Now, here’s food for thought

Paul Brownfield can easily find a medianoche at Porto’s on Brand, right in downtown Glendale (“Chewed Up, Spit Out,” July 31). Avoid going on Friday afternoon, which is when hordes of people throng the place to pick up their baked goods for the weekend. The medianoche might not be as stellar as, say, the first one I ate in Tampa long ago (a serious Cuban colony from way back), but it’s good enough, and cheap.

I’m sure there’s great food in Manhattan’s grand halls of haute cuisine -- ethnic specialties so authentic as to make a transplant cry for her homeland -- but I’ve never had a really great meal there. I was never hungry so much as exhausted.

Leslie Thorson

Los Angeles

*

Paul Brownfield uses self-righteous nativism to spice up his hostile review of a date with a New York “foodie,” but the taste of lonely, rotten snobbery comes through in every bite. It left this reader wondering which of the two enjoyed the evening less. Doubtless Mr. Brownfield ends many of his nights cooking up midnight snacks of spite, alone.

Linden Elstran

Brooklyn