Results tagged “wolfgangpuck”

             

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.

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."

                                   

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.

                            

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.

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

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.

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.

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."

Continue reading "Pizza Pioneer Ed LaDou Dies at 52"

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.

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...

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...

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.

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,...

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...

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...

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.

- 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...

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.

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...

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...

It's a short work week for most, but that doesn't mean that we can't already start planning for next weekend's fun. This Friday and Saturday Bon Appetit Magazine is coming to Los Angeles for a very special 50th anniversary celebration heralded as "The Ultimate Wine and Dine Weekend." The event brings together "some of the country's most celebrated chefs and entertaining personalities paired with the dynamic culinary talents of Los Angeles and Southern California." There will be workshops focused on food and wine, tastings, seminars, a Grand Tasting featuring 50 top chefs, and the chance to walk along Rodeo Drive and taste and mingle with top names in cooking and retail. Participants include Honorary Co-Chair and local legend Wolfgang Puck, the stylish Colin Cowie, Bon Appetit's Test Kitchen guru Cat Cora, and the ubiquitous Border Girls Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger, and the magazine Editor Barbara Fairchild. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Chefs for Humanity.

This LAist admits to not talking food much around these parts for some time now. Obviously we haven't been starving ourselves; there's been plenty of eating out and cooking in at home to sustain us in our shameful absence. We might even so boldly suggest that while we were keeping quiet we were also busying ourselves with learning more and more about food so we could pass on this wisdom to our readers. We've devoured the written words of famed critics like Ruth Reichl, Gael Greene, and Mimi Sheraton, and are now nose deep in Anthony Bourdain's famous b.s., and loving every minute of it. We've also just started a series of professional cooking classes at Culver City's New School of Cooking, and boy howdy can we julienne a raw potato! So that's what we're up to. But we're back... so get ready to eat our words...again.

The latest episode of Who Wants an NFL Franchise entered a new stage yesterday: The Meetings of the Rich Dudes.

The James Beard Foundation award nominations (the Nobel Prizes of food) are out today. And two out of three nominated cookbooks "From a Professional Point of View" are from chefs who've made their names in Los Angeles: Nobu Now from Nobu Matsuhisa and Sunday Suppers at Lucques by softspoken Suzanne Goin. Together the books total just about $50, which is less than you'd pay to eat in either place.

Next weekend brings two major foodie events to Los Angeles!

Los Angeles airports are wonderful places for evesdropping- so many fascinating people, so many interesting stories, and all under one proverbial roof... While casually browsing the books in the United terminal of LAX, right next door to Wolfgang Puck’s Pizza joint, LAist observed this exchange:

The Golden Globes are over, Industry-types are off to Park City for Sundance and the Oscar nomination/winner odds-making begins in earnest. Now is the time for out-of-town journalists to do their legwork about town in order to find new ways to describe the luxuriousness of Wolfgang Puck's Oscar Ball menu or give readers a verbal blueprint of this year's location for the Vanity Fair party.