Food & drink

Food & drink

Finding Vaca feels like a treasure hunt that's well worth the effort. Park in the 777 Figueroa Building and take a rather ominous tunnel down to the main retail stretch along Figueroa Avenue. Make a hard right at the end of the tunnel, and Vaca resides on the ground floor of a tall residential tower. Santana's approach to Spanish fare bucks the trend of mid-range prices, featuring high-end dry-aged beef, lush seafood paellas, and precise tapas.

We are now in Dungeness season, which is the perfect time try one (or two) of Damansara's crustaceans. I ordered a chili crab with rice today as a first-season crab to have for lunch over the next two days. I will also make a broth out of the shells to freeze for spicy crab broth on demand. Hello, future bowls of ramen! The thought of this is truly comforting already.

One of the restaurant's owners, who was of Dominican heritage, requested that the menu showcase dishes reflecting her family's recipes, albeit with a modern twist. At the time, I was unfamiliar with Dominican cuisine, so I immersed myself in research by visiting local neighborhood establishments and seeking out the limited cookbooks available.

Buffalo chicken dip is a must while cheering on the athletes of Team USA.

In 2024, DC got a slew of thrilling, genre-busting restaurants, from Dōgon to Pascual to La' Shukran to Moon Rabbit. This past year was different: more safe, less boundary-pushing. Major openings included copies and spinoffs of existing restaurants (Chai Pani, Lucky Danger) and Stephen Starr's revamp of the century-old Occidental. And 2025 closed out with two flashy new steak spots from big restaurant groups. Not exactly groundbreaking.

Tanya Holland, especially among Bay Area foodies, needs no introduction. She's the award-winning celebrity chef behind Oakland's Brown Sugar Kitchen, B-Side BBQ and Town Fare, and the author of multiple cookbooks. She competed on Top Chef, hosted Tanya's Kitchen Table on the Oprah Winfrey Network and today serves on the James Beard Foundation's Awards Committee. For the Super Bowl this year, she'll be at a cousin's 80th birthday party.

On a recent Friday night, around 150 people lined up around the block to get into DC's newest hotspot. They weren't seeking out some trendy cuisine or buzzy chef. They were waiting for Eebee's, which is, basically, just a neighborhood bar. Vintage beer signs and family photos give the Shaw corner joint a dive-y unpretentiousness. You can get a Miller High Life for $6 or a martini for $13. And the cheeseburger is better than you might expect.

Signatures - refried lentils, duck albondigas, lamb neck consommé - return in a new, warm setting, without sacrificing the complexity that made the original iconic. Chicharrón reimagined into a crisp-soft pinwheel of pork belly. Duck albondigas permeated with smokiness from chipotle and bacon. Lamb neck, its meat as yielding as pot roast, previously steamed in tamales and currently fashioned as chile-stained barbacoa set over fragrant consommé.

It's even the home of Duff Goldman's favorite fast food item. But we can't forget about the milkshakes. On its website, Sheetz describes the shakes as "robust" with "classic and extra freaky flavors," but not everyone is on board with how they're made. While a classic milkshake typically consists of a combination of milk, ice cream, and some sort of flavor, Sheetz's shakes have the added ingredient of ice.

A longtime Oakland bakery located in the old headquarters of the Black Panther Party has permanently closed. On Jan. 27, butcher paper covered the windows of the It's All Good Bakery at 5622 Martin Luther King Jr. Way and signs announced, We are permanently closed. Thank you for 30 years of support! A neighbor at the barbershop next store said it had shut down the previous week. Asked why, he replied, We're all still wondering that ourselves.

No food recall is good news, but the last news you want to hear is that food in your home may have been exposed to bird and rodent droppings. Unfortunately, that's exactly the case for a major new recall just issued by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), which says thousands of products, ranging beyond food into cosmetic products and medical devices, may have been exposed to animal waste.

Kaleidoscopic seems a fitting word to describe the assemblage of drinks curated by Sparkling Ice. The brand has some serious range. Each vibrant flavor of sparkling water is denoted by its trademarked fruit-caught-in-an-ice-cube imagery, spanning from obligatory classics like fruit punch and lemonade to more creative combos like grape raspberry and ginger lime. It makes for a colorful grocery store display and happy customers who can always find a flavor that suits their taste buds.

Who decided Alfredo always needs to be served with pasta? Not me! Tonight we are breaking the dinner rules and swapping out the noodles for my absolute favorite pantry staple: fingerling potatoes. This Chicken Alfredo Casserole is the ultimate "family comfort food"-it's rich, bubbly, packed with garlic butter goodness, and incredibly hearty. It's one of those simple, cozy meals that makes the whole kitchen smell amazing and disappears from the pan in record time,

'Rest assured, our iconic Cheetos and Doritos remain unchanged. Simply NKD is an alternative option, not a replacement, introduced to meet consumer demand.'

The issue is, the recipe was wrong and it claims it is from Inspired Taste, when it really wasn't. So Glenn would be cooking up this recipe, thinking it is from Inspired Taste, then when it comes out bad, he would not be happy with his favorite recipe blogger and fault them. But the truth is, it is Google's fault for providing the wrong recipe, due to its AI.

There are several things you'll want to keep in your car for winter emergencies, including a first aid kit, blankets, jumper cables, and even an emergency radio. But what about food? You don't want to be sitting there for hours, hungry and freezing cold, with nothing to eat. We talked to a few safety experts, including Dr. Jason Schroder, medical director and co-founder of Craft Body Scan;

This creamy Spinach Lentil Curry is comforting, richly spiced without being heavy and made with just a few pantry staple ingredients in about 30 minutes. Prep Time: 10 minutes. Cook Time: 20 minutes. Servings: Makes 4 servings of approximately 1.5 cups each. Nutrition: 269 calories with 17g protein + 19g fibre. Dietary Info: Vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free. Difficulty: Easy! One-pan recipe with minimal ingredients and prep needed.

Virginia-based Gerber Products Company is voluntarily recalling limited batches of Gerber Arrowroot Biscuits, a cookie-like snack meant for children 10 months or older. On January 26, the baby food and snack producer issued the voluntary recall due to the potential presence of soft plastic and paper pieces that "should not be consumed," the company said this week. The material comes from a supplier of arrowroot flour that initiated its own recall, Gerber said.

Food waste in America is a significant and persistent problem that often goes unnoticed. According to a 2010 USDA study, 30-40% of our country's entire food supply winds up in landfills each year - almost 70 million tons. That's about $161 billion worth of food, meaning the average family's food waste totals around $3,000 a year. And while an enormous portion of our food supply is simply thrown away, roughly 48 million Americans - including one in five children - experience food insecurity.

If you thought Myrtle Beach was just funnel cakes, mini golf, and sunburns, think again. The Grand Strand is getting a serious glow-up in 2026, and the food and beverage industry is leading the charge. We're talking Guy Fieri's largest entertainment concept yet, Tennessee's favorite distillery heading south, a 100-foot roller coaster, and enough live music to make Nashville jealous.

Logan Airport will soon get more options for Boston travelers and visitors to quell their hunger this spring. A press release Tuesday from Paradies Lagardère, a restaurant and retailer group that focuses on airports, confirmed the opening of Berkshire Farm to Flight and CAVA at Boston Logan International Airport. Paradies Lagardère said both new restaurant concepts would be located in Terminal B.

Kevin Tien, chef/owner of Moon Rabbit in Penn Quarter, says he encountered a lot of eel dishes, from soups to congee, when he traveled to Vietnam for the first time a year ago. "I didn't realize myself that eel is a really popular source of protein in Vietnam," he says. "And with my background in Japanese cuisine, I thought it was just an easy thing to put on our menu."

From a candelit dinner to a dance party for situationships, everyone's feeling the love. Whether you think it is the most romantic day of the year or a full-on capitalistic cash grab, Valentine's Day is right around the corner-and there's no escaping it. I f you happen to have a sweetie, we recommend getting a plan together ASAP so you aren't left with a heart-shaped box of chocolates pulled straight o ut of the discount bin.

The capital of my home country, and the location of my new restaurant, Marcus Addis Restaurant & Sky Bar, is both the center of Ethiopia and a core component of our nation's culture. Restaurants and artistic institutions go hand and hand in Addis. Here, galleries, museums, and markets come together to create a steady, electric rhythm that comes alive in the city's restaurants and kitchens.

The purveyors of late-night hot dogs, tins of Zyn, and countless varieties of gummy worms generally don't sell a lot of "real food." But in America's food deserts, convenience stores are more than just places to pick up a snack-they're grocery stores. The USDA estimates that tens of millions of Americans live in low-income areas with limited access to grocery stores.

Sam's Club's new cookie tray comes with a whopping 60 cookies made up of five unique flavors. This lineup includes a flavor for everyone: Honey Almond Shortbread, Birthday Cake Shortbread, Chocolate Cherry, Blueberry & Creme, and Salted Caramel Cashew. The entire tray costs just $19.93, and you'll get 12 of each flavor. This is a steal compared to Costco's most recent holiday cookie tray, which also featured 60 cookies but cost $24.99. Not only will Sam's Club's newest bakery item sweeten up your day, it'll save you $5 - and there's nothing better than a sweet deal.

Bodenheimer said he's adjusting portions, like one less deviled egg per platter, or rearranging the measurements of a batched cocktail. "It's like you're in a recording studio, and you're turning the levels up and down on the master board," he said. Many of Cure's products are imported, from German beer, French cheese and Spanish Marcona almonds, which Bodenheimer refuses to substitute. He said some of the tariff burden is shared between the supplier and importer before it reaches the customer.

The latest NIQ Hospitality at Home Tracker, powered by CGA intelligence, reveals groups' like-for-like sales last month were just 0.3% ahead of December 2024. It was flat at 0.0% in November, as some consumers tightened their spending in the run-up to Christmas. Across 2025, at-home sales growth rose above the UK's rate of inflation in only two of the 12 months.

We had a plan [to only use Islay barley], but as we grew, we moved beyond being able to do that,