Flickr user jakrapong

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​Allow me to steal the book spotlight from Gustavo (whose book on the history of Mexican food in the United States, Taco USA, comes out in April) for a moment.

For the last few months, I've been copyediting--stop laughing!--Nathan Lyon's first cookbook, Great Food Starts Fresh. Lyon is the host of "Growing a Greener World" and "A Lyon in the Kitchen" and was the runner-up to Guy Fieri on "The Next Food Network Star" in 2006.

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Photo courtesy of the Anaheim Ducks

Corey Perry debates serving from the left or right

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Last week was opening day for John Wayne Airport's newest arrival, the Anaheim Ducks Breakaway Bar & Grill. Located in expanded Terminal C, between Southwest Gates 18 and 19, passengers can leisurely await flights with cocktails, sandwiches and flat-screen televisions. We scored a booth overlooking the runway and checked out a few of its offerings.

While only a limited number of items were available for sampling, we looked over the menu and were pleased they thought to include specialty non-alcoholic options besides soda, as well as a kids' menu.
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Mark your calendars for April 10, 2012: that's when my long-promised history of Mexican food in the United States, Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America, finally hits the two bookstores left in this country. More >>

ALL HAIL OUR GOLDEN IDOL...kind of...

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A couple of months ago, I confessed in these very digital pages that I had never tried Wienerschnitzel, even though I've long been a fan of their advertising campaign featuring that always running anthropomorphic hot dog.That immediately triggered an email from Wienerschnitzel's PR department, offering to leave off some coupons for freebies. We don't roll like that, but I promised them I'd soon try their chain.

That finally happened today.
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Forgot my camera, so no photos of the new Luigi's D'Italia--you'll have to see the restaurant yourself...

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For 30 years, Luigi's D'Italia was the place you went when you wanted slops of good Italian food--but that was it. You didn't take a first date there, but rather the girl who already knew all your bad eating habits and wouldn't cringe too much when the spaghetti inevitably swung into your shirt. Most likely, you took your guys or family to twirl through mountains of pastas, pizzas as large as basketball hoops, baskets of bread that filled you up so much you either had to take most of your meal home or get fat trying to eat it all in one sitting--and guess what most of us did? It was a classic, it was beloved--and no one took it seriously.

There was nothing that made Luigi's stand out from the other Italian restaurants in Orange County, not even the Italian-American ones, and honestly, I stopped going after a lifetime of patronage as a proud Anaheimer once I discovered Rufino's on the other side of town. I just assumed Luigi's would always be there, just like its little weekly ad in the parish bulletin for St. Boniface (which I remember since I was a kid), and eventually disappear as its clientele died off or discovered better places.

But an ambitious reclamation project is currently underway at Luigi's, thanks to the impetus of Gordon Ramsay. Somebody narcced on Luigi's to the tempestuous chef, because he set up shop this past week to devote an episode of his FOX Kitchen Nightmares series to save the restaurant and make it relevant again. The show invited the chica and I to try the revamped Luigi's--I'll focus on the Ramsay angle come October, once the show airs (and you know we're going to devote like a million blog posts to that), but right now: the new Luigi's, a place to finally visit for the food, a place that can combine the best of Cortina's and Onotria if it stays on its new track. More >>

"Yo Dawg, I heard you like lobster so I put a lobster on your lobster roll..."

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UPDATE, JUNE 30, 8:30 A.M.: The lobster sandwich is a one-day-only special for this July 4. Bruxie will start serving the lobster roll at 11 a.m., not when they open at 9 a.m. Supplies are limited, no rainchecks, when they run out, they run out, no whining, yadda yadda.

ORIGINAL POST, JUNE 29: What's a more American dish than lobster and waffles? Actually, lots of things. But that's how the house of Belgian waffles in Old Towne Orange rolls on this Fourth of July.

It's Bruxie's take on a lobster roll, only instead of a butter-griddled New England-style roll, it's using an airy, yeasted, Belgian-style, savory waffle stuffed with chilled Maine lobster meat.
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​C'mon, don't pretend like you never enjoyed these at some point in your pre-Michael Pollan life or even now. Like a great thinker once said, "You ain't gotta lie ta kick it!" After all, a good fast-food dessert is just as American as apple pie loving Osama's death. For this assignment, your trusty OC Weekly intern busted his ass yet again and bit the cloyingly sweet bullet--five of them to be exact.

For the list, I went back to my old-school favorites, and tried bunch of other new sugary crap; after much deliberation, this was the best of the worst! From great to greatest!
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​It's one of the universal truths of life that everyone in America, no matter how deeply into home cooking and made-from-scratch dishes they may be, has used bottled pasta sauce at one time or another. Anyone who says differently is either misremembering or flat-out lying.

The problem is finding good bottled pasta sauce. Some of them contain a laundry list of unpronounceable ingredients; the vast majority contain sugar, presumably to make up for tomatoes that are not what they should be. Of those few sauces that remain, at least half don't actually taste good, which is why I was not expecting much from the Monte Bene garlic marinara sauce I bought at Mother's Market.
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ProfessorSalt.com

​Costa Mesa's foodie collective at the Camp gains another strong player with a line of gourmet tacos from the team that owns Haven Gastropub. It's an unapologetically nontraditional, non-Mexican taquería in a city filled with authentic Mexican taquerías.

But neither is it a gabacho-Mex travesty. Does it rip off Kogi's Korean-barbecue-in-a-tortilla format? It's not that, either. The Asylum inmates draw inspiration from all over the world, with ingredients such as sous-vide beef heart, Greek-style grilled baby octopus and Indian paneer cheese.More >>