Although the official opening date isn't until this Saturday, the new Chego digs inside Chinatown's Far East Plaza has been working out their Ooey Gooey Fries, rice bowls and half-pound Chego Burger for a few days. Papi Chulo himself tweeted out a photo of the full Chego spread a few days ago, which can only mean one thing: It's time to eat. 
Farley Elliott Chego in Chinatown
And here now is a video of Tom Cruise making soup dumplings, in exactly the same way you'd imagine Tom Cruise would make soup dumplings: With determination. Cruise was in Taiwan earlier this month to promote his latest film, Oblivion, and stopped by Din Tai Fung's Taipei 101 branch to learn how to make the restaurant's famed xiaolongbao. 
Clarissa Wei XLB at Din Tai Fung
The visit wasn't as strange as, say, Dennis Rodman going to North Korea, but it nonetheless was still wonderfully awkward: Cruise carefully greets the restaurant's staff in Chinese (does he have them at hello? Hard to tell), waves to the crowd a few times and then gets to work. He concentrates, really intensely concentrates, as he's taught how to pinch and fold the dough. It takes him but a minute to nail all the folds in the classic Din Tai Fung dumpling, and he goes on to complete an entire steam basket's worth of XLB. Then he bursts into laughter, because he is Tom Cruise. Turn the page for the video.
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The above (awfully cute) photo is pretty self-explanatory, right? For the uninitiated, Trois Mec is the new culinary experiment brought to you by Ludovic Lefebvre and the Animal guys, also known in real life as Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo. 
Trois Mec
That's the Who. Where: a kind of reassuringly crappy strip mall diagonally across the street from Mozza and down the street from Street (to orient you, food-wise); no sign other than the defunct Raffallo's Pizza; no valet; opaque windows; locked door till they want you in there. When: began last week, ongoing. Why: maybe ask the chef (Ludo), who will be chatting you up, if you're agreeable and he's in a good mood, as he and his stellar crew serve you very beautiful dishes (on very beautiful actual dishes, some from local ceramicists, some from Ludo's French grandmother, or so he says), which brings us to the ...
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For all of you who make the regular trek down to Bludso's in Compton for, perhaps, the sole purpose of eating Kevin Bludso's justly celebrated barbecue, you can cut down on your carbon footprint (although maybe not that of Bludso himself; add your BBQ carbon joke here: ____ ), as of about 5 o'clock this afternoon. That's when the new Bludso's will open at 609 N. La Brea, in the location formerly occupied by The Tar Pit. 
Noah Galuten/Instagram brisket
It's a fitting space for a barbecue joint, really, albeit one that's a bit swanker than Bludso's Compton digs. Concrete floors, grey walls, a lot of booze, enough flatscreen TV's (six) to make the restaurant, which will be open daily, a pretty terrific place to take in March Madness. This outpost is the joint venture of "executive pit master" Bludso and Jason Bernstein and James Starr, co-owners of The Golden State.
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Let me preface all of this by saying that I've never been to a Yoshinoya Beef Bowl, and I'm willing to bet that you haven't either. In fact, I don't know anyone who has dined at a Yoshinoya Beef Bowl, and my contacts folder reads like a who's-who of questionable eaters. Yet, inexplicably, those orange-and-white huts are everywhere. There is an off chance, I suppose, that you've experienced a taste of the namesake beef bowl on some late night, after confusing the Yoshinoya logo with the Jägermeister logo and stumbling your way inside. It's not hard to do. 
Farley Elliott The Yoshinoya Beef Bowl
For the rest of us, there are questions. What's it actually like inside a Yoshinoya Beef Bowl? Where did it come from -- and why won't it leave? More importantly: How's the food?
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Even if you're not a student of linguistics or etymology, the topic of naming things is kind of fascinating. Your kids. Other people's kids. College bowl games. And, of course, restaurants. 
Random House
You can name your restaurant after yourself, which, although unimaginative, makes both remembering it and googling it a lot easier. You can name it after a farm animal, which seems almost required if it's a gastropub or you're an English celebrity. But the recent and long-awaited opening of David Myers' Hinoki & the Bird in Century City, a name which could appear a) whimsical, b) perplexing, or c) truly silly, seemed to some of us more like the title of a Haruki Murakami novel than any of the above.
Which got us thinking -- see: the transitive principle of ridiculous things -- about actual Murakami titles that would indeed make great restaurant names, and, for that matter, dining concepts. Turn the page for five of them, listed in order of book publication.
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It used to be easy to shower celebrities with lavish gifts. Back in the good old days, companies put together gift baskets worth tens of thousands of dollars that they gave to presenters and other celebrities attending awards shows such as the Oscars and Emmys. 
Flickr/basykes A Bertolli pasta dish
Then those spoilsport Feds decided that the gift baskets could be construed as taxable income, forcing celebrity gifting underground. So-called "gifting suites" popped up at high-end Beverly Hills hotels and other secret locations, where celebs (or their handlers) could pick up fancy items, and it was difficult for the IRS to track who had gone where and accepted what.
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El Bulli Can you find the vending machine in this flow chart?
Ferran Adrià does like to play with products. And the El Bulli chef has a history of innovation and unlikely pairings. But Pepsi? Recently PepsiCo announced a partnership with Adrià , to work on procedures and techniques for new snack foods, breakfast options and convenience alternatives. Imagine. Molecular gastronomy meets a 7-11.
chef emoticon
Wanna know what this emoticon is? Turn your head, or your iPhone or laptop. It's a chef. With toque, smiling. Just in case you were wondering how to code the text message that you're now sending your friend, along with the postage-sized picture of a bowl of tonkotsu ramen or wildly overpriced spaghetti. More fun with small toys.
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