Restaurant

It's official. The future has finally arrived. Just like in "The Jetsons" cartoon, you can now push buttons on a computer and the meal of your choice slides out on a tray. OK, maybe not immediately and certainly not for free, but at the new Specialty's Café and Bakery on Brand Boulevard in Glendale, that's pretty much how it works. Questionable spelling aside, Specialty's is totally plugged in to the modern, techno-friendly way of doing things. In the middle of the restaurant, there is a bank of iPads at which you place your order.

Regarding the restaurant review by Lisa Dupuy on La Cita ("Dining Out: La Cita still good standby for 37 years," Aug. 21), it doesn't seem very professional to do a review on La Cita and end up praising La Cabanita. These are two different types of restaurants. La Cabanita serves Mexico City-type dishes and La Cita is more like home style cooking Mexican food. If she is going to review a restaurant, she should confine her comments to that particular restaurant. Just a thought.

I wish you would instruct your restaurant reviewers about the city of Glendale. It is neither a part of, nor a suburb of, the city of Pasadena. It seems like nine out of 10 reviews in the Glendale News-Press are in Pasadena. Glendale has some nice restaurants - and some funky, undiscovered ones that we will never hear about because our “local” newspaper prefers to focus on a nearby city instead of our own. I like to eat out, but would never drive to Pasadena for a hamburger. Please support our local restaurants!

I was very disappointed in your wording for the headline of the new North Shore Burger. It read “North Shore comes up a bit flat.” As a small business owner for three generations, your headline was very detrimental to this new business. We want to encourage the entrepreneur. Most of my friends and family are always looking for a restaurant that is not a chain when dining, and here your headline was very unnecessary. I know you were trying to be cool and reference a surfing term, but in general it was not that cute.

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.

The son of a 38-year-old man who was shot and killed at a Sherman Oaks restaurant said he "wants justice" in his father's death. Raul Lopez was killed about 11:10 p.m. on Friday just outside Hoagies & Wings, 14522 Ventura Blvd., Los Angeles police said. Lopez, who worked as a cook at the restaurant, had just escorted a group of men outside of the restaurant who had become angry while waiting for their food, police said. "At least one of the men in the group started to argue with restaurant staff.

ADAMS SQUARE — Weeks after it opened in Adams Square, De Revolution restaurant has fallen under the gaze of city officials who are now looking to revoke the eatery’s conditional-use permit for alcohol sales. In a letter sent to the restaurant and copied to the city attorney’s office Tuesday, Neighborhood Services officials notified the business owners that their zoning-use certificate and conditional-use permit for alcohol sales are invalid, Neighborhood Services Administrator Sam Engel said.

GLENDALE — The city’s former planning director told a four-man, six-woman jury in Glendale Superior Court on Thursday that the owners of the Montrose Collection restaurant illegally expanded beyond existing regulations against banquet halls. The expansion came after verbal warnings from city officials that such growth defied the Glendale Municipal Code, said Elaine Wilkerson, who led the Glendale Planning Department for five years until her retirement in 2006. Wilkerson told the jury Thursday, the first day of the proceedings, that she and other city officials warned restaurant owner Arman Aivazian and his associate.

Alecia Foster GLENWOOD -- Workers at a fast-food restaurant were shaken but unharmed after a recent armed robbery. The incident occurred Friday at about 2 p.m. at the Carl's Jr. at 1124 W. Glenoaks Blvd. A man approached a clerk working at a register and told her to give him the money, a police report stated. The man then grabbed her hand, which was holding money, and put a gun to her head, the report stated. He ordered the clerk to open the other registers, the report stated.

The owners of a new restaurant now under construction at 3463 Foothill Boulevard have applied to the city for a conditional use permit for the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages. The restaurant will be named Urartu, the name of an ancient Armenian kingdom. The restaurant will serve Mediterranean style food and be open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., the owner told the design review board. It is being built on a site formerly occupied by Shakey?s Pizza. The design was modified after some concerns were expressed by community members over its appearance.

Nordstrom - the high-end retailer that has come to life on a prominent corner of the Americana at Brand - will open on Sept. 20, officials announced Wednesday. Americana officials also announced that two big-draw restaurants will open in the outdoor shopping mall within a year. The Americana is also making $60 million worth of improvements along Brand Boulevard to create a grand lobby entrance leading to Nordstrom as well as street improvements such as landscaping and lighting, according to Rick Caruso, founder of the Americana's owner, Caruso Affiliated.

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 bill introduced this week by Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Silver Lake) to protect against what he called “shakedown lawsuits” comes as 12 businesses in his district face similar legal action for not posting simple signage - violations that have spurred thousands of dollars in settlement agreements in the past. In the last two months Miguel Custodio Law in Pasadena has informed five restaurants each in Burbank and Pasadena and two others in South Pasadena that they are in violation of Proposition 65, a voter approved law that requires establishments to post “clear and reasonable” warnings if the public is at risk of being exposed to chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects.

Glendale played a starring role in the 1945 movie "Mildred Pierce," the story of a single mother who opens a restaurant right here in the heart of Glendale. The movie was based on a book by the same name written by James M. Cain in 1941. “Cain portrayed Glendale as the epitome of the working-class aspirations and disappointments in Depression-era California,” said Arlene Vidor, past president of the Glendale Historical Society, who wrote an article on the movie for the society's Summer 2010 newsletter.

I wish you would instruct your restaurant reviewers about the city of Glendale. It is neither a part of, nor a suburb of, the city of Pasadena. It seems like nine out of 10 reviews in the Glendale News-Press are in Pasadena. Glendale has some nice restaurants - and some funky, undiscovered ones that we will never hear about because our “local” newspaper prefers to focus on a nearby city instead of our own. I like to eat out, but would never drive to Pasadena for a hamburger. Please support our local restaurants!

After almost 25 years in Montrose, Rocky Cola Café will serve its final burgers on Sunday - an end wrought by stiffer competition from restaurants that have opened during the past two decades and a too slow recovery from the recession. Don't expect the building to be vacant for long, though. Rocky Cola representatives are in talks with four prospective restaurant owners to take over the lease, though none appear interested in keeping the name, said Lucy DiMino, the general manager who has worked at the establishment since its early days.

A casual, sit-down Vietnamese-centric restaurant is now open adjacent to what will soon be a completely renovated entrance to the Glendale Galleria. Called 9021pho, chef Kimmy Tang, a partner on the project, is well-known in the culinary world for her unique, health-conscious approach. And the restaurant fulfills the mall's goal of finding a unique vendor for such a prominent location. “You can get lots of burgers and fries everywhere,” said Shoshanna Puccia, senior marketing manager for the Galleria.

As an asthmatic, I was originally pleased to hear of Glendale's program to limit public smoking - I spent 16 weeks in the hospital last year alone as a result of uncontrolled smoking in the building where I live. In order to get away from this activity, I began escaping to a local popular McDonald's restaurant. Regrettably, little effort is made to control smoking outside near the entrances. At intervals, workers in the building, customers and even McDonald's employees light up in the back right under the air conditioning intake vents, flooding the restaurant with smoke within seconds.

Two men were arrested Sunday afternoon after police found 24 pounds of marijuana in a locked container inside a parked BMW outside an In-N-Out Burger, officials said. Stephen Thompson, 27, of Canoga Park and Trevor Alcorn, 30, of Millville, near Redding in Northern California, were arrested in the parking lot of the In-N-Out in the 300 block of Harvey Drive, Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said. The marijuana was divided into 24 1-pound bags, which Lorenz said could be worth $150,000 to $200,000 if sold on the streets.

The Glendale City Council on Tuesday created a last-minute three-tier system regulating smoking in outdoor dining areas - a move that will increase the number of smokers able to be accommodated at some restaurants. The change to what had initially been agreed to a week earlier was fraught with contention on the dais, with Councilman Dave Weaver, who voted against the amended rules, likening the situation to a “circus.” According to the changes, which were approved on a narrow 3-2 vote, smokers can sit in 25% of outdoor dining areas that are less than 2,000 square feet, 50% of spaces between 2,000 and 5,000 square feet and 66% of any larger open-air dining spots.