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Menuplease: Bruciante’s Stole a Pizza My Heart

Bruciante, adj, Italian, m/f. .che brucia, accesa, acceso, brillante. English:  Burning, fired, lit up, blazing, on fire. Verb, to scorch, to sear, to burn, to burn up Though there have been ovens as long as people have been cooking (any covered vessel or firepit containing… Continue Reading

11

Menu Please: Dial 808 for Delicious Food

In “Square Meals,” their love letter to American suburban cuisine, the very tongue-in-cheek food & pop culture writers Jane and Michael Stern have this to say about Hawaiian food:  “There is no cuisine more adventurous, or more totally spurious, than that… Continue Reading

17

Menu Please: Mazatlan Grill – Well, cover me with guacamole and call me Sally

Longtime Redding residents will remember the old Italian Cottage on Hilltop Drive, pre-dating even the Mount Shasta Mall. Sawdust was piled high enough on the floor to get in your shoes, they put an olive in your beer, and the… Continue Reading

8

Menu Please: Fast Mex at Baja Burrito

The late Dame Anita Roddick (founder of The Body Shop cosmetics chain) wrote of a visit to Mexico City when she was taken to Fonda Meson de Alonso, where she was promised “real Mayan cooking.” The house special was a… Continue Reading

12

Menuplease: Fine Dining at Clearie’s

Femme de Joie only dined twice at Doc Clearie’s Skyroom, once on the occasion of her high school graduation and again a few years later for a reason she can’t recall now. She remembers nothing whatsoever about the meal itself;… Continue Reading

9

Menu Please: Humboldt Brews in Arcata – Come for the Beer, Stay for the Food

Being in a traveling trade myself, I know the problem of asking someone in a strange city for the best restaurant in town and being led to some purple palace that serves “Continental cuisine” and has as its chief employee… Continue Reading

16

Menuplease: The Downside of Fame – Guy Fieri’s Cautionary Tale

On September 12, 2012, The Village Voice wrote a not-complimentary review of the new restaurant opened in Times Square by celebrity TV chef Guy Fieri.  Three weeks later on October 2,  the New York Observer published a scathing review of Guy’s American… Continue Reading