Photos by Kevin Weis/LAist Fans of Bravo's highly successful reality program "Top Chef" were in for quite the treat last Thursday evening, when two contestants from previous seasons, CJ and Antonia, participated in a friendly cook-off at The Grove. The event was sponsored by the Sherry Council of America, and featured sherry tastings and gourmet bites from a few of The Grove's top restaurants. The evening began with demonstrations from chefs representing The Whisper Lounge,......

Florencia Pita is one busy lady. A current faculty member at the Sci-arc (Southern Institute of Architecture), she is also a gifted designer and architect in her own right. Her Alice exhibit at LAXART (which just ended on August 30th) was a creative 7x20 foot installation inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Working with cast urethane, & covered in orange vinyl the exhibit explored bringing life to the found images in the......

Don't forget to enter our Labor Day Weekend Contest with the prize to see AIR at the Greek Amphitheater later this month. Recent major events for the Los Angeles Fire Department include a fire last night in North Hills contained to a 12 x 12 foot room where a twenty-something male in serious condition with smoke inhalation and an air ambulance rescue for a two-year-old boy who fell from a pony, dragging him near......

What are your favorite food memoirs? Ruth Reichl shares her picks with NPR, and we definitely agree that these are must-reads, especially Jeffrey Steingarten's hilarious and informative essays. Still haven't taken the $20 Farmer's Market Challenge? Now Slashfood and the Washington Post are polling readers to see how much loot they can get at their local markets for only twenty bucks. Jonathan Gold and Pat Saperstein over at EatingLA are both reporting on Jitlada......

Maybe you've got a long lunch and you've been itching to see the inside of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Well, here's one opportunity this Wednesday at 12:45 p.m. The Cathedral's organist, Samuel Salvador Soria will be playing an organ recital. We're not sure what on the program yet, but he's a former prize-winner at the J.S. Bach International Competition at the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. If dude can play Bach like......

Turns out that cheap buzz you've been getting from Trader Joe's staple swill might actually be a legitimate wine tasting experience: Charles Shaw Chardonnay has won the top prize at this year's California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition. This is great news for those of us who buy the stuff by the case - and although we may fondly recall many nights (and days) (and, um, softball games) spent chugging wine from a box,......

I happened upon this event last year and giggled for about 4 days. Last year I had the fortune of walking by just as the women's figure competition was finishing up, and there was this voice of God over a microphone that would say "LEFT DELTOID" and then everyone would turn and flex their oily glistening shoulders in unison and smile their most constipated smile while standing atop 4 inch tall plastic hooker shoes.......

Lakers? Out. Clipper? Out. Hometown hero Baron Davis? Out. What's an NBA fan from Los Angeles to do? Go to the Santa Monica Pier. NBA Nation is on tour and they're here for the weekend. You never know who might show up. Rumor has it the Laker's Andrew Bynum and Kwame Brown were spotted on Saturday. On Sunday the Clip's Cuttino Mobley is scheduled to be there from 2:00pm-3:00pm. Among the hoops themed activities, the......

I'm a vegetarian so fortunately, that lifestyle choice did not lead me to a non-BBQ BBQ-event that has caused much irritation by many, and rightfully so. From experience, if you want some good BBQ in a festival environment, we know first-hand that the Santa Clarita Cowboy Festival offers great food, including BBQ (well, this veggie at least recommends the best peach cobbler you'll ever have. As for the 'que, our meat-eating friends never complained......

The NBA All-Star Weekend is happening 5 hours east of us in Las Vegas. Tonight they will hold the big game (on TNT). Although the game is never all that exciting, the Skills Competition, the 3-point Contest, and the Dunk Contest are always worth watching. This year the Dunk Contest was actually really good, with little Nate Robinson skying and Dwight Howard putting a sticker of himself on the top of the backboard as......

This March, we will vote again. All even-numbered Los Angeles council districts will be up for grabs. Well... sorta. A few will be running unopposed: CD2: Wendy Greuel CD4: Tom LaBonge CD12: Greig Smith Competition will be found in: CD6: Tony Cardenas CD8: Bernard Parks CD10: Herb Wesson CD14: José Huizar (a story about this race) And since Alex Padilla will resign his seat in CD7 to go to the State Senate, there will......

Torontoist immediately wins our heart by using the word "Jackass" in a headline. In fact, we love their use of it so much that we're going to use it as much as possible throughout this post. For example, it looks like there are Toronto-area jackasses besides those who misuse the sidewalk: look at the crap on sale on Toronto's craigslist. But it looks like Toronto doesn't contain the kind of jackasses who pee in......

Lindsay Lohan is lounging at the beach in a bikini - Egotastic K-Fed is explaining that his laughable single was an ingenius game of reverse psychology, "At first, when I put out PopoZao, people were kinda laughing at me. I did it on purpose so people would look at me exactly the way they did," Federline said. "That way, when I come out with my real s**t, people are f**king blown away." - Hindustan......

There are plenty of ways to scare yourself silly this weekend in LA. If you're too old or wary for trick-or-treating, then why not head to the local cineplex? Here are five movies playing around town that range from frightening to fun. Doom - The Rock returns in this sci-fi/horror flick set in a futuristic Mars research facility. Predictably, the facility loses communication and is quarantined. The Marines discover the source of the trouble:......

Well, the “fit’s hit the shan,” the storm has hit, whatever metaphor you’d like to use–the mayor’s race has taken the long-predicted turn to the negative, as detailed in today’s Times. Hahn’s come out with his first attack ads, while Villaraigosa and Hertzberg have responded with their own (credit Parke Skelton and John Shallman with the pre-packaged response ads; they knew it was coming). Though we haven’t seen the ads (we don’t have time......