Things worked out well for the inaugural Los Angeles Food & Wine festival last fall, so the event is coming back again in '12, but a little earlier. more ›

Because we are a town who can't get enough chances to throw down big bucks for fancy food festivals, there is another contender for your hard-earn ducats and calorie counts coming to town this fall. The Los Angeles Food & Wine Festival is a four-day event that will take place October 13th-16th at multiple locations around town, reports GrubStreetLA, and will feature a smorgasbord of star chefs. more ›

Considered one of the premiere culinary events in the nation, the American Wine and Food Festival, held Saturday on the Universal Studios Back Lot, was a feast for the senses. Among the pantheon of American food and drink stars were a host of local chefs who shone while representing the dining landscape of Los Angeles. more ›

To some, Wolfgang Puck is the "big poppa" of the Los Angeles food scene, with his decades of restaurant success and international profile. It's only fitting, then, that the festival he has organized for the past 28 years is considered the "big poppa" of food and wine events. more ›

Rumors of Wolfgang Puck taking the 24th floor restaurant space at the newly opened J.W. Marriot/Ritz-Carlton tower in downtown's L.A. Live were confirmed today. “I am thrilled to be partnering with The Ritz-Carlton again and to be a part of the first luxury hotel to open downtown,” Puck said. “Given my longstanding relationship with the city of Los Angeles, it is an honor to continue my involvement with the renaissance of downtown, especially L.A. LIVE.” more ›

This year's Academy Awards will take place on March 7th. But the real fun happens after the awards, when the stars let loose at the Governor's Ball. 1,500 guests, including both award winners and nominees, will finally be able to stop dieting and start drinking recklessly. LAist was there to preview the feast prepared by Wolfgang Puck and his pastry chef of wonder, Sherry Yard. Moet & Chandon was also on hand to show off the official Oscar cocktail. more ›

Consider it confirmed after weeks of speculation: Chef Kerry Simon of SimonLA will head up the downstairs eatery at the soon-to-open JW Marriott/Ritz Carlton hotel at LA Live. The announcement came late this morning as part of an AEG/LA Live press event held on the downtown entertainment campus, and validates rumors that began to swirl in November when the info was overheard on a DC-to-LA flight then reinforced by a series of Tweets on the topic. more ›

This summer Chef Traci Des Jardins traveled to Mongolia with a group of female chefs to hunt and cook a wild boar. Together with friends Loretta Keller, Mary Sue Milliken, Anita Lo, and April Bloomfield, they camped out in yurts and spent their days tracking wild beasts. In the culinary world these women know that hard work, talent, and creativity are necessary for a successful career as a chef. Hunting and cooking in Mongolia adds another layer of depth to their culinary experiences in the world. more ›

Pulitzer Prize winning food critic Jonathan Gold did not discover an unknown but extremely tasty mom and pop restaurant in a strip mall in one of his reviews this week, but instead headed to LA Live's Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill. "To be honest, Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill feels more like Puck’s restaurants in the Midwest or Las Vegas than it does like Spago: This is the export model, food in the crunchy, spicy, sprightly, smoky, slightly sweet groove he does so well," Gold writes. "He’s not making any breakthroughs here. But Puck, the Magic Johnson of chefs, perfected many of the tropes of new American cuisine, from the Mediterranean-Asian thing to hardwood grilling, from exotic pasta to rowdy herbal accents to wood-oven pizza, and there is a sheen, a professional presence to the cooking here — burgers, chops, sautéed Alaskan halibut and beet-burrata salad — that Puck always seems to execute more consistently than anyone else." more ›

For 15 years Wofgang Puck has been the official caterer of The Governors Ball, the celebration that follows the Academy Awards. And this year, LAist was there for the preview. This time we get to show you pictures of Oscar-shaped chocolate statues. We also had the opportunity to test-taste a few of the treats and the cocktails that will be served at the Ball. more ›

Saturday night was the main event in the three-day American Wine and Food Festival festival that started with Red Hot @ Red Seven Friday and culminated in a chef's dinner on Sunday, Saturday evening's event was a full-blown extravaganza. more ›

The American Food & Wine Festival kicks off tonight. / Photo by pink_fish13 via LAist's flickr pool. more ›

We can't all be vegans, right? Some of us still appreciate meat. That's why this shot of some tempting ribs by neonspecs from our LAist Featured Photos Pool makes the perfect bite for our Eye Nosh series. Our foodie photographer explains where this plate came from:

oh man. so good. but the best part was the little salad on the side. At Chinois on Main as part of the DineLA Restaurant Week(s), we ordered the Barbecued Baby Pork Ribs with Sweet and Sour Teriyaki Sauce as one of our appetizers. Super delicious, but could have been more tender.

uWink, the entertainment/dining "experience," has just announced plans to open a new location in the Hollywood & Highland complex, in the space formerly occupied by Wolfgang Puck's Brasserie Vert. The restaurant is coming to Hollywood sometime in early May 2008, and promises to bring as-of-yet-unheard-of levels of FUN!!! and FAMILY EXCITEMENT!!! to the Highland complex. more ›

Sunday's Grammy Awards weren't just about honoring the best in music, they were also about supporting environmental awareness and conservancy. And the The Recording Academy® hoped to set the precedent with getting the Grammys to go green. more ›

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," said Mark Peel, a former chef at Spago who now owns Campanile in Los Angeles. "Wolfgang had a great sense of taste, but he was not a pizza maker by any means. Ed was highly skilled, fast and clean; he was an intelligent guy who made a great, great crust. There are people who have built empires on less." more ›

Daniel Boulud is one star-studded chef: he's got a small pile of Michelin stars and James Beard awards, and his New York restaurants are consistently ranked as the country's best. His TV show "After Hours" is equally star-studded: celebs and famous chefs show up to join Boulud on an intimate tour of kitchens and homes. The new season, which premieres tonight at 9:30 tonight on the HD channel MOJO (if you don't have HD, you can watch the first episode online here), finds Boulud exploring one of the world's capitals of adventurous, robust, modern cuisine: Los Angeles. more ›

Oh Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan Gold! Where will you eat this week? Why, Hacienda Heights, my dear foodies: at Earthen, a wildly popular new Chinese deli in - what else - a strip mall. I'll take an order of potstickers, please. Top Chef Recap: Lordy, lordy, what an upset! The underdog quartet of Howie, Hung, Sara, and Dale captured the win in Restaurant Wars, cleaning up their menu and sporting a new name: Quatre. Tre... more ›

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... more ›

Every Friday, LAist is taking you on a trip down to Orange County to uncover the unique dining experiences that await adventurous eaters willing to explore beyond the county line. more ›

Last March, one of my favorite Los Feliz restaurants, il Capriccio, opened up a pizzeria. It’s located at the Sunset Junction, on Hollywood Boulevard next to the U-Haul, or a block up from the strip joint, depending on your frame of reference. When people talk about California pizza, they usually mean gourmet toppings, a la Wolfgang Puck, with a sweet, bready crust like California Pizza Kitchen's. While I am a fan of adventurous toppings,... more ›

all photos by Wathana Lim for LAist. Los Angeles may not be know for it's beer. Yet. But if you roll up to a bar with Craftsman on draft, you're about to drink the freshest and most flavorful beer around. So fresh, that it may have found it's way from the fermenting tank to the keg earlier that day. That keg of Craftsman was delivered by Mark Jilg or one of his two full-time... more ›

A Word or 73: LA, get ready for your dirty underbelly to be nauseatingly exploited as the sixth season of The Shield gets underway tonight. There's a bit more room on the dial after, thank god, the following shows got the ax last week: The Wedding Bells (Fox) which was truly awful, Six Degrees (ABC) another bad one, 7th Heaven (the CW) which I don't even know about and The Black Donnellys which was... more ›

The movie 300 got you pumped for some action? Ready to pound an adversary in front of a cheering audience? Then Stoked Mentoring’s 1st Annual Celebrity Rock Paper Scissors Tournament and Fundraiser might be for you. With programs in Los Angeles and New York City, Stoked Mentoring is a not-for-profit that aims to develop at-risk youth into successful teens through action sports. To raise money for these efforts, Stoked is partnering with the United States of America Rock Paper Scissors league (USARPS) for a fun-filled competition presented by Bud Light and Mountain Dew. Activities will also include a silent auction, music by the DUBLAB Soundsystem and food provided by Wolfgang Puck. more ›

- Why did The Departed beat Dreamgirls at the Oscars even though Dreamgirls threw a lot of money in hyping it to voters? - Reuters - Where will you be tomorrow at 11:30am when the Doors get their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of the Virgin Megastore? Also, according to the Doors website, jazzy drummer John Densmore, who helped give the Doors part of their unique feel, won't be in... more ›

Goodbye O.C., a shame that the show is better now than it has been for the last couple seasons. Hey, who is the amazing Thai girl that was in Lost last night? Lots of new shows tonight, am going to have to order that second Tivo. more ›

Blood on the Sand is the new Apple-tini. British-born Muslim extremist Abu Izzadeen (AKA Omar Brooks) declares that the Prophet Mohammed would want nonbelievers to know, "I come to slaughter all of you." Militant + thirsty + batshit crazy = "We are the Muslims. We drink the blood of the enemy..." Yum. -CNN Bill Moyers gives our spineless politicos (and that includes Bill Clinton) a long-overdue verbal spanking for their willingness to bend over and... more ›

The Daily News throws a one-two punch at New York (top 10 list below) as tomorrow begins the National League Division Series against the New York Mets. Got any to add to the list of why LA beats NYC? 10. We have Disneyland. You have Coney Island. 9. We have the Pacific. You have the East River. 8. Our women wear bikinis. Your women wear dresses with sneakers. 7. In the winter we ski... more ›