Top 10 Bucket List Restaurants in California Worth Planning a Trip Around
“Some meals are just dinner. A handful of them become the reason you went.” ~ Elliot Kallen I have been eating my way through California for most of my adult life. Tammy and I have driven up Highway 1 with nowhere specific to be, spent long afternoons on Sonoma back roads stopping wherever looked interesting, […]
12 Best Breakfast and Brunch Spots in Napa and Sonoma, According to Locals
These are the mornings I actually keep in the rotation, the ones I take Tammy to on a slow Sunday and the ones I hand to a friend who asks where to eat before the wineries open. QUICK ANSWER: The Napa and Sonoma breakfast and brunch spots I actually return to are Grace’s Table and […]
15 Hidden Gem Restaurants in Napa & Sonoma Most Visitors Never Find
Notes From My Own Napa & Sonoma Notebook “Every list I read before this trip had the same twenty names in a different order. So I stopped reading lists and started asking the people who actually work the dinner shift.” Elliot Kallen I’ve eaten my way through Napa and Sonoma more times than I can […]
Food Tour vs Wine Tour: Which Should You Choose?
“I stood in a parking lot in Healdsburg for ten minutes, deciding between garlic bread and Grenache. That’s the whole problem right there.” Elliot Kallen Honestly, I picked the wine tour. Drove out to Dry Creek, sat on a patio for two hours, and had one of the better Zinfandels of my life. And the […]
12 Farm-to-Table Food & Wine Pairings Every Foodie Should Experience
“Farm-to-table” is one of those phrases I’ve learned to be suspicious of. Every third restaurant in wine country puts it on the menu now, right under a logo of a tractor, and half of them source the same produce from the same regional distributor as the place next door. So when I say a pairing […]
How to Decide Where to Eat in San Francisco Without Spending Hours Researching
I’ve watched people spend 45 minutes scrolling through Yelp, only to land on a restaurant they could’ve picked in 5 minutes. San Francisco doesn’t have a shortage of good restaurants. It has a shortage of good decisions. Every ‘best of’ list reshuffles the same twenty names, half the reviews are written by someone who ate […]
15 Los Angeles Date Night Plans You Can Try This Weekend
“We should do something different this weekend.” Almost every couple says some version of that line around Thursday. Then Friday shows up, and it’s the same restaurant or the couch. I say it to Tammy nearly as often as she says it to me – a strange thing to admit for someone who runs a […]
20 Signature Dishes You Can’t Leave San Francisco Without Trying
FROM My Travel Journal Thirty years of eating in this city, and I’ve kept a running list the whole time – napkins, notes typed into my phone at red lights, dictated to Tammy while she drove and rolled her eyes. It was never meant for anyone else. Just what stuck, what I went back for, […]
20 Los Angeles Food Experiences Every First-Time Visitor Should Try
”People ask me what Los Angeles tastes like, expecting one answer. I never give them one, because the honest answer is that it tastes like Oaxaca on one block and Seoul three blocks later, and that contradiction is the actual food scene here.” — Elliot Kallen Every first-time visitor to LA lands with the same […]
Michelin-Star Restaurants vs Local Favorites: Which One Fits Your Night?
“I’ve had the seven-course tasting menu. I’ve also eaten standing up at a counter with three stools. Both nights ended up on my list of the year’s best meals — for completely different reasons.” — Elliot Kallen, A star on the door changes everything before you even sit down. You stand up straighter. You expect […]