#chifa

#chifa

Chintemani is looking to blend a respect for tradition with a modern approach to Mediterranean food, featuring a menu that leans heavily Turkish.

"We're thinking more about what oil we use, what ingredients we use and who we're sourcing from. I'm really thankful for that. It's evolved me in the best way."

"What we didn't expect was the response - customers were coming by, messaging us, and sharing stories about what the restaurant meant to them. It made us realize this wasn't just a place to eat - it had become part of people's routines and memories."

Nan Xiang Soup Dumplings is known for its handmade soup dumplings, made in an open kitchen where diners can observe the preparation process. The menu features traditional dim sum and noodle dishes, including Shanghai Siu Mai and pan-fried crispy noodles.

The overall landscape design of the garden centers on the theme of auspicious clouds, with a circular landscape boulevard connecting the entire garden and a centripetal layout creating a diverse array of scenes.

Pisco is a great spirit with a great story. At the bar, the team has recently featured an Italia pisco, and guests are taken aback by how fragrant and perfumey it is.

A small splash can brighten the sweetness of corn and add a subtle herbal lift. It should enhance - not dominate. Think of it as a squeeze of lime, ever so popular in Mexican food, in spirit form.

Oversized burritos are more of a north-of-the-border staple. In Mexico, even in northern regions where burritos originate, they're practical and proportionate. This is owed to the differences between traditional Mexican cuisine and its American-adapted counterpart.

Doyers Street is a one-block strip in Chinatown that starts off perpendicular to the Bowery and then curves ninety degrees, like a lowercase "r," to terminate against the bustle of Pell Street. A notorious battleground for gang fights in the early nineteen-hundreds, it has, in recent decades, scrubbed out the bloodstains and redefined itself as a beloved, city-grid-defying idiosyncrasy, narrow and wonky and overflowing with atmosphere.

Though they were only serving in town for one night, the chefs and staff behind the Mexico City supernova Masala y Maíz managed to cause what felt like a temporary ripple in L.A. dining during their pop-up last week. It reminded this diner that despite the era's current dedication to culinary and cultural boundaries - you should only cook what you know, write what you know - a spirit of mixture and melding can actually lead to something extraordinary, and not cringey, in practice.

East Bay hardcore outfit Manos De Fierro is part of a new wave of bands pushing the Bay Area scene back toward something raw, physical and community-driven. Pulling from hardcore, metal and beatdown influences, their sound is confrontational without feeling performative, rooted in real experience rather than image. The band has built a reputation through local shows that thrive on intensity and shared energy, where the line between band and crowd all but disappears.

Cristian Orozco has come a long way from his start in the hospitality industry as a dishwasher at a Vietnamese restaurant. Since arriving in the U.S. from Guatemala at 17 years old, Orozco has spent the last 12 years methodically working his way up the culinary food chain with kitchen gigs at celebrated restaurants like Acadia, Tzuco, and North Pond.

Christmas is lovely, but my kids think Chinese new year is by far the best holiday. I might be biased, but, unusually, I am inclined to agree with them. As my eldest puts it, New clothes, cash, booze and food what's not to love? There's the added bonus that cash is absolutely more than acceptable in fact, it's de rigueur, so there's no shopping for mundane socks and smelly candles. Chinese new year is full of rituals and, just as at Christmas, every family has its own, but they are all variations on a theme. Symbolism looms large in Chinese culture, and at new year it centres around messages of prosperity, luck and family.

Living in Japan in the early 2000s, Fralick fell in love with an Italian restaurant in the city of Shizuoka, where he ate Italian food, but with Japanese influences, like pastas made with uni and the fermented soybeans known as natto. "It really reminded me of home," says Fralick, who grew up in upstate New York and started his cooking career in Italian fine dining.

whose family immigrated to Los Angeles in 1967, remembers vividly how his school lunch of braised pork and Chinese sauerkraut between two pieces of bread was looked at by his classmates. 'Oh, God, what are you eating? That's gross,' Chen recalled during a recent busy lunch hour at his San Francisco restaurant and bar, China Live, on the edge of the nation's oldest Chinatown. 'And now everybody wants the braised pork and Chinese sauerkraut. Hopefully, perception of Chinese (food) has now come a long ways.'

In Chinese culture - not the only Asian culture to celebrate the holiday, surely, but a big one in the Bay Area - think whole fish, which represents family and sharing. Or think dumplings, which represent wealth and good fortune with shapes recalling gold ingots. And across regions and families, there are, of course, the personal traditions that mark this most auspicious holiday.