russ parsons

Hi Tana, Actually, I was probably closer to a chicken-head-biting geek than a science geek growing up. But my dad was a scientist, and I think subconsciously that implanted me with a curiosity about how things work. But though "French Fry" is a kind of science writing, I do a lot of other things as well. Probably the greatest thing about journalism--and food journalism specifically--is that it affords someone like me, born with an intense curiosity but the attention span of a hummingbird, the opportunity to stay busy and involved. It's like a college division of continuing education, except you get paid for it. So I do some science stuff, I do a lot of agriculture stuff (some of which involves science), I do a lot of technique (some of which involves science), some history (none of which involves science, really) ... and I never get bored. When I get tired of one thing, I move on to another. I'm a real interdisciplinary guy. I did start out as a sportswriter and I did that for 10 years. I learned a lot. I learned how to work really hard. I learned how to have fun writing. I learned how to write on deadline (if you've ever had 10 minutes to phone in 800 words from a pay phone in a 7-11 parking lot in Plainview Texas, when the temperature is 24 degrees and the wind is blowing 40 miles an hour and the big question is not only whether you're going to make deadline, but whether you're going to freeze to death first ... well, I've never ever had writer's block). I was also a music writer for a number of years. I think what I learned from that was more personal than professional ... how important good work is in your life and how to pursue that despite what may seem to be insurrmountable obstacles (here are a few musicians who have slept on my couch back when they were to poor to get a hotel: Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Lucinda Williams, Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, Walter Hiatt and countless sidemen, including Natalie Maines' dad). I've also covered news ...cops and courts. Mainly that taught me how lucky I was to be able to do other things.

Ooooh, that's a good question. I don't think there has been a really good California cookbook. Let me rephrase: There have been a lot of really good cookbooks written in California, but I don't think there's been one that really captures the sense of the state in the same way the Helen Evans Brown book did in the '50s. Maybe someone will write one someday. Maybe after he's finished the book he's working on now. Maybe. The best book on California wine, I think, is Matt Kramer's "Making Sense of California Wine". It was published a few years ago and he's working on a revision now, but it still holds up (disclaimer: Matt's a really good friend). Unfortunately, I don't think any of the local chef books have equalled what Alice and crew are doing up north, or what Judy Rogers did last year with Zuni. As far as a sense of cooking, my favorites are still the Evan Kleiman-Vianna La Place Cucina books.

Sure Dave, I was food editor when we were moved from the third floor of our building to the second floor. Well, I says, we can't go tramping up stairs to the test kitchen can we? We need a new one. A perplexed look. Well sure, tell us what you need (first time--and probably last--that's ever happened). Most of the work in redesigning the kitchen was done by the architect and by Test Kitchen Director Donna Deane. I sent her up to Menlo Park to spend the day at Sunset magazine, looking at theirs and she came down with a wish list. I think we got pretty much everything we wanted. It's a really spectacular facility. The one thing I was adamant about was that all of the cooking equipment had to be from the appliance store ... no professional stuff. So in essence what we've got is a really nice home kitchen. Well, two really nice home kitchens. We did one side in a contemporary style and one more traditional so we'd have two different looks for photography!

check's in the mail.

Hiya Lesley, I've admired your posts on pastry and baking (something I find constitutionally impossible ... I'm not sure that's a guy thing or not). That's an interesting question. I'm sure that in the end, just like anything else, there are pluses and minuses. For one thing, when I go to conferences, I never have to wait in line at the bathroom. (One time Bruce Aidells and I were standing around BSing at a cocktail party and he said: "Look at all these women and we're the only straight men in the room." I acted shocked: "You're straight?" Maybe you have to know Bruce to appreciate it ... hard-core Fab Five material there). I have made a lot of friends in food, and many of them are women, but I do think that in a lot of occasions there's a kind of barrier that goes up. Girls talk to girls about things they won't talk to boys about, etc. As far as feeling typecast, I've made it my business not to be. When I write about cooking in my personal life, I try to be as honest as I can be. I'm not a stereotypical guy (though I was a sportswriter), not that there is such a thing as a stereotypical guy, come to think about it. I do think one big advantage in being a male food writer ... or a male cook, period ... is that I don't carry with me a lot of the baggage that I think a lot of women do. Whether my dish turns out or not doesn't reflect on my gender-specific assumed abilities. I don't have to worry about whether my mom could have done it better (bad example: she was a wonderful woman but a truly horrible cook). I think this has made me freer to have fun with cooking and maybe to express that fun. Don't get me started about working on my own car, though.

Oh, of course. Many of them. Right now, I tend to drink wines I have a personal connection to. Rob and Maria Sinskey are good friends and I think his Carneros Merlot (no, not PN, no, not Chard) is about as good a wine as that region has produced. Very elegant. I like Richard Sanford's Pinot Noir from the Santa Rita Hills and I very much like the Melville Estates Chardonnay "Inox" bottling from the same area. Great acidic ripe fruit, all stainless steel, made by the same guys who make Brewer-Clifton. I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting. I'm sure they'll let me know.

I think they probably as close as any commercially made product could. They're OK. It's a funny thing about those sauces. Stubb was a great and wise man and a helluva cook. But he was probably the worst businessman in the entire world. Toward the end of his life, he was sick and there were several of his old friends who would chip in and send him some money to help him pay rent. In return, every once in a while he'd send along a case of hand-bottled barbecue sauce (I've still got 2 of them on my counter ... a kind of shrine to cooking). Imagine my shock when I was in New York, browsing through Dean and Deluca and all of a sudden I see Stubb's face lookingout from the shelves! And now they're in my neighborhood grocery. He was truly an amazing man and I could tell Stubb stories all day long. He changed my life, for sure. When I was a sportswriter at a miserable paper in Lubbock, I'd eat dinner at his little bbq place a couple times a week (it was really a shack, the first time I took her there, my wife [then my fiancee] refused to eat; when she smelled the sauce, she backed off and refused to eat only the potato salad). One night I was eating dinner and he got hit by a crush (which at that place could have been two extra tables). A waitress had called in sick, so he asked me if I could fill in for an hour. Of course. Well, the first time I put a plate of Stubb's barbecue in front of someone, I realized what it was to do quality work that you were really proud of and how profound the act of cooking could be.

What I should have added to that, and perhaps most important, is that unlike food magazines, newspaper food sections are general interest publications, not aimed at a specific audience. The Los Angeles Times lands on roughly 1 million driveways every Wednesday morning and each of those driveways belongs to someone who thinks the paper--and the food section--belong to them and should be tailored to them. We do have a lot of readers who are very interested in the fine art of cuisine, we also have a lot of readers who just want a great cookie recipe. Think of it this way: we have to please both Fat Guy and Fat Guy's mom, both Steve Klc and Steve Klc's mom (the moms in this case are theoretical and ma actually be more interested in fine dining than either of their boys are ... not that they'd know because they spend all their time on that damned computer and never pick up the phone for the women who bore them and raised them). But I digress. Both readersare valid and we have to offer stories that appeal to both enough that they will put up with the other. Some editors try to do this by playing the ball right down the middle, averaging everything out. I think our philosophy at this paper, at least since Ruth Reichl took over the food section, is to try to offer a mix of stories that offers everyone at least one thing that they'll like to read. The downside of that is that everyone will probably find at least one story they can't imagine what in the world we were thinking about when we ran it.

Funniest, I have to think about. Horrifying is easy. There are so many of them. Contrary to what it may seem like, newspaper writers HATE to make mistakes. There is nothing more embarrassing. In the trade, corrections are called "skinbacks" and I think that perfectly captures the feeling when you find out you were wrong about something. Most of mine I've overcome through self-medication and therapy, but the one that really sticks out in my mind was the first section I edited when I was hired at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. This was really my shot at the big time, funny as that seems today, with the paper dead more than a decade. And for my first section, the features editor had assigned a writer to do a piece on the USC UCLA football game (an annual event here) and what the coaches were cooking, or some such stupid thing. I hated the idea, but it was my first week so I couldn't fight it. The story came in, I edited it and layed it out (we had no desk help at the Herald). The section pbulished and I was actually pretty pleased with the way it turned out. Until I got the first phone call pointing out that the big game was the NEXT week, not this one. I swear, I almost got back in my car and drove back to Albuquerque. Funniest? There's been a lot of fun, by not much in the way of wacky. One exception (and again from my Herald days), I got an assignment from another feature editor, this one totally crazy, to do a piece on what was billed as "the opening of the legendary Rudy Vallee wine cellar." He had died the year before and they were talking auction and stuff, part of a general and ongoing liquidation, it turns out. I got to the Vallee house a little early, it was at the top of one of the Hollywood Hills. Amazing place, it had a turntable in the driveway because there wasn't enough room to turn a car around. It also had been plundered through years of high living and not working. Picture a grand Moorish castle filled with furniture from Sears. At a certain point the widow Vallee came to meet us (there was also a group of touring Italian restaurateurs) and take us to the cellar. On the way down we passed through Rudy Vallee's private auditorium, complete with stage and mini-museum (one exhibit was a fully nude, fairly dated photograph of the Widow Vallee--when he met her, he was in his 60s, she was a 15-year-old Vegas showgirl ... you get the picture). After much oohing and aahing by the restaurateurs, we made it to the fabled cellar, which was actually located under the tennis court, stacked up against an outside south-facing wall, protected by chicken wire. Take the wine selection at your neighborhood 7-11 and you've got a pretty good idea of the contents. There was a publicist there, an actual old-time Hollywood publicist, and he came over and told me, you know something about wine, the TVs are coming, why don't you pick something out to open? I told him I presumed he meant something without a screwtop and that that might be a challenge. I did dig through the racks, though and I spotted what looked like a thick wax capsule. I pulled it out and it was a 1961 Chateau Trotanoy, truly a diamond in a coal mine. I very carefully removed it from the rack and took it over to the guy. This is really something, I said, but I'm not sure you want to open it. Of course I do, he told me and grabbed the bottle by its neck and waved it over his head "Look what the guy from the Herald found!" He pulled a corkscrew and proceeded to try to pop the cork through the capsule, shattering the cork in teh process. I finally cleaned up the last bits I could get ... he poured a couple of glasses and at just that moment, he leader of the restaurant group, an old friend of the Widow Vallee, spied the bottle. I saw them join in an urgent whispered coversation and she came running over. "Press conference is over!" she shouted, giving me a really dirty look.

The first thing you need to know about newspaper editorial marketing research is that there really isnt' any ... beyond the seat of the editor's pants. I mean that almost literally. Each editor balances the section the way he/she thinks is best. And rarely does anyone do any kind of statistical analysis of what kinds of stories are running. Rather, week by week and month by month, we try to spread the coverage around as best we can to serve what we perceive to be the readers' interests. Our section has changed dramatically over the last couple of years. Part of that is because of a difference in editor's philosophy, part of it is because of a difference in the larger philosophy of the newspaper and part of it is because of structural changes. In fact, of the three, the difference in the individual editor's philosophy is probably the least important. When I was editing the section, I think I had a little more interest in practical cooking stories than Michalene Busico, the current editor, does. But that's hard to judge because of the changes brought by the other differences. In the first place, we now include restaurant reviews and restaurant news coverage in the food section, something I had fought for for years (the theory of the previous administration had been that restaurants were entertainment, not food, so they went to the Calendar section and then to the Sunday magazine, which needed a draw). You can't add coverage to a section without subtracting from somewhere else (space is dictated by business reasons ... it's not the web). The other big difference in the section is our use of staff writers vs. freelance. When I was editing the section, I had two staff writers. I had to rely on freelance and that tends to dictate a certain kind of story. Today, I think we have six or seven staff writers (at the same time the new Food section was launched, a general features section ws closed and some of those reporers turned to food). In my experience, most freelance writers are pretty weak reporters but are good at writing "personal experience" stories. Most staff writers (another broad overgeneralization) are the opposite, more comfortable going out and interviewing people, collecting and synthesizing information. One isn't better than the other--personal stories do a better job of taking you inside a situation, but are inherently biased in that you get all the cultural assumptions that go with that situation. They're also limited in that you only get the experiences you can find writers to describe. All of that is way more wordy than it ought to be. Here's how newspaper marketing research works in editorial: After a section runs, if I get the same number of people hating it because it's practical and hating it because it's too high-end, then I'm on the right track.

I think I know where you're talking about fifi, that area roughly between Ojai and Magic Mountain, around Santa Paula. Those groves aren't abandoned, at least most of them; in fact, they produce some really great fruit (also, in the hills above there are where you can find some of the last surviving Royal/Blenheim and Moorpark apricots growing on 100-year-old trees). You really should try to get through that area in mid-spring, which the orange trees are blooming. It's like miles of perfumeries. Agriculture in the wild tends to look messy, especially when compared to our gardens. I can't keep up with the windfallen fruit from my own backyard trees (tangelo, navel orange, kumquat, avocado and, of course, Meyer lemon), I can't imagine if I had 10 acres of them. Another interesting aspect of that is the whole holistic agriculture thing, which for me incorporates biodynamic, organic, sustainable and all the rest of it. You'll notice that fields/orchards/vineyards that are grown that way often look much sloppier than the neat, clean rows we have come to expect from good farming. The idea (and this is a broad overgeneralization), is that the less you do to the plants, the better off they are. "Weeds" growing between rows help hold moisture, provide shelter for birds, small animals and bugs that eat harmful bugs and also turn into "green manure" when they are disked back into the soil at the end of the season. Key up the soundtrack: "Great Circle of Life."

That's the question everyone asks and I thank my agent every time someone does. The title does stick out. It comes from a story I did a long time ago, some of the information from which ended up in the book. When I do my "Mr. Science" stories, one of the things I do is go to the library and do literature searches on the topics. Then, because I'm basically scientifically illiterate, I call the people who did the research to get them to explain it to me. Scientists are used to talking to scientists and they communicate in a secret code, like ants, or journalists. I see my role as acting as translator between the people who have the information (the scientists) and the people who can use the information (my readers). So I keep asking them more and dumber questions, trying to get them to "concrete-ize" their observations: What does this look like? How will I know this? What does this smell like? What does that mean? They really are, most of them, very good sports about it. I was talking to a guy who specializes in oil chemistry and he was explaining to me how oil changes during the cooking process and what effect that has. He used the example of a french fry and said that you could tell what stage of oil a french fry had been cooked in by looking at it. He explained that really fresh oil doesn't fry very well, that a french fry cooked in it will be pale and may be raw or undercooked at the center. Break-in oil that has been used a little gives perfect french fries, crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside, sharp corners, etc. And then the oil begins to degrade. And he finished by saying "That's how you read a french fry." I included that line in the chapter synopsis when I turned in the proposal (I don't even remember what the original title was supposed to be) and my agent, Judith Weber, sent me back an immediate e-mail suggesting that as a title. For that alone, she earned her 15%

That there are problems with the California wine industry is beyond dispute. But so is the fact that there is enormous potential. Each of those criticisms ... lacks terroir, too oaky, too fruity, too expensive ... are true, and maybe for the vast majority of wines. But then there are the exceptions and that's what keeps me coming back (that and rank chauvinism). California wine is in an odd spot culturally and historically in that it developed in an atmosphere where the only goal was to make a work of art. Think about the implications of that. We don't really do a lot of "drinking" wine here. We make prestige wines (albeit, based on a very shaky notion of what is prestigious). I think that's where California is really hurting. We are pretty poor in the kind of $8 to $12 delicious wines that people will want to drink every night with dinner. And we are inundated with teh kinds of trumpets-blaring big event wines that really should only be tasted a couple of times a month. In a way, I think there is a parallel in the restaurant scene, in that we're trying to build a culture from the top down rather from the bottom up. The places where wine (and restaurants) are best are the places where simple goodness is accepted as a natural fact. I'm skeptical about saving the Rancho Cucamonga wines. I'm glad that the vines have been saved, but when a wine region exists for 100 years and nobody pays any attention to it, there's probably a good reason. I'll make an exception for the Rancho Cucamonga Sherry, which is solera-aged and very, very nice. It is also very very hard to find.

I'm afraid most of my overseas travel has been limited to Italy. I got bit by the bug early and hard. And I still have a very great love for some of those places I visited when I first started--the Piedmont and Umbria, in particular. Where do I want to go next? Everywhere. I'd love to spend more time in France and, of course, Spain. And Morocco. And Lebanon. And Vietnam. And Thailand. And England, Scotland and Ireland ... you get the picture. Lately, my travels have mainly been in California. I'm not complaining. I'm constantly amazed at how rich and diverse this state is. And how much good food.

Hi Monica, I'm a big fan of Indian cuisine (or cuisines), but I am almost wholly ignorant about them. In that sense, I'm probably like most other American eaters in that I have one or two places that I love to go and though I'm curious about what else is out there, I really haven't gotten around to educating myself about it (big world, lots of cuisines, one lifetime). In Southern California, I've been lucky to have been blessed with two very good south Indian vegetarian restaurants, one now closed. The one that's still open is called Woodside and it's in Artesia (Little India). As you exit Pioneer Blvd off the 91, it's in that first shopping center on the left. As far as the popularity of Indian food growing ... I'm not much of a forecaster. Chinese food does have about a 100-year headstart on it in this country. And I'm not sure I'd wish what has become of most Chinese restaurants on anybody.

Dang, I should have done that! Yeah, thanks JFL (how do you pronounce that, I assume it's like "shuffle" ... only different).

I purposely avoided answering No. 2. One of the blessings of not living in Manhattan is not being surrounded by a "chattering class." Most of the people I think are the most interesting out here don't spend most of their time at the computer (note to self: check number of e-gullet posts you've made; determine own "interesting" factor). I would point out that la belle Wolfert who immediately preceeded me is a west coaster, though I think probably by coercion, though maybe not anymore. The folks who I think are most interesting out here are farmers, cheesemakers, winemakers, chefs. I think Michael Bauer has done this, hasn't he? Maybe Janet Fletcher? I know she always seems to be busy when I e-mail her, but that could be me. Carol Field has done this, hasn't she? It might be interesting to have Clifford Wright on ... he's certainly interesting enough and not afraid of taking a stand. What about Hal McGee? Did he do this? As you can see, I'm stumbling. As for our section vs. the NYT. Thanks for your kind words. I think this is a great section, certainly the equal of any in the country. I do wish people reacted to it the way they do the other Times, but on the other hand, I don't think I'd envy them that microscopic and, yes, at times, vitriolic attention. And I guess the point I was trying to make in my last post is, in the end it's the work that matters. When I'm sitting at home writing, or researching, or cooking (well, I stand to cook), I never think about the competition at all. I think about writing something that makes me happy. Getting reaction is just the sprinkles on the icing on the great cake of art.

I think that there is without question an East Coast--no, let's speak plainly, Manhattan--bias. Look no further than the usual explanation: how many magazines and book publishers are headquartered there? More to the point: how many aren't? The echo chamber effect is deafening. I'm of two minds whether that is a good or bad thing, though. As much as I wish people responded as much to my stories as they do to Amanda's, I'm also grateful that they don't and that I don't have to deal with everything else that goes on in the Manhattan food scene. I once wrote that it was a perfect example of too many dogs chasing too few bones and I still stand by that. It's nice to be in Los Angeles where I can be friends with everyone and not have to get involved in who isn't speaking to whom on this particular day. I think Ruth taking over Gourmet has helped obviate the bias (though mainly in focusing on San Francisco ... she now seems to regard her time in Los Angeles as temps perdu). I think most places in the country that aren't Manhattan have the same complaints. Restaurants in Washington don't get the credit they deserve (do they Mark and Steve?). I don't think Chicago does either. Somehow we all soldier bravely on, though, don't we?

I've lived in Albuquerque off and on since 1958, so I have a real fondness for the city. I wrote about food there starting in 1982 or thereabouts and continuing until I moved to Los Angeles in 1986. This was New Mexico before Santa Fe was Santa Fe. In fact, the last year I was there I did a project working with Mark Miller researching historical New Mexican food while he was putting together Coyote Cafe. People who live in New Mexico are very passionate about their local cuisine, which they call "Mexican food" (I can't tell you how many times I'd talk to people who vacationed in Mexico who'd come back and say "the food was interesting, but it wasn't Mexican"). Essentially, New Mexican food as it is most commonly presented is typified by three dishes and two sauces: enchiladas (really the only authentic dish), tacos (always hard-shell), and burritos (a California import, I think). The sauces are either green (from the unripe Anaheim chile) or red (from the ripe, dried Anaheim chile). Sides are refried pinto beans and "Spanish" rice. Nowadays you can find posole as a side, which I think is a great improvement on the rice. I was the only restaurant critic in the state for most of the time I was there and I cannot count the number of times I've eaten these dishes. The surprising thing is how different they can be (and how delicious). I still get very powerful cravings for it. When I go back (which I do once a year or so ... my wife and I both have families there), I immediately order a green chile cheese enchilada, flat, blue corn with an overeasy egg on top. I then repeat the prescription as often as possible for as long as I'm there. Sometimes I'll eat red, particularly in winter. If you know Albuquerque, my favorite places, then and now, are Monroes (I used to eat there when it was a converted gas station just north of Old Town, run by old man Monroe), and Garcia's Mexican Kitchen. Andy Garcia is one of the city's true treasures. Other than that, food was pretty skimpy, though there was a very good wine store (the Quarters, run by my good buddy Ken Shoemaker). And at one time there was a very good French restaurant with the horrible name Le Gourmet. I don't remember the name of hte chef, but that was one of the first "wow!" places. Funny story (and true): One of the very first places I ever ate that completely blew my mind was the French pastry shop in the basement of the La Fonda hotel in Santa Fe. Really great buttery pastries, nothing fancy. Years after I had become friends with Michel Richard, we were talking at lunch and he said "well, I remember when I was in Santa Fe" ... and I said "What? When were you in Santa Fe? What did you do there." Well, you guessed it. I'm not sure New Mexican food has really evolved. In fact, I'd say one of its charms is that it hasn't. The biggest change, of course, has been the coming and going of "Santa Fe Cuisine" which has about as much in common with anything real as those stupid statues of coyotes wearing kerchiefs (uh, sorry if I offend). Santa Fe Cuisine as the world knows it is actually much closer to the Caribbean than the Sangre de Cristos. Chipotles, cilantro, black beans ... none of those things had ever been seen in New Mexico before that.

Thanks for the compliments and the chance to get this off my chest: I wrote that book with the ghost of Prince Hal hanging over my shoulder. Don't get me wrong, he's a buddy and "On Food and Cooking" is one of the most remarkable books of its kind. Further, I don't think I would have been able to do "French Fry" if he hadn't done his book first. That said, every night for two years while I was writing the book, I woke up dreading that someone would compare the two books (not that it's not an honor to be compared to "On Food"). What I was going for in French Fry, though was something entirely different than what Hal did. I regard "On Food" as a kind of work of 19th century gentleman scholarship. I wanted my book to be intensely practical. Truth be told (and I blush to admit it), the model for my book was really much more along the lines of James Beard's "Theory and Practice of Good Cooking," which had a constant place on my bed table for the first five years I was learning to cook. I've always stressed that "French Fry" was about cooking rather than about science. I was lucky when the book came out that the major critics seemed to pick up on this. Of course, I'm still stewing over the guy on Amazon.com who called it "McGee Lite". Grrrrr. There are several other books on this same general topic and they are each different. Shirley Corriher ("CookWise") probably knows more about flour mechanics than any of us. Bob Wolke is crankier. I hope people will read them all.

hmmm, if there's anything i hate more than trends, it's celebrities (at least in the abstract, non-individual form). I remember back in the '80s, it seemed like the one question everybody asked was "what is the next hot cuisine?" As if there were "cold" cuisines. My problem with all of that is that it seems to focus on characteristics other than quality. And that it encourages the kind of bandstand-jumping where every cook who wants to make an impression decides that this is the way to do it. Ack. OK, here's my pick for who I wish would become the next celebrity chef out of Los Angeles: Evan Kleiman. She's done honest, delicious food for more than 20 years at Angeli Caffe, she is supportive of everyone who makes a contribution on her radio show, and there isn't a touch of pretense about her. Evan would be a cool celebrity.

Aaaah, specifics. Let me answer this one generally. Reporters are by training (or nature) people who are completely unembarrased about making complete pains in the asses of themselves in the service of getting a story. Whether it's knocking on the door of a family that's just suffered a tragedy or walking up to strangers in a public place and asking personal questions, or posting on a website soliciting interviews. As far as I'm concerned, none of those is wrong. And in each case, the person being solicited has the right to simply close the door and ignore the question. What you choose to do with this as a matter of policy is up to you. I do think that it would be difficult to justify any kind of ban in a website that is easily visible to the public. I mean, if you hold a loud conversation in a public space, it's difficult for me to see the argument for your right of privacy. I also don't see what damage it does to the site. On the other hand, if people find it offensive, the simplest thing is to ignore it. If they're not getting responses, they'll go away.

I'm going to cheat and answer this two ways (since I already partially answered it on Jason's question). Picking three ultimates is different in some ways from picking three favorites--the favorites being places you wouldn't mind going back to again-and-again, while the ultimates are more in the manner of one-time splurges. That said: In LA: I think I'd include Valentino ... in November/early December, when they are one of hte few places that get white truffles that actually taste like the Piedmont. I'm not too particular about the menu ... they'll figure something out. And I'll leave them the wine, too. Having Piero Selvaggio choose wine is the most sublime kind of education. Since I'm bound for a desert island, I would splurge on a great Barolo to finish, preferably from Aldo Conterno because he is such a wonderful man, and probably from the 1971 vintage. I'd choose Bastide, because I've known Alain Giraud since he started working for my great friend Michel Richard in the mid 1980s and it is so wonderful to see him finally come into his own with incredibly stylish, elegant food in a beautiful setting. I'd choose my house, on a winter night, with my wife and daughter and a couple of best friends and a table full of cold, cracked Dungeness crab and great Chardonnay (we do this once a year and it is our "let's talk about god" meal. There's something about such simple perfection that makes you think about big topics ... even if it sometimes is embarrassing the next morning). Outside of Los Angeles, I'd want dinners with the three greatest chefs I've known: Thomas Keller, whom everyone knows, Michel Richard, whom everyone should know, and the late C.B. Stubblefield, a barbecue cook in Lubbock Texas who was the first person to open my eyes to the power of good cooking.

Hiya Rachel! First of all, I'm a great believer that the best food sections are extremely specific to their communities and to their newspapers. They need to fit seamlessly. And what makes a good food section in Chicago is not what would make a good food section in Los Angeles. I hope this doesn't sound like a cop-out, but what really makes a good food section is an involvement in the community it serves. That said, I've got a couple of pet peeves that I think reflect what is going wrong with too many newspaper food sections. The first is internal: the advancement of general-purpose editors who don't know anything about the subject, are not engaged with the subject and are only waiting until the great and blessed day they are named AME Features. The second is, in a way, the opposite. And that's editors who are engaged with the subject and knowledgeable but assume that their readers are complete idiots. Nothing curdles my blood like hearing an editor saying "that's a great story, but I don't think my readers are ready for it." I also think food sections need to be open to all different kinds of stories. The really great thing about writing about food is that you can approach the subject from so many different aspects. I do write some about the science of cooking, but I also write about agriculture and technique, and personalities and trends, and ingredients and history and a lot of other things. My cover story this week is on the sardine fishery out of San Pedro ... it's a blend of a lot of those things.

That's an impossible question to answer. There are as many ultimate weekends in LA as there are visitors. And certainly no two days could reveal everything (Los Angeles is a wonderful city that gives up its best only over time and intimate conversation). I'd say you'd have to visit at least one farmers market: if it's the weekend, probably Hollywood, which is such a scene in addition to having some great growers. You'd probably want to eat somewhere that would (as an old friend used to say) change your hair color. Right off the top of my head (bald joke), I'd suggest Palms Thai, where the food can be absolutely terrific and where Friday and Saturday nights they feature an irony-free Thai Elvis impersonator. If you're a glitz guy, probably hit Spago. It's like the Love Boat. For something more quiet, maybe Bastide. For a total dining experience, probably Valentino (but ONLY if you let them do the menu and are prepared to drop some good money on wine). My favorite all-around Italian place right now is Osteria Angelini. Get the tripe. My favorite French bistro is Mimosa. But really, I'm not much of a restaurant-goer. I probably go out for a big-deal meal less than once a month. For me, a perfect LA weekend would be having a picnic on the beach, going to a farmers market, and then coming home and cooking dinner for friends.