Thoughtful Gourmet Blog

No polystyrene? No problem. California restaurants are embracing sustainable takeout solutions, reusable containers like tiffins, and more. For Marin Magazine, I explored ways restaurants in NorCal are utilizing new – and ancient – takeout containers.

Scott Clark, a chef with Michelin cred (Benu, Saison) ditches the high life for something quieter on California’s Central Coast. Coastal, a cookbook packed with soulful, spirited flavor – and plenty of umami – is the result. Good Food is Intuitive. And Takes Time. What type of stories do you like? The Journey is a […]

Do you ever walk into a restaurant and a memory of a previous visit there snaps into focus? When I stepped into the blue-washed 2025 iteration of Park Tavern, I did not recognize it, at first.  The dark walnut paneling of yore is gone (I remember them from a networking event I attend), replaced with […]

A Master of Science and Registered Dietician, Kylie Sakaida brings an easy-breezy healthful eating approach to her cookbook, “So Easy, So Good.”

Expo West, the enormous consumer packaged goods show at the Anaheim Convention Center, is a chance to see, in real-time, the future of food and drink. If my data set is accurate, these are packaged food trends that maybe, just maybe, you’ll find on a store shelf near you “soon.”

For Authentic Food, I wrote about Guerrerense cuisine, a seafood-forward region in Mexico. My experiences in Zihuatanejo and Playa Blanca were so elemental, so refreshing. And chatting with chefs in Spanish was a hoot and a half. (I did alright but thank goodness for digital transcription tools.)

I had never heard of Caffe Luxxe before a recent dinner at Tiburon’s Malibu Farm. A Malibu-based brand with coffee shops around SoCal and elsewhere, the coffee roaster also sells coffee to fellow Malibu-based brand, Malibu Farm (not Malibu Farms). After a full meal, I still managed to drink three cups, the coffee whispering sweet […]

If you had to pick a cookbook to conjure up your childhood, which cookbook would you choose? For me, the child of German-Czech immigrants, Luisa Weiss’s “Classic German Cooking” was a flavor-driven journey down memory lane.