I loved the LA Times food section in its heyday. They published the Zuni chicken recipe long before the NYT, and I still refer regularly to Jim Dodge’s pie crust recipe and Russ Parson’s brilliant piece on “Demistifying Duck”. Just last week I baked one of Nancy Silverton’s scone recipes. This is great news, I wish them luck!
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@S Groshong. And Russ Parson's dry-brined Thanksgiving turkey. That was a revelation. He was such a great food editor.
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@Peppa_D
Was he really the inventor of dry brining?
I tried a dry brined pheasant and one marinated in dry white wine with herbs. To my taste, the results were similar.
I’m always overwhelmed by the LA food landscape. This city is not a melting pot, but a mosaic of cultures as Jonathan Gold once said. For that reason, eating in this city is like no other. The ethnic food, in particular, is exceptional. It’s pockets and layers of so many different competitive food scenes from every culture imaginable, doing their own thing, colonizing their part of the city, culturally contained and uncorrupted, but sometimes colliding with one another with brilliant culinary results. It was baffling that LA Times, for so many years, wouldn’t celebrate what is arguably the most dynamic food scene in the country, and right in their backyard. I’m happy for this reversal.
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¡Gustavo is great!
An excellent writer who loves Mexican-American food.
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The food section of the LA Times of the past was a main reason for me to subscribe. Talented writers, strong production features, and accessibility to ingredients/menu items provided a rich and satisfying reading experience that produced many delicious meals. Good luck.
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This is good news. I live in Los Angeles and have subscribed to the L.A. Times since I moved into my freshman dorm in 1981. I have seen the LAT dwindle from a sizeable newspaper with good coverage of world, national, and local issues to a pathetically thin shadow of its former self. I miss the Food section, the View section, the Outdoors section, the Sunday magazine (and no, PARADE is not a substitute for a decent magazine), and many, many people who used to contribute to the LAT's offerings. I do understand that ad revenue has dropped substantially -- we used to have about 10-12 department stores advertising and now we have two, and there are almost no classified ads published in print -- but I still miss the depth and breadth of coverage the LAT used to provide. I read the NYT for content and quality. I read the LAT for local news and -- guilty admission -- the comics.
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Amid a recent reported studies linking many diseases, among them a variety of cancers, with obesity: this. Just saying.
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Hiring a New Yorker who will split his time between Los Angeles and New York to cover the food scene here doesn't instill confidence, but it's a start. If Meehan starts obsessing over French and Italian cooking in the pages of LA Times to the extent that the NY Times does, it will not be well received.
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Smart move, LAT! FOOD is the best feature NYT has going for it.
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San Francisco, it isn't, but L. A. does have potential as food destination and having a proper "food" section in a proper paper will help. It will also give me reason to read my local paper in the morning.
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Great idea. I hope it will be a resounding success.
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LA is the country’s greatest food city (with the 7 train between GCT and the US Open a close second), and now hopefully LAT readers will have a worthy successor to the dearly missed North Star of LA Food Jonathan Gold.
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Hope there will be a successor to Nathan Chroman and Robert Lawrence Balzer to write about wine.
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Hurrah! The LAT's back!
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In the past the food section was the one part of the LAT that out shone the NYT. For those of us who live in LA hopefully that section will regain its glory.
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@ MEM Los Angeles
“We view Los Angeles as the nation’s food capital", as the article cites the new editor of LA Times.
Well, many people view their geese as swans, this is part of human nature, also well expressed in a Russian proverb, "Buckwheat kasha always praises itself".
Not being an Angelino, I have only a suspicious view of food coming out of California.
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@Tuvw Xyz, as someone from Chicago & Evanston, who now lives in Los Angeles, the food scene here is incredible. There's great places in Chicago, NYC, and smaller cities across the country. But the best cheap eats exist in LA. High end restaurants are continually reinventing and sharing new dishes.
Californians like to eat out at restaurants, and mediocre restaurants stay open longer here than what I experienced in Chicago. But, the best rises to the top quickly.
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@Tuvw Xyz
Why, exactly, do you have “only a suspicious view of food coming out of California”? Have you had some bad experiences eating in California restaurants? If so, when? The food scene in LA right now is dynamic and on any given day you can have amazing Japanese, Indian, Chinese, Mexican, Thai, etc(!) food.
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