I’ve been on a cooking spaghetti kick lately.  Here are two kinds I’ve made in the last week. Above: Pasta With Sardines, Bread Crumbs and Capers from Mark Bittman of the New York Times.  I had this with some vinho verde, my default house white.  Fantastic. Below: Shiitake carbonara – my own creation.  Super easy.  [...]

I was in Portland, Oregon over the weekend for the JET Alumni Association Regional Technology Conference.  On Sunday, after the Conference ended, I went with LL to check out Portland’s much acclaimed Pok Pok Thai restaurant.   The restaurant is a bit off the beaten path, but definitely worth the trip.  It’s built to resemble  [...]

While I was in “Teherangeles” visiting the family last week, I went to check out Attari Sandwich Shop in Westwood (1388 Westwood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, 90024). We started with a Shirazi salad, a simple and refreshing chopped salad of tomato, cucumber, and onion. Next course was Ash-e joe, a thick soup with lentils, black [...]

I checked out Kogi, the much-hyped Los Angeles Korean BBQ Taco truck when I was in town visiting the family last week.  We followed them on Twitter and drove out to Encino to wait in line for the Korean/Mexican fusion food cart.  They have multiple trucks that park at different locations in LA on different [...]

Elizabeth and I went to The Wine Trials 2010 book release party at Seppi’s on Wednesday night.  I was one of the blind tasters for the first edition of the book. The Wine Trials 2010 is a completely rewritten new edition that “recommends 150 wines under $15 that outscored $50-$150 wines in brown-bag blind tastings [...]