Food Sectional: Silvertali wins, Bobby Flay confesses, Michelin chefs bolt

Los Angeles still loves Osteria Mozza and hates its waiters, the New York Times comes up with a new high holy day and San Francisco gives humility a good name. All that and more in this week's edition of the Food Sectional.

Los Angeles Times: Russ Parsons roasts in salt, Leslie Brenner embraces spinach, Charles Perry imbibes cocktail history with "Imbibe!" (and four recipes) and Irene S. Virbilia gives three stars to Osteria Mozza. There's a deluge of support for Brenner's piece last week, "Diners, stand up for your rights!" and a letter pointing out that service might improve if restaurants were more interested in hiring based on experience: "In Los Angeles, Paris Hilton and Zac Efron clones edge out those of us in the professional ranks nearly every time." Datebook rounds up Halloween-minded special events at Blue Velvet, Lacanda Del Lago and Vermont, while Regina Schrambling babbles about something or other.

New York Times: William Grimes gets drunk on "Imbibe!" with an author interview, a chapter excerpt and a snazzy slideshow that illustrates five recipes (including one that appears in the LAT, for a very sweet-sounding Crusta). Julia Moskin gets foodies to admit their favorite childhood Halloween candies (Flay: Nestle Crunch), with Michael "The Ominvore's Dillemma" Pollan calling Oct. 31 "the high holy day of high fructose corn syrup." Frank Bruni gives us a twofer, with three stars (!) for Alto and two for L'Impero (chef Scott Conant left both, replaced by Michael White; neither were harmed and Alto improved); a profile of New Orleans chef-turned Katrina activist-turned-Food-Network-star John Besh; Mark Bittman calls a recipe for roasted beef marrow "a no-brainer" and Eric Asimov pulls out a "top this!" of a wine grape: Vitovska. Of the white wine it produces -- Vodopivec, from Italy's Friuli-Venezia Giulia region -- he says:

This was from the 2002 vintage, and like those beautiful wines from Gravner and Radikon, it had a pink, cidery haze to it, with aromas of apples, peaches, pears and smoke. In the mouth it was dense, with weight, yet not heavy at all, honeyed yet dry and full of mineral flavors. It was almost a paradoxical wine, resting on that fragile border between lightness and weight, dry and sweet. It gave the wine tension and energy and made me want to drink more of it.

I'm on it.

San Francisco Chronicle: Initially shapes up as a bit of a snooze -- make heritage turkey and Thanksgiving dinner reservations now, there's good vegetarian at Napa's Ubuntu (Michael Bauer compares it to the almighty Greens), Thanksgiving recipe winners to come! -- but there's paydirt in The Inside Scoop: Two chefs who earned Fifth Floor a Michelin star get no credit because the restaurant's owners told the guide "they had no chef." Classy! Also: Another Michelin one-star co-chef, Louis Maldonado, is leaving Cortez to be a lowly line cook at the French Laundry. That's cojones -- and to my mind, a chef to watch.