Laura Rebecca's Kitchen

Fraiche is closed as of July 2014. Originally published on December 25, 2013. Dessert is often a casualty in culinary cost-cutting. An eatery might work to keep a good steak on the menu, top-shelf liquor behind the bar, and fresh greens in the salad, only to phone it in for the final course. Sometimes literally, […]

Originally published on October 2, 2013. The first items arriving to our table from Bistro Han’s kitchen were the braised pork belly steamed buns ($5). Two to an order, perched on a small plate, these were fit-in-the-palm-of-your-hand-sized sandwiches: thick slabs of browned pork encased in snowy, white dough. The pork belly and the belly of […]

  Originally published on September 4, 2013. Early on a Saturday evening, I drove with my husband along 490, toward West Avenue. The sun was shining, traffic was flowing, and my stomach was growling in anticipation of dinner. Just prior to crossing the Douglass-Anthony Bridge, the scent of barbecue — a perfume of smoke, meat, […]

Originally published July 24, 2013. If you do a Google image search for “rodízio,” a Brazilian-style restaurant in which servers continually bring diners food until the patron signals they’ve had enough to eat, one of the first images you’ll see is a man sitting in a restaurant. Before him is a table cluttered with dishes, […]