IMAGE: Ollie Hammond’s, 3683 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, 1950. From To Live and Dine in L.A.: A Century of Menus from the Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library by Josh Kun, published by Angel City Press. Restaurant menus seem like the most ephemeral of ephemera: updated seasonally or even daily; printed in-house on cheap card […]

Until recently, the question of whether an apple was truly ripe could only be answered by destroying it. The human mouth, with its variety of multi-functional sensory detection mechanisms, provides the traditional—and, until recently, the most reliable—guide. But once an apple has been bitten, there is, as Eve reminds us, no going back. For eaters, […]