Quinn Hatfield

What do poets and journalists have in common? Unless you’re the talented Amy Scattergood from the L.A. Times, I’d say: not a whole lot. Journalism school ruined my poetry. Wildly lyrical juxtapositions, I learned, had little place in clear communication. I wrote poetry to obfuscate, articles to illuminate. Even when I tried my hand at playfully mixing the two, a la the great Andrei Codrescu, the sentiment fell flat. And since life as a poet offered so few opportunities to make a living that I ended up in j-school in the first place, I knew I needed to find a new muse.

She came dressed at “motivation,” which is funny considering the number of people out there questioning mine in this new era that I’ve taken to referring to as “Post-FBCE” (Food Blog Code of Ethics). Nonetheless, I love finding out what makes people do what they do, to hold their beating hearts up to the world for all to see. Continue reading

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It’s been three weeks since I stepped into the vortex of Southern California and two weeks since I started managing the new Mario Batali/Joe Bastianich/Nancy Silverton restaurant in Los Angeles. While I do have some posts in progress (check back for write-ups of Bottle Rock in Culver City and Primitivo in Venice), the amount of free time I have to write has been limited by 14-hour workdays. Sleep-deprived delirium can be good for creativity, but with a long commute to work until my place in Tahoe sells (anybody looking for a ski condo?), I’m usually smoked before I even try and put a sentence together. Once things start to settle, expect to find lots of juice on Italian wines, as well us an investigation of the nascent food scene here. Los Angeles may not be a dining Mecca yet, but in a place where it’s 80 degrees in December, anything is possible.

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