Tina Larkin

Dim sum and then some

Maybe it makes me a tacky American to admit this, but I adore ornate Chinese restaurants. The more dragons, gold paint, big red lanterns and Buddha statues, the better. When you add all that eye candy to the delicious odor of incense mixed with cooking smells, it equals an exotic sensory experience that spears me right through the heart.

View in Alibi Chowtown

• food and beverage
• local
• review
• restaurant
• restaurant review

Courtesy of South Mountain Dairy

New Mexico farmsteads craft cheese ... without Kraft

A couple of years back, Saveur magazine dedicated an entire issue to cheese. I settled into my reading chair and quickly became entranced with stories of small artisan cheese producers who had shaken off the big-city entrapments to spend their days crafting cheeses from milk they had personally coaxed from all sorts of beasts.

Apple season is a blessing and a burden. Excited by early October's glut of local fruit—so strikingly different from the homogenized four varieties that pack grocers' shelves the rest of the year—I tend to overdo it. There's at least one more bag of apples than I can eat. Regifting is out; my friends and coworkers are all in similar situations. So the orphaned apple sack sits whithering in a corner of my kitchen, scowling at me, until I finally throw it out. My guilt makes that trip to the dumpster even weightier.