Food & drink

Food & drink

Ilcha, a Korean restaurant in the Marina that's been lauded for its fried chicken, is closing after Valentine's Day, and the SF Business Times has news of its replacement. Coming soon to 2151 Lombard will be Kava, a restaurant serving Nepalese, Himalayan, and Indian cuisines, from Nepalese owner Kamal Kandel of North Beach's Yarsa Nepalese Cuisine. The menu, which will have some similarities to Yarsa, will feature Nepalese curries, momos, chaat, tandoori, and biryani dishes.

Many thanks to the Crenn team for such a playful celebration of high-low: mac and cheese with black truffles, cheffy hot dogs served in the kitchen, and a spin on Frito pie, but with salt and vinegar chips, egg yolk jam, smoked crème fraîche, and caviar. Pastry chef Juan Contreras set up a chocolate fountain in his pastry room in true Willy Wonka fashion, and chef Crenn was in truly exuberant form.

Loading your fridge with frozen ice packs ahead of time can help keep it cool if the power shuts down, and grouping cold food together can help it stay cool even as the temperature warms. It also helps to have a separate cooler ready to move any perishable items into during a prolonged outage. But no matter how else you prepare, you should also stave off odors by using a sponge.

Dip into New York's Shinji's at True Laurel, a new concept from Square Pie Guys at Mago, and a Michelin-powered dinner at Songbird Parlour. For fans of blends and bubbles, check out the Festival of Undiscovered Grapes in San Jose, a celebration of oysters and bubbly wine in Mendo, or an afternoon of sparkling wine and wellness in Napa. Save some calendar space to close out SF Sketchfest. Jump ahead to this week's top events.

I started working at Trader Joe's after college and my time there provided me with a graduate education in specialty foods. It was there that my palette expanded and grew up. Having lived on a diet of pizza and french fries as an undergrad, I developed a taste for so many of Trader Joe's hidden gems. These were "fancy" products I'd never considered, like olive tapenade (a discontinued item; trust me, I've asked), chevre goat cheese, and strawberry mochi.

"Through this 7th edition of Chef's Council, we're uniting the culinary creativity of world-class chefs with our deep expertise in flavour and taste to push the boundaries of hot and spicy, embracing all the nuances and sensations that make heat truly satisfying," Ullram stated. That nuance is key. Today's consumers aren't just chasing the hottest pepper on the Scoville scale: they're looking for layered experiences: the slow burn, the cooling contrast, the lingering tingle, and the complex interplay of pungency with sweetness, umami, or citrus.

Old Cutler Inn, the reimagined neighborhood favorite nestled along Old Cutler Road, is expanding its daytime offerings with the launch of breakfast, lunch, and Sunday brunch programs, further establishing the restaurant as a true all-day destination for the Palmetto Bay community and beyond. Old Cutler Inn now offers a Breakfast Window, open Wednesdays through Sundays from 7:30 AM to 10:30 AM, designed for both grab-and-go convenience and relaxed patio mornings.

Firehouse Subs is one of our favorite sandwich chains, ranking sixth out of 21 national sandwich chains. While they offer soups and salads, Firehouse Subs' sandwiches are what keep customers coming back time and time again. Ironically, Firehouse Subs began with an order that wasn't a sub, but a hot dog.

Ever since Noodle Inn on Old Compton Street went viral, it's had people queuing around the block for its hand-pulled biang biang noodles slapped down on the counter, and knife-cut noodles, cut off from blocks of dough straight into the pot. It became so popular that at the back end of 2025, a second site opened in the City, close to Liverpool Street station. And the team isn't losing any momentum as a third location is now on the way.

Hey there! After so many years of celebrating my birthday as Guy, Fieri said in the video. I figured this year I'd celebrate it as just a guy. Happy birthday to me!

I kept telling myself, 'One day, I'm going to try these,'

"In 2022 and half of 2023, we would do like $40,000 to $60,000 [in sales] a month out of one little stall," says Jamra, whose restaurant, Evette's, was named one of the New York Times' 50 Best Restaurants in the U.S. in 2022. "It was extremely profitable," Jamra tells Eater. "We were making all kinds of money. We had lines every day, every vendor did. Back then, it was a who's who of the Chicago restaurant industry."

Located on the west side of the city, it's a family-owned business that's as quintessential a Houston steakhouse as you can get. All the steaks are USDA prime Certified Angus Beef and are wet aged for 40 days, more than twice the standard aging time for steakhouses, producing exceptionally tender, buttery steaks. And while the prices aren't cheap, Taste of Texas' dedication to using only

We are in the midst of a high protein craze. Every week I get dozens of protein-packed pitches to my inbox, and I'm sure you've seen the protein bars plastered all over subway cars, protein-ified menu items at fast-casual chains like Starbucks and Sweetgreen, and protein versions of classic products (protein pasta, protein crackers, protein...yogurt?) lining practically every aisle at the grocery store.

This is the time of year when my kitchen starts to tell the truth about who I am. Scottish crab, fresh from Tarbert, is lowered gently into a bubbling chilli bath of sambal and egg to become chilli crab, scooped up with steamed mantou buns and eaten messily with friends and family. Oysters from Lindisfarne are deep-fried in a light cloak of rice and corn flour, fished out of the wok with long chopsticks and dipped into sweet chilli sauce.

Sat in a nineteenth century pub, the wine bar is hip without being pretentious, sultry without being intense and low-key without being boring. Time Out contributor Daniela Toporek paid Godet a visit back in October. She said that Godet 'can easily be spotted by its peachy-pink exterior and checkered curtains' and that, inside, the 'the vibes ridiculously cool', with vinyl DJs playing funk, soul, disco and house at a reasonable volume (one that doesn't force you to yell at one another in a deeply unromantic way).

Northwest Londoners will no longer have to travel all the way to Dartmouth Park to grab a slice of their favourite pie, as Yard Sale's latest branch will serve all of East Finchley, Muswell Hill and Hampstead Garden Suburb as well as parts of Highgate, Finchley Central and North Finchley. After opening in Clapton in 2014, Yard Sale quickly became one of the city's best-loved for a Neapolitan-style pie.

Clara Greenstein, a 28-year-old who lives in Queens, New York, can be found several nights a week at her local bar, The Seneca. The spot serves good burgers and drinks for a good price, but the main draw is a pool table. Greenstein entered a tournament about two years ago, and now she's inherited the role of running it. "I get a free hamburger every week and get to basically have office hours for all my friends," she tells me.

The eponymous Dave of Dave's Hot Chicken trained under Chef Thomas Keller...so maybe our expectations were too high going in? We need to talk about the cheese fries. In Tasting Table's roundup of the Dave's Hot Chicken menu items to order and the ones to skip completely, we wrote the chain's cheese fries off as a skip. However, in our ranking of the 10 best restaurant cheese fries, we gave Dave's cheese fries the illustrious number two spot out of 10 (surpassed only by Wingstop). Why do the results of our taste-tests vary so drastically? After some soul (and stomach, and internet) searching, the answer seems to be that Dave's cheese fries vary pretty drastically, too.

In this version, cooked butternut squash is mashed directly onto a thick slice of warm raisin-walnut toast and topped with crumbled feta and a sprinkling of crunchy dukkah - a nutty Middle Eastern blend of toasted seeds and spices. The result is an easy, vibrant, flavorful breakfast that carries you through the morning without feeling rich. To make mornings simpler, cook the squash ahead - roasted, sautéed or even microwaved - and keep it on hand for a week of toast, wraps, salads and simple sides.

Drinking green juice gives you all the benefits of the vegetables (except fiber). It's actually even better to eat the whole vegetables. Consider munching on celery and cucumber with a healthy yogurt dip or blend up some green smoothies. It's important to drink green juice in moderation. Per Healthline, it may contribute to poor blood sugar control or kidney issues if you drink a lot of it. Research also associates juice cleanses with disordered eating and a negative relationship with food (read more here).

Once upon a time, themed restaurant chains ruled America's dining scene. Planet Hollywood gave us a taste of fame, Harley Davidson Cafe let us live on the wild side, and Rainforest Cafe took us on a tropical adventure. But today, as minimalism dominates restaurant design, the dining experience often feels nearly identical from one chain to the next. Just look at one of the country's most popular old-fashioned franchises, Cracker Barrel, nearly unrecognizable after modernizing its iconic look.

Cento Pasta Bar began as a Downtown Los Angeles pasta pop-up by chef Avner Levi, a former pasta cook from Bestia, more than 10 years ago. Its West Adams location opened in 2021, where Cento has remained a destination for fresh noodles and vibey date nights, even expanding with a gallery-like, Neptunian raw bar next door. As the restaurant name suggests, the star of the menu is undeniably pasta;

Each year restaurants and bars across the country are set abuzz when the James Beard Foundation announces the top chefs, restaurateurs and beverage professionals in the running for its coveted awards. The semifinalists, announced today, are the first announcement in a string of them, and Los Angeles-area restaurants and individuals racked up two dozen nods. Of these semifinalists, the nominees will be announced March 31, while the winners will be announced and awarded at a June 15 ceremony held at Chicago's Lyric Opera.