Michael Lippman

Except for M Cafe de Chaya, Sona is my favorite restaurant in L.A. right now. It's genius. A few weeks ago I went to Sona twice in one week. (!) First I went there with my wife to celebrate the 9 year anniversary of the day we met. And though I married a beautiful and brilliant woman, I did not marry a woman who, like me, thinks it's perfectly normal to spend a four hour meal conversing ENTIRELY about the food and the wine. So I had to return to Sona 4 days later, by myself, to eat aga...

I got off work early, so I called my wife and told her I’d be getting off work late. Went to Spago, sat at the bar. Alone. What a great way to eat the best food in town without dropping $250. No wife, no date, no one to order multiple courses and random side dishes and desserts and coffees. Just a glass of wine and a piece of fish -- to taste the food, to be able to say “I’ve been there”, to be part of the scene, to eat well. And I’ll be out of here for 60 bucks ...

So I enjoyed the cheeseburger here (only served at lunch) so much that, when my aunt came to town and wanted to take us “anywhere” for dinner, I jumped on the chance to go back to Comme Ca. It was me, my wife, our two-year-old daughter, my brother, his pregnant wife, and my aunt’s L.A. friend – in reservations terms, that’s “six and a baby”. My daughter, Daniella, has a 7:10 PM bedtime, so our reservation was for 5:30. It’s always dicey bringing...

All' Angelo is one of the best Italian restaurants I’ve been to in Los Angeles in the 15 years I've lived here. The cooking manages to be soulful, from the heart, while also being a bit outside the box, a bit inventive. I went the other night with my wife and my good friend Patty, who's a superb Italian cook herself. As Patty put it after the meal, "the food is just a touch challenging, each dish represents a really particular "take", and it's not necessarily exactly what...

Okay, so by now you've probably heard about the lawsuit. Wolfgang Puck suing Wolfgang Zweiner for opening a steakhouse in Beverly Hills called "Wolfgang's" -- just a couple of blocks away from Wolfgang Puck's steakhouse, "Cut". Hmmm. Eater L.A. reports: Puck claims Zwiener's products are inferior and that patrons will be injured when they seek a meal created by a "world famous and award winning chef, and instead, receive a pedestrian meal from an investment banke...

So my parents were in town this past week. God bless them, they’ve been visiting from NY every couple of months -- because I have a 2-year-old daughter, and my brother has a 2-month-old daughter, and so us flying to NY is not so easy. They arrived last Thursday afternoon and while we hadn't planned to see them until Friday, at the last minute everyone was free and we thought, let’s go for an early dinner tonight! I got right on the phone and called Anisette, Alain Giraud’s ...