santa Monica. LaDou is best known for his work at Wolfgang Puck's legendary Spago; LaDou was the first to experiment with unusual and innovative pizza toppings like duck and smoked salmon, and he also helped develop the menu for the casual dining chain California Pizza Kitchen. From The LA Times: "Ed really set the tone for the pizza,"......