Trolling for customer appreciation down Sushi Row.

Back in America’s glorious days of wealth and excess, say, 2004, I was as guilty as the next nouveau riche hipster of foregoing the deals and bargains that involved the slightest bit of effort to realize. Rebates? Forget about it. No way was I photocopying a receipt and proof [...]

After a few months of licking my wounds and navel-gazing in the wake of the implosion of my former blog network and the spectacular flame-out of its shattered founder, (name withheld), The Wreckoning had landed right-side up on a new server. For two years, we found our legs while piggybacking on someone else’s shaky brand [...]

Since the Wreckoning launched over two years ago, the stories have incited a flurry of comments from readers, much of it warmly encouraging, a lot of it appreciative of the writing, but wary or even disdainful of a perceived snootiness on my part. A number of readers [...]

Beso might be the last man standing when the economy finally recovers. If so, it won’t be because it’s that great of a restaurant. It won’t be because the food is great. The food is just good enough. It [...]

There are two types of restaurants: those that will transfer your bar tab to your table and those that will not. Those in the former category send a confident signal that they have their stuff together. Those in the latter are admitting defeat before you even see [...]

Valet parking is one of those eye-rolling Los Angeles institutions that is probably here to stay, much like the inexplicable line of customers outside Pink’s hotdogs. Compulsory valet service is annoying and pricey for residents and a source of great derision among visiting LA bashers (to Hell [...]

The evening was gearing up to be everything a restaurant experience shouldn’t be: stressful, annoying and carried out on the restaurant’s terms, not those of the paying customer. We had a reservation at Anchor & Hope, the new offering in SOMA from the guys who brought you <a href=”http://sanfrancisco.citysearch.com/profile/39317308/san_francisco_ca/town_hall.html”>Town Hall</a> and <a href=”http://www.zagat.com/Verticals/PropertyDetails.aspx?VID=8&R=111604″>Salt House</a>. (That’s [...]

It is our most precious resource, the lifeblood of civilization. In bottle form, it is a $12 billion industry. In its natural state–falling from the sky or melting from snow-covered mountains–it has become the stuff of myth. The piddling amounts we have in reservoirs remind us that, [...]

The Los Angeles Times gets it right in calling out a restaurant that gets just about everything wrong. The fact that Gladstone’s, the seafood institution on PCH in Malibu, will still be licensed to print money despite a scathing review, greedy and ambivalent owners and [...]

The kids are back to playing restaurant over at STK, and there doesn’t seem to be a competent adult in sight.

In an attempt to branch out from [...]