fishing with chef Sal Marino

Chef Sal Marino (Il Grano, La Bottega Marino) likes to get up early. Which is a good thing, since most of the chefs who trek downtown to International Marine Products routinely get there around 5 a.m. to pick and choose among the pristine fresh fish that comes in daily to the downtown market and wholesale supplier.

As IMP isn't open to the public, the chef recently gave us a tour. A very early morning tour. Turn the page.

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Shako Liu

Fugetsu-Do Confectioners, a mochi shop in downtown Los Angeles, will celebrate its 110th anniversary this fall. The family-run sweet shop was founded by Seiichi Kito in 1903. In Japanese culture, mochi, a Japanese rice cake made of glutinous rice, is a favorite food for New Year's Day. Fugetsu-Do's current owner Brian Kito, Seiichi Kito's grandson, combines the tradition with a modern twist, adding colors and different fillings -- chocolate and peanut butter, for example -- to the hand-made rice cake recipe he inherited from his grandfather.

"We use pastries in funerals, showers, certain birthdays in the Japanese culture," Kito says. "We also use them for certain religious ceremonies and holidays -- New Year's Day is generally a day to eat mochi."

Recently we caught up with Kito to ask him about the upcoming anniversary. For the video, turn the page.

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If you haven't been to Spago recently, the newly remodeled restaurant will come as something of a surprise. A new menu. New decor. And maybe best of all, a retractable roof on the patio. Read Besha Rodell's review, and then maybe check out this video. A visual aid, if you will, as well as a chance to hear Wolfgang Puck discuss the remodel -- and a few other things. Turn the page.

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Foodists, dieters and food allergy sufferers can now find dates through a medium that they care about -- dining. Sameplate.com, a new dating website, helps single people find romance through food, the one thing we all have in common. The first and only dating site in the U.S. that matches couples based on the food they eat or don't eat, as well as the diet they follow, Sameplate.com was launched in July 2012 by Jeff Nimoy, an Emmy-winning writer and producer.

Nimoy, who is on an organic food diet, said that he realized he needed to find a woman who has the same diet if he ever wanted to date again. It also occurred to him that sometimes different food preferences are the deal breakers in a relationship.

"Once you are eating together," Nimoy says, "The rest will take care of itself."

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Shako Liu

The trend of personalized food has reached the realm of sushi. U Sushi, which opened on South Beverly Dr. last December, brings the make-your-own concept to one of L.A.'s favorite foods. U Sushi owner Jeremy Umland, who also owns Ozumo in Santa Monica Place, traces the idea for his restaurant to the pre-made packaged sushi he'd buy -- and wasn't exactly happy with. So he decided to make his own sushi, and opened U Sushi in Beverly Hills. A second store opened in San Francisco in February 2012.

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puuikibeach via flickr

coffee beans

Calling all coffee geeks! Today from Smithsonian Magazine comes a video featuring Merry White, author of Coffee Life In Japan, on the history of coffee consumption in America. There's also some cool science in there, as well as smart people saying smart things about our favorite caffeinated beverage. Watch below.

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Flickr/R.E.~

I want candy

Want to be the Gordon Gecko for halloween sweets? Then check out this video from Buzzfeed that breakdowns the relative value of candy trades, a deliberate and intense science that had us pondering how to maximize our Reese's and Butterfingers counts as trick-or-treaters.

Basically, all halloween candy can be broken down into three groups: Nut-Based/Crunch, Fillings/Soft-Centered, and Fruits/Sours. Knowing your trading partners' preferences, as well as your own, is crucial to mastering the game.

Candy trading practices can even broken down into laws of Marxism, Keynesian economics, and heaven-forbid Reaganomics -- which places a very high emphasis on jelly beans. Just make sure that you don't get conned into some candy corn, which is a negative asset for sure.

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Nanette Gonzales

Cake and Art

Elton John's Eiffel Tower, Bob Hope's piano and Bernadette Peters' shoe have one thing in common: They've all become cakes from Cake and Art, a West Hollywood bakery that can seemingly recreate anything into a cake. From cars to sculptures, animals to accessories, from a bloody body to a family photo.

This was a revolutionary idea when Glenn Von Kickel founded the bakery in 1976. Three decades later, the crazy idea that Von Kickel, who died in 2001, and his business partner Tom Rosa translated into art has become a successful business.

"It basically comes down to an artist trying to find a new outlet," Rosa said, "The outlet was cake."

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Alie Ward (left) and Georgia Hardstark (right) on the set of Classy Ladies.

"Swizzle your beef sticks a little slower," the director says to Alie Ward and Georgia Hardstark as they stir their jerky-infused tequila Bloody Marys -- a drink they've dubbed the Beefy Tomato. It's an odd direction, but every move the women make while demonstrating the drink recipe is supposed to be at half-speed. The crew is getting the final shots needed for this episode of Classy Ladies, Ward and Hardstark's latest web series for Cooking Channel. The cocktail was inspired by a trip to People's Sausage Co. earlier this week. There, they got a lesson in jerky making, then figured out a way to put that flavor into drink form.

This is the process on Classy Ladies for best friends and spirit mavens Ward and Hardstark. The pair visits a Los Angeles mom-and-pop food purveyor -- a French chocolatier, an artisan marshmallow maker, a creamery -- learns the craft, then translates those flavors into inspired cocktails. It's similar to the factory field trips Mister Rogers used to take us all on, but with alcohol.

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Garofalo pasta

There are movies where food has a starring role. And then there are times when eating is just another extra in the background. But when detail-minded Woody Allen shot his newest film, To Rome With Love, no morsel was left to chance.

As with any Italian-based film, eating looms large (that's what people do there, right?) So when the characters played by Jesse Eisenberg and Ellen Page decide to cook up something together, they head to the supermarket to shop for the main star of their meal: pasta.

What do they grab? Eschewing the industrially produced boxes of Barilla or Buitoni, they grab a big bag of Pasta Garofalo. Good choice.

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