Barbara Hansen

cold acorn noodles at Ma Dang Gook Su

Forget the bulgogi and galbi. Instead, chill out in Koreatown with the coolest noodles around. You probably already know naengmyeon, the buckwheat noodles that come either in chilled broth or dry, with spicy seasonings. It's a Koreatown staple, but so are other cold noodle dishes that you'll want when it's too hot to eat anything, well, hot. Ready to think outside the pasta box? Then turn the page for three places to get really great Korean cold noodles.

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Alanna Hale

Bartender Erik Ellestad at home

As cocktail books go, The Savoy Cocktail Book is neither precise -- it contains numerous forgotten ingredients (you mean an Aviation uses Crème de Violette?!) and botched measurements -- nor original, as it cobbled together recipes from numerous other sources without any credit whatsoever. Despite the aforementioned facts, the book, which was originally published in 1930, tops the list of "must-have" cocktail compendiums for many bartenders, not only because of its thoroughness but because of its ability to capture an era of refinement, elegance, and above all, cocktail glory. And the tongue-in-cheek advice therein ain't bad either.

Tonight, San Francisco bartender Erik Ellestad will bring a little bit of the Savoy to life at the Eveleigh, where he'll mix Savoy cocktails and, as he says, "spread the gospel according to Harry."

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Facebook/Mohawk Bend

Summer root salad

Since he took over the kitchen at Mohawk Bend last December, Erick Simmons has thrown out a few tools from his traditional chef's tool box. "I have no butter in my inventory. I haven't used it here for the last six months. If you told me that before I arrived last year, I would have thought you're crazy."

In fact, one of Simmons' first orders of business was to get rid of 15 pounds of butter that had been languishing unused in the kitchen. Olive oil became the preferred oil instead; vegetable oil for the fryer. Chicken and beef stock were swapped for vegetable-based stock, beer for wine.

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Farley Elliott

Eddie's Italian Restaurant

It's important to remember that strip malls can happen any time, anywhere. Sure, you might be used to catching miles and miles of them as you reach towards the suburbs, but sometimes there's a strip mall right under your nose.

For example, take a look at the intersection of Lincoln Boulevard and Washington Boulevard in Marina Del Rey. The intersection of these two major westside thoroughfares should mean a boon of commerce, particularly with the marina-side luxury condos that exist just down Lincoln and the upscale beachcombers at the end of Washington. Yet there's there's the blocky 7-11 that anchors one end like a strip mall version of a department store, selling everything for cheap and driving in most of the business. There's a dry cleaner on site, a check advance storefront and a locksmith shop that's exactly the size of one parking space. This is classic strip mall stuff, in the shadow of exactly the sort of urban planning that seeks to kill off strip malls altogether.

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youtube.com

Screenshot from youtube of flying iTray

Ever wanted your food to fly at you on a whirling automated tray? Not really? No, me either. But if you're in London, you can have this fine experience, at a restaurant called YO! Sushi. They've developed a flying waiter tray called the iTray.

There's a video of the waiter-copter (posted below), but it raises more questions than it answers. The obvious one: WHY? But also: Isn't it kind of dangerous? It's propelled by a "quadcopter" -- four spinning propellers. What happens if someone touches them? At the very best, wouldn't your food go flying? And then, what if the food hit the copters? I kind of hope that has happened, actually, it sounds awesome and hilarious.

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Jamie Tiampo/Top Round Roast Beef

Roast beef sandwich

We're well-served by tacos, burgers, and ramen in L.A. But when it comes to a classic roast beef sandwich, our main source is probably Arby's. Which says a lot. This could all change come Monday, June 17, when Top Round Roast Beef opens at the corner of La Brea and Olympic.

The roast beef featured is a USDA Choice top round cut (hence the name), slow-roasted for 12 hours and thinly sliced-to-order, then presented in a toasted bun.

"We wanted it to taste like something you would have eaten as a kid growing up -- nothing processed and artificial. The basis for the rub is salt, pepper, and carraway. You know, the roast beef you'd have at your grandmother's table," says chef Anthony Carron (800 Degrees, Michael Mina), one in the team of four behind the new restaurant.

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L. J. Solmonson

Ross Measuring at Comme Ca

In the modern bartending pantheon, Sam Ross is a fellow of epic proportions. Having helped his mother and sister open Ginger, a cocktail bar at the forefront of the Melbourne cocktail revolution, he headed to the States in 2004 where he mixed drinks at three of New York's legendary locales, Milk & Honey, Little Branch and the Pegu Club, working with fellow cocktail gurus Sasha Petraske and Audrey Saunders.

During this time, Ross also came west to help craft the cocktail program at Comme Ça, David Myers' Melrose Avenue bistro, open since 2007. When the cocktail renaissance was a nascent blip on the Los Angeles radar, Comme Ça led the charge in no small part due to Sam Ross's vision and bartender training. Now, many of L.A.'s best bartenders, Julian Cox and Marcos Tello among them, have passed through Comme Ça's doors. Of Ross, Cox has this to say: "Sammy Ross's cocktail program at Comme Ça defined an era of change and craft in the Los Angeles restaurant scene. More than any other restaurant or bar for that manner."

Currently, Ross is busy with Attaboy, his new bar with fellow bartender Michael McIlroy, in the old Milk & Honey space. Still, he makes sure to find time to keep an eye on Comme Ça, a labor of love for both him and Myers. Recently Ross held court at the Comme Ça bar, feeling very much at home as he mixed up a slurry of classic drinks from past and present, and discussed what makes a truly great cocktail. Turn the page for his 5 tips.

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Anne Fishbein

Think Outback Steakhouse's Bloomin onion is vegetarian? Think again.

A vegetarian walks into an Outback Steakhouse. It sounds like the beginning of a joke, and a joke that won't end very well for the vegetarian. There's really no good reason any self-respecting vegetarian would ever set foot in such a place.

And yet, vegetarians find themselves in positions all the time in which they must choose the lesser of certain evils. On a road trip, in a small town, when in the suburbs with grandparents, often chain restaurants are all there are to choose from. Would Outback be any harder or easier to eat vegetarian than, say, Applebee's?

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Lisa Keating

Mollie Katzen

When we talked with cookbook author Mollie Katzen in January, she was deep into book number 12, The Heart of the Plate: Vegetarian Recipes for a New Generation, due out in September. During that conversation, Katzen wondered if this might be her last cookbook.

"The first time you talked to me, I was actually working on the book. I was in my grumpy author mode. Now I'm in -- 'Whee! I finished the book!' -- mode," Katzen said during a recent phone interview.

It's understandable why she might have experienced a touch of cookbook fatigue, having spent the last three years testing and re-testing dishes. The just-completed book, contains some 300 recipes. At one time, there were even more.

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Felicia Friesema

Scott Peacock's farm-made hoshigaki

Hoshigaki -- peeled, dried and hand-massaged persimmons -- are an old traditional food, usually reserved for celebrating the New Year. You start the process in the fall, leaving a stem attached when harvesting (stems are usually clipped off to prevent them from damaging other fruit), removing the thin outer layer of skin on a still-hard Hachiya persimmon, tying a string to the stem, and then naturally air drying the exposed fruit, massaging the flesh -- every three to five days for three to five weeks -- until it softens and dehydrates, pushing out a thin layer of white sugar coating. It's not exactly an afternoon project.

This old school preservation process finishes up right around the end of the year, cementing it as one of those evocative flavors of the season -- lightly moist, chewy, and dense with some super concentrated persimmon flavors that are missed when the fruit is fresh. Persimmons have the highest glucose content of any tree fruit. And that sweetness buries an otherwise complex flavor profile of citric tang, jasmine, cinnamon and cloves. In the hoshigaki, they emerge.

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