Food

Fancy Food Truck Friday is this week behind the Webster's complex, 2450 N. Lake Ave., from 5-9 PM, and special guest is YouTube sensation Paco the Crime-Fighting Chihuahua. Paco and Ace Smoke Shop owner Erik Night will be Webster's honorary guests from 6-8 PM .  Patrons will be able to take their photo with Paco, shake his paw, and receive his paw-tograph. Erik will also have commemorative T-shirts available for sale. Proceeds will benefit dog rescues. As for the food trucks, this months choices include Food Network's Great Food Truck Race Winner Grill em All, as well as Greenz on Wheelz, Shrimp Pimp, India Jones, Hungry Nomad, and A Rockin Ice. The event is sponsored by Webster's Community Pharmacy, Fine Stationers, and Liquor Store.

Claudia Peschiutta DOWNTOWN -- If you provide free food, they will come. People filled the Brand Boulevard walkway that leads to the Orange Street parking garage on Thursday afternoon for a chance to sample the free dishes being offered by several downtown restaurants. Expo-goers listened to live music and checked out booths hosted by retailers and city departments at "Glendale Expo 2000." The fair gave members of the recently formed Downtown Glendale Merchants Assn.

Darleene Barrientos Families crowded around tables piled high with foods from around the globe Friday night at Horace Mann Elementary School's second annual International Family Fun Night. The event attracted more than 1,000 people to Horace Mann's playground, school officials estimated. It was a chance for the many ethnicities represented in the student population to come together to appreciate the school's diversity. Students plastered portable-classroom walls with posters decorated with miniature caricatures of themselves in their ethnic costumes.

Darleene Barrientos It's time to enjoy food, music and poetry with an Armenian flavor. The annual Armenian Independence Day Cultural Festival is from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday at Verdugo Park, 1621 Canada Blvd. The festival, hosted jointly by the Nor Serount Cultural Association and the Gaidz Youth Organization, was originally intended to be a cultural festival when it began five years ago, said Sevak Khatchadorian, a member of the coordinating committee.

At Poquito Mas in Burbank, the restaurant?s motto is simple: ?We don?t serve fast food. We serve fresh food as fast as we can.? The menu says they always use only the freshest ingredients ? lean beef, chicken, pork and ahi right from the fisherman?s boat. They serve freshly made tortillas, salsa, chips, jalapeños, beans and more, and they prepare your meal in front of you. Poquito Mas guarantees that you will always get friendly, courteous service, and that your food will be delivered within seconds after it is prepared, so you can enjoy your meal hot and savor the nuances of their Baja California style dishes.

MONDAY 7 a.m. - Glendale Unified School District Calendar, food services menu 10 a.m. - Annenberg Educational programming 6 p.m. - GUSD Calendar, food services menu 7 p.m. - GUSD Invention Convention TUESDAY 7 a.m. - GUSD Calendar, food services menu 10 a.m. - Annenberg Educational programming 6 p.m - GUSD Calendar, food services menu 7 p.m. - Rosemont "Holiday Showcase" WEDNESDAY ...

A svelte brunette croons "Besame Mucho" to the small crowd, her smooth voice accompanied by a computer-driven soundtrack. The song runs seamlessly into the next, a dreamy Russian folk tune. She doesn't mind that no one applauds. She's creating atmosphere. More features create atmosphere at Old Village Restaurant: a wall mural of the Georgian countryside, the deep Slavic accents of the waitress and maitre d', footed cut-glass bowls, silver-plated utensils and linen tablecloths create a sense of place that belie the mini-mall parking lot outside.

This Sunday afternoon, the intersection of Glendale and Glenfeliz boulevards in Atwater Village will be taken over by brewery tents, wine tasting stations and food trucks for the first Atwater Village Beer, Wine & Food Festival. Organized by the folks behind 55 Degree Wine shop and the adjacent Link N Hops gastropub, and sponsored by the Atwater Village Chamber of Commerce, the festival will showcase more than a dozen breweries. Local favorites such as Eagle Rock Brewery, Angel City Brewing and Atwater's own Golden Road Brewery will be joined by farther-flung breweries such as Ventura's Surf Brewery, Triple Voodoo Brewing and Deschutes Brewery.

One Burger King in Glendale wants its customers to have it their way - right to their front door. Since April 9, the Burger King on North Central Avenue has been delivering a handful of orders each day - the first Burger King in the state to do so, said franchise owner Bob Stevens. "We were chosen to be the first Burger King franchisee to have delivery in the state, so it's quite a feather in our cap," Stevens said. Following in the footsteps of delivery programs in Miami, Washington, D.C., and Houston, the fast-food company is bringing its delivery program to California.

Four Café in Eagle Rock feels a little like walking into a pal's kitchen. (OK, if your pal had a glass dessert case and a cash register right by the kitchen door.) The vibe is friendly and relaxed and the locavore food is worth lingering over. The neighborhood eatery does put a sliver of space between its half-dozen or so inside tables, but it feels more like communal dining. This is not the place to have a private discussion. But the wall of reclaimed wood slats, the modern paintings, polished concrete floors and gorgeous blown-glass ceiling lamps put you in the mood to share your egg salad, if not all your secrets, with your neighbor.

Going out to eat is supposed to be one of life's pleasures. You don't have to cook or clean up afterwards. Plus, servers take your order and bring your food. For just a little bit of money you can feel a lot of specialness - even if it's only for an hour or two. Unfortunately, sometimes the experience is lacking. As a coffee drinker, I expect to receive refills once my cup is near empty. So it is especially frustrating when one dines out and has a server who doesn't do that. My wife and I often comment that the establishments which have good service, even coffee shops, have a dedicated worker who refills water and drink classes.

A quick show of hands here: How many SoCal cities have a resident Cuban restaurant? Not many, eh? Well, Glendale stands tall in this regard. Mambo's Café, at the corner of Victory Boulevard and Western Avenue, serves lunch and dinner, with live music two nights a week. Even the Versailles chain, the standard for Cuban cuisine among Los Angeles residents, can't boast a music schedule. Pull into the parking area that buffers the one-story building from the street traffic and you get the idea that Mambo's is a one-of-a-kind operation.

Real Food Daily is a bit of an oasis in Pasadena. At the busy corner of Del Mar and Lake, the restaurant offers a sanctuary with wooden walls, soothing colors and a menu that just might help your body cope with the stressors of a busy life. The vegan restaurant is the sister of two others in Santa Monica and West Hollywood. It is the brainchild of Ann Gentry, a Tennessee native who served as personal chef to actor Danny DeVito after coming to Los Angeles in the 1980s. She started Real Food Daily as a home delivery service soon after and opened the Santa Monica restaurant in 1993.

Nestle, the world's largest food company whose U.S. operations are based in Glendale, says a fast-moving scandal in Europe over mislabeled food products tainted with horse meat is isolated to overseas markets. The controversy over mislabeled meat in millions of frozen dinners, pastas, stews and other products took a turn for the worse this week when Nestle found horse DNA in some of its products, the L.A. Times reported . And testing of meals yanked from store shelves and freezers in Britain and Germany has turned up traces of a powerful equine painkiller deemed harmful to humans.

A 25-year-old Los Angeles woman was arrested early Monday when she allegedly threatened three men with a knife after a small food fight inside In-N-Out restaurant, police said. Nancy Perez was arrested about 12:44 a.m. after she allegedly pulled a small knife from her pocket and swung it at three men who she claimed were making fun of her and her girlfriend, according to Glendale police. The men - two of them 30 years old, the other 23 - were seated at a booth near Perez and her girlfriend inside the In-N-Out in the 300 block of Harvey Drive, when Perez reportedly thought they were staring and giggling at her and her girlfriend so she walked over to confront them.

The spirit of giving is continuing this week at Whole Foods in Glendale. Ascencia, a program that helps homeless individuals and families, is benefiting from donations collected by employees of the grocery store chain through its Grab & Give project, said Becky Feliciano, Whole Foods marketing supervisor. Customers at each register are asked to donate funds or they can purchase breakfast, lunch, dinner or a personal care kit for an individual or family in need. Shoppers can also tell the cashier to round up the bill to the next dollar and that change will be the customer's donation.