Beth Kopley

A few weeks ago, food maven extraordinaire Jonathan Gold described this new restaurant, saying “There are ladies who lunch….and ladies who lunch in Chengdu.” Drawn by this description, I pulled together a posse of ladies and headed for Sugar Spice Café, in the mini-mall next to the Hilton on Valley Boulevard in San Gabriel. Unlike the usual SGV noodle joint, there is décor of which to speak: wicker chairs, comfy banquettes, and even a couch...

Panel at PaleyFest 2009 At 5 p.m. last Tuesday, the line for the True Blood panel at PaleyFest snaked around the Cinerama Dome toward the Arclight entrance. Many of the predominantly female fans of the HBO series had been camped out since early afternoon, traveling from as far as Texas and New York. When the program began at 7 p.m. there were only a few empty seats toward the back of the balcony. The...

Bamboodles (you know you will like saying that name over and over) has two great things going for it: freshly-made noodles in a variety of flavors, and soup broths made without MSG. For those of us who love the foods of the SGV but are MSG-intolerant (hello, migraine!), Bamboodles is a welcome new choice. The noodles are rolled out with a huge bamboo stick by the noodle maker,who works in a glass-fronted area, leveraging the...

Blowfish photo by tavallai via Flickr Foodblogger Andrew at Very Good Taste has posted a list of one hundred foods that he thinks every omnivore should try once in his or her life. Since he posted the list earlier this month, he's gotten close to 700 comments with many, many links backs to personal lists. Clotilde Dusoulier at Chocolate and Zucchini has posted hers here. She's missing 37 from the list -- which favors access...

Just as I reached Fab Hot Dogs in Reseda, forty-five painful minutes on the 101 from Los Feliz, my iPod kicked up Bruce Springsteen, the unofficial state poet of New Jersey. It was a good omen, given all the noise about hot dog excellence on LAist lately. The ripper, Fab's deep-fried dog, is a Garden State original, featured since at least the 1930s at Rutt's Hutt in Clifton, New Jersey, at the gritty junction...

Eating one's way through the San Gabriel Valley is the task of a lifetime. For anyone with the intestinal fortitude, it's a worthy quest. I have taken up that challenge - most recently at Noodle House in Monterey Park, which has gotten a lot of internet buzz recently. Here's what's special about Noodle House: their dumplings, of the northern Chinese variety, are made to order, while you wait, and they are worth waiting for. Dumplings...

Coming up on Sunday, June 29 at UCLA is Jewish Geography: Place, Design, Memory, Imagination, a festival presented by Nextbook, an online magazine that also produces events showcasing Jewish culture. Details are available at Nextbook.org, as are $15 passes for the day (no reserved seats for panels, so get ready to stand in line). Among the many notable literary sorts appearing that day are graphic novelist Ben Katchor (Julius Knipl: Real Estate Photographer) and...

Because George Harrison was my favorite Beatle, I devoured Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me, a memoir by his first wife Pattie Boyd (of whom I confess I was, in my Beatle phase, horribly jealous) within days of its publication last year. Since recovering from her marriages, Pattie has become known as a photographer. This Sunday from 12 to 5 p.m., a show of her photographs opens at the Morrison Hotel Gallery...

One of the most enjoyable aspects of celebrity fashion is what I'll call the superiority factor. You know, the sneering satisfaction that you or I can take in seeing someone who has all the money and fashion consultants in the world and still looks like they got dressed in a lightless closet stocked with Salvation Army rejects. On Oscar Sunday, your television screen will offer the best opportunity to see which stars haven't gotten...

Square One Dining on Fountain Avenue, tucked behind the Scientology Center that extends from Sunset to Fountain in East Hollywood, is a restaurant of little pretension and noble purpose: it serves one of the finest breakfasts in Los Angeles. Although two years ago, LAist had careless service at Square One, despite the great food (it even made a staffer's top ten list), the service on this and previous visits was attentive and polite -...