The phrase “tote-bag hell” was first coined during the 1970s for those interminable weeks when public television programming was interrupted every six minutes to beg the viewers to pledge money. In exchange, the pledger received a “token of appreciation” –… Continue Reading
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
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
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
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
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
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
Cottonwood is one of those I-5 exits most people zoom on past. Unless they need to fill the tank or get a cup o’ joe, the average driver sees it as a blip, another of the zillion green exit signs… Continue Reading
That Peck’s Bad Boy of the Travel Channel, Anthony Bourdain, recently commented in the New York Times that San Francisco is “a two-fisted drinking town, a carnivorous meat-eating town, it’s dirty and nasty and wonderful…” and Femme de Joie would… Continue Reading
Back in the 1960s and ’70s, an unimpressive cinder block building on South Market Street was a liquor store. Later on it became, variously, Asian markets, Chef Paul Trout’s Experience, and now Kanya Garden. Located virtually across the street from… Continue Reading
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