I am back in God’s Country after my trip to Los Angeles! When my pal Sara Tane and I got together for our recipes collab in April (the coconut caramel ccc’s and the steak tostadas) I had mentioned my plan to visit LA this summer. She, being the giving queen that she is, said I should just stay at her place while she was in Copenhagen! Reader, I gave her five minutes to take it back before buying my plane tickets. And of course, I insisted she let me look after her dog Pepper while I was there.
I got so many great food recommendations from the Instagram community so thank you if you sent one! I mostly stayed in Silver Lake and the surrounding area so I’m sorry if I missed your favorite spot in Venice or Long Beach or wherever. If you followed along on my Instagram Stories, you may have seen some of these, but because people have questions like what is that? and where is this? and why don’t you write any details like these? I’m going into more specifics below.
Courage Bagels
Before Sara left for the airport she took my jet-lagged husk to Courage Bagels, the hype-y, pricey bagel place serving up naturally-fermented, Montreal-style bagels. I’m skeptical of anything people line up for, and even on a Monday at 11 a.m., there was a sizable line and a 15-minute wait after ordering. I can’t imagine the horror of a weekend visit. I got one sesame bagel half with almond butter and jelly and one everything bagel half with a pile of unwieldy veggies. And let me just say this: The bagels? Delicious. The exterior is crispy without ripping up the roof of your mouth, the tender insides give way under the slightest pressure (in a way that no dense New York bagel ever would) all with the flavor of the best sourdough.
Then there’s the price. Despite how delicious the bagels are, at $19 plus tip for a well-dressed bagel, you still can’t help but leave feeling like you’ve been duped. I love everyone and I want everyone to earn a living and run fabulous restaurants, and I see how many factors can raise the cost: 1. the care they put into the dough (apparently, they naturally ferment for a week) 2. The high-quality ingredients (artisanal almond butter certainly isn’t JIF) 3. how expensive it is to rent a store in a popular area and pay a good wage to employees. My feelings could be explained by the fact that we don’t think of bagels or sandwiches as having the potential to be a more upscale food item — but maybe we should start? Then again, if everything becomes a luxury food item, how are normal people going to be able to keep eating out? For now, there are still plenty of places to get an affordable bagel … in New York.
Kismet Rotisserie
My first night, I got right to work crossing places off my Beli “to-try” list. You’d think my passion for food would explain my haste — but really, rating restaurants on Beli has become something of a sport to me. I must confess, eating alone in public is pretty uncomfortable for me — I basically only do it at Cava. (I know.) But if I wanted to try everything on my list, I had to bite the stick and just do it. So I walked the 30 minutes to Kismet, and then I passed by it to order at the window of their sister restaurant Kismet Rotisserie. I was firmly the only person dining in the restaurant’s parking lot seating. Fortunately, my sense of dread and anxiety melted away with every bite of the unctuous, falling-apart chicken leg, creamy hummus, warmly-spiced chili oil, toum, and crunchy pickled cabbage.
Erewhon
There’s an Erewhon location in my host’s neighborhood. Against my better judgement, I stopped by to pick up a couple groceries for the week (even though I would be eating at home rarely.) I did not get a Hailee Beiber smoothie, but I did get this pathetic haul. The garlicky “miracle” noodles were actually pretty good, though just as overpriced as the curry cauliflower. You may think the inclusion of the Dutch-process cocoa powder was random but I can never find it at my grocery stores in New York, so it came home with me!! I’ll let you guys guess in the comments how much this haul was.
La Mill
Though La Mill had some off service and a bizarre interior, my breakfast sandwich with sausage and cheddar cheese on a brioche bun rocked, and so did my sparkling matcha lemonade.
Quarter Sheets
Some friends who live in LA said they had to bring me to this Sicilian-style pizza restaurant … and it may have been the best meal of the trip! The spicy pepper, burrata and peach salad was refreshing but not super memorable. We ordered a litany of pizza flavors, but the standouts were the Bianca (with sungold tomatoes, pesto and pistachios) and the Sicilian Corner (which seems to change a lot but ours had peppers, sausage and a sesame crust).
The dessert menu is so popular here that we had to reserve our desserts with the waiter before the meal even started. We couldn’t even get the (apparently beloved) princess cake because it had already sold out that night. AND I’M GLAD! Because instead we got what might be one of the best bites from this trip, the ricotta cheesecake. I don’t even like cheesecake and yet this was the most dreamy, never-too-rich, sensual cheesecake, topped with a pile of fresh strawberries and sauce that retained so much of the fresh strawberry flavor and and acidity, I have a feeling it wasn’t even cooked. I was stumped — what is this crust? It tasted like graham cracker or Biscoff cookies, but way more complex. My friend asked her friend, the pastry chef there; Turns out they make the graham crackers from scratch and then crush them up for the crust. Insane.
Pijja Palace
With its dosa onion rings, hari mirch masala chicken wings, and TVs all over playing basketball games, this Indian sports bar was recommended a bunch and I was very curious to try it. I would skip the onion rings. I would also skip the pizza, which, while toppings like chicken tikka and stinger chilis had great flavor, was too thin and dry for me while also unpleasantly oily. Focus your attention on the wings, with flavors such as Achaari Buffalo, and the Malai Rigatoni with tomato masala, cream and coriander (didn’t snag a picture).
Doubting Thomas
I met up with one of my OG food blogger idols, Adrianna of A Cozy Kitchen, at Doubting Thomas, which was recommended a few times for brunch. I’ve been following Adrianna for probably eight years at this point and we’ve developed a friendship in the IG DMs. My braised pork breakfast burrito was delicious; somehow wet in a good way, like a French dip. We both agreed the passionfruit tart (which everyone said to get!) was too sweet and didn’t have enough of that signature passionfruit tartness.
Café Tropical
Another establishment where the excellent entree was let down by the sweet. After hearing mixed reviews from two locals, I went on a solo trip here to investigate for myself. I’ll just say it, the chilaquiles breakfast burrito was maybe Top 5 breakfast burritos of my life. The tortilla chips were the perfect balance of salsa-soggy and crisp, and melty cheese pulled out with every bite. The tortilla, with stone-milled Sonora flour from Tehachapi Grains (had to look it up on their website) had this gorgeous, earthy flavor that just took it over the top. The guava cheese pastelito is described as buttery on the menu but I struggled to find that flavor. The guava jam and whipped cream cheese filling was delicious but encased in a sort of bland, if puffy and flakey, pastry. Sometimes, what’s on the outside *is* important.
Azizam
I found this spot on The Infatuation and decided it would be perfect for a weekday lunch with my friend Nikki. Walking into the Persian home-cooking restaurant smells like you’ve been transported to your grandma’s kitchen in the best way. I ordered the turmeric braised chicken with yellow fava bean rice, fried shallots and pickles. This is the kind of comfort food I would want to eat after a breakup or a layoff.
LA BAKERY TOUR
My friend Alex Roberts is a wonderful baker and fellow creator who was kind enough to be my sherpa on a five-stop tour of LA bakeries. He knows what’s good, so I let go and let him take the wheel (he drove me around.)
Friends and Family: This is actually my second trip here after visiting a few years ago! They feature an absolutely solid and unfussy selection in such a nice, big diner-style environment. We got the peanut butter cookie, tomato chausson, and bacon quiche. The pastry? Absolutely, shatteringly crisp and buttery. No notes.
Petitgrain Boulangerie: Alex and the owner Clemence go way back so she invited us into the back to check out the bakery operation (which was so cool!) before proceeding to fill up three BOXES of pastries for us. I couldn’t even try everything but let’s just say, a warm, fresh pain au chocolate from here could wake me from a coma. Also amazing: the laminated cinnamon roll (so many bakery cinnamon rolls suck, not this one) and the banana bread. This was also the location where two men in Stussy tee shirts asked Alex and I if we were TikTokers.
Fat & Flour: Next up was Fat & Flour, owned by Alex’s friend and my online-to-IRL pal Nicole Rucker. We were in desperate need of true sustenance so I got a massive curry chicken salad sandwich (on excellent bread), and for balance the key lime pie. Nicole kindly brought out a black raspberry chocolate cheesecake she was testing, and despite us saying how full and sugar-dazed we were, we just kept going in for another bite.
Gjusta: I was underwhelmed with the selection here but did get a baguette to bring home for some of Sara’s radish butter I spotted in the fridge.
Helm’s Bakery: With a gleaming, golden interior like the inside of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, and a fun, nostalgic pastry selection to boot, this new bakery is parter of a large outdoor luxury mall. I was so full at this point in the tour that I could barely have one bite of my olive oil-pistachio cake with a rosewater soak, which was dense, moist, and maybe a little too rich (still fab though).
If you want to read more, check out Alex’s Substack post about our bakery crawl.
Rasarumah
Caught up with another LA-based friend who said he’s been trying to go here for many months. And while it wasn’t on my Beli list, I said hey, let’s take the chance. Locals know best. And I’m very glad we did. We ordered too much delicious Malaysian food: chicken and pork jowl skewers (skip the turnip ones), Rojak (a salad of mango, cucumber, pineapple, watermelon radish, herbs, tamarind and crispy shallots), Char Kway Teow (with stir fried rice noodles, Chinese sausage and shrimp) and for dessert a Cendol Sundae (with coconut pandan ice cream, pandan jelly noodles and red bean). While pretty good, I think we could have skipped the sundae.
La Sorted’s Pizza
I may have mis-ordered here. The mortadella sandwich looked so good on Instagram and Beli that I took a 30 minute walk with the sole purpose of acquiring it. The ingredients were top-notch: burrata cheese that tasted like the cow was nearby, fresh focaccia. The whole thing was a bit overpowered though by the cheese and would have benefitted from a little bit of heat from pickled peppers, Calabrian chilis, or even some mustard. Also, there was no seating at all the day I went so next time I’d just do pickup or delivery — and I would try the pizza. I was going to bring the other half of this sandwich with me to my flight home but I forgot it in the fridge. And I’m kind of glad because I instead had a surprisingly good chicken caesar wrap at the Burbank airport.
Mashti Malone’s
Luckily, I passed this place on the way back from La Sorted’s that had been recommended to me a few times. I stopped in and I tried scoops of the Persian cucumber and the saffron-pistachio flavors. This spur-of-the-moment venture made the hour-long walk in the sun worth it! The cucumber was ultra-refreshing, like they turned spa water into ice cream. Neither ice cream left a trace of iciness and both had that “chew” that only the best ice cream makers know how to get. One of the best bites of the trip was unplanned — leave room for surprises!!
best house guest/dog sitter ever!!!!!!!
Loving that baguette bag!