June Gloom is almost in the rearview, which is excellent news for the beachhounds among us. I take my beach-going seriously—I am a beach-all-day person, ideally on the road by 9 a.m. to stake my claim and enjoy a few hours of relative quietude before the hordes descend. I’m partial to secluded beaches with a dash of epic nature, like La Piedra in Malibu (my always and forever go-to), RAT (Right After Torrance) in the South Bay, or Crystal Cove State Park in Newport.

All serious beach people know the importance of a proper Beach Sandwich. Structural integrity is key: ingredients must be carefully layered to avoid soggage, wet fillings like raw tomatoes or pickles should be applied judiciously, and crusty breads (i.e., ciabatta, baguette, focaccia) make for the sturdiest base. Obviously, Beach Sandwiches should be able to withstand a few hours between procurement and consumption, which is where a small insulated cooler/lunchbox comes in handy. That said, even with a cooler, certain fillings give me the ick: tuna or other mayo-heavy salads, for example (although plenty of you seem to disagree), or anything with an abundance of soft cheese (mozzarella, burrata, etc.).

I have my go-tos (more on them in a minute), but as beach season kicks into high gear, I sought inspiration. So I polled friends and notable L.A. food folks for their Beach Sandwich and corresponding beach of choice. For the purposes of this survey, I expanded the definition of Beach Sandwiches to include other handheld, carb-wrapped eats, such as burritos, wraps, and—sure!—onigiri. While I have always considered acquiring the Beach Sandwich part of the beachgoing experience, ideally performed near the beach itself, plenty of respondents are happy transporting their sandwiches across town.

I’m publishing the highlights of this extremely unscientific survey below, and the full results in a painstakingly compiled Beach Sando Map that you should bookmark for future trips (link below), but I’d also love to hear from you—what other Beach Sandwiches are worth seeking out? Take it to the comments!

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#97 is Tasbeeh Herwees, the writer behind No Bad Days, “a newsletter about Los Angeles,” which has quickly become one of my immediate opens when it hits my inbox. Tasbeeh is a native Angeleno, proud political activist, and possessor of a true gimlet eye when it comes to reporting on all of the things that make this city so alluring (and occasionally infuriating). Her bylines have appeared the Los Angeles Times, GQ, Teen Vogue, The Fader, VICE, Bon Appétit, Vulture, and more, and you can rest assured that whatever she writes will be sharp and incisive. From her home base in East Hollywood, here are Tasbeeh’s Plugs.

Restaurant: Flavors From Afar

Some people may remember Flavors from Afar from when it was located in Little Ethiopia, and it operated on a “chef-of-the-month” model, where all the chefs represented different refugee communities. It quietly closed down a couple of years ago, after it earned nationwide recognition for its incredible dining program.

And just as quietly as it disappeared, it reappeared—this time in East Hollywood, on a stretch of the boulevard that is overpopulated with smoke shops and was desperately in need of a restaurant like this one. Flavors from Afar remains an extension of the Tiyya Foundation, an organization co-founded by owner Meymuna Hussein-Cattan to support refugee families in the states with employment opportunities, professional training, and community resources.

Flavors from Afar is also one of the few places in L.A. where you can get koshari, a carb-heavy pauper’s dish from Egypt that I crave often but rarely have the energy to make myself. Though they no longer have a chef-of-the-month program, they continue to offer a global menu, highlighting lesser known cuisines. On the weekends, you can even catch a live jazz show inside the restaurant.

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#14 is Michael Robinov, the co-founder and CEO of Farm To People, my favorite (online) grocery store in New York. Through Farm To People, you can buy produce, meat, and dairy from some of the finest local farmers in the broader New York region; bakery items a la She Wolf, Knead Love, and Sobre Masa; and artisanal pantry items like fresh La Trafila pastas and Yesfolk kombucha vinegar alongside thoughtfully sourced ingredients from further afield, including California citrus and Spanish olive oil. I'm very bullish on what Michael and his team are building, particularly because the curation is top-notch—they've put me onto some of my current favorite groceries, from FLX Farm Fresh organic rolled oats to Pequea Valley Farm grass-fed yogurt. Michael and I are kindred spirits, and here he is with his Plugs.

P.S. If you haven’t tried Farm To People yet, you’re missing out. Use my code EMILYW22 for a free farm box! (I tend to order a la carte, but the farm boxes are a nice way to dip your toes in.)

Restaurant — Stissing House

My partner and co-founder, Anina, and I cook a lot when we're home in Brooklyn… It sort of comes with the territory. But whenever we get the chance, we love to get away and visit her family and farms upstate, and eat out. Stissing House in Pine Plains is our favorite dinner spot and always such a treat. Clare de Boer turned the 1782 house into a destination restaurant, with a wood-burning oven and grill. Get the artichoke, the coal-roasted dayboat scallops, and save room for dessert.

BONUS — Cafe Mutton

This tiny neighborhood restaurant on a sunny corner is our go-to for brunch. While the menu might scare off a few less adventurous eaters on first look: pigs’ ears, blood sausage, offal, etc, everything is made in-house and hits the spot every time. Each visit we adjust our order to try new things, which is easy to do since the menu rotates daily, and we always end our meal with a plate of the crepes! Thank me later.

OFF-MENU BONUS — The steak at Misi

This is my sleeper pick. Misi in Williamsburg is known as a pasta restaurant, but IMHO the off-menu dry-aged steak topped with fennel pollen is the dish to order.

TAKEOUT BONUS — Samurai Mama

I also have to shout out my go-to takeout in Williamsburg. The sushi taco set is the move, plus the seaweed salad, miso soup loaded with mushrooms, and a hamachi roll. It's one of those orders I've been placing for years.

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It’s summertime on the East Coast, precisely the season I moved back to New York for. The farmers’ markets are beginning to pop, the mood is sultry, and, hopefully, many of you, like me, have plans to get out of the city over the next few months and spend time in places like Maine, Long Island, Vermont, Connecticut, the Catskills, and the Cape.

In case you’ll be in the Hamptons at any point, I’ve got a guide for you on Rec League: The Eastern East End, my 24 favorite spots in Amagansett—where my family has summered for 25+ years—and the neighboring towns of East Hampton, Montauk, Napeague, and the Springs.

I’m hoping to grill a ton (or rather, be grilled for), make dozens of ice cream flavors, and spend quality time with my husband, my family, and my friends. I’m also carving out time to focus on some new creative projects, which means you can expect to hear a bit less from me here on The Angel, for now.

Still, I’ve got stories in the mix throughout the summer, including two features (one sweet, the other juicy) from yours truly, L.A. dispatches from , and weekend Plugs. Come fall, we’ve got some exciting plans in the works, so stay tuned...

Thank you, as always, for your readership. Happy summering!

<3,
Emily

#5 is John McDonald, the restaurateur and entrepreneur known for iconic establishments like Lure Fishbar, for co-founding the food media site Tasting Table, and for writing on Substack. As the founder and CEO of Mercer Street Hospitality, John is also behind Bar Mercer, Bowery Meat Company, Cha Cha Tang, Smyth Tavern, and, most recently, Seahorse in Union Square. He’s lived in SoHo for 20 years and has worked there even longer, since opening MercBar in 1993—which he ran in a garage rented from the Mercer Hotel for two decades (until the building was demolished). Eight years ago, John gave up his office; now, on any given weekday, you’ll find him working from one of his restaurants or the lobby of the Mercer Hotel. Here he is with his five go-to SoHo spots.

M&O Market & Deli

This has been a go-to spot for some of the best sandwiches in the city. In the back of the market is their deli counter, and they have a carving board that features either roast beef, turkey, or pork each day, fresh Portuguese rolls, and amazing empanadas. No frills, just excellent.

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“Just look at the bend halfway down the handle!” I’ll exclaim to myself, admiring the patina, which I proudly inflicted on it myself, over seven years of daily use.

Erosion of any kind is an affecting thing to behold, and in the culinary world, it’s ever-present. The erosion on my perfect wooden spoon that dutifully stands at attention in a utensil crock to the right of my home stove; the erosion of pots, pans, and knives that live on the line in the millions of restaurant kitchens across the globe; and the erosion of the body seen in burns, cuts, swelling, and aches of those who farm and prepare the food we eat.

I’ve developed my share of joint issues from working in kitchens, few more pernicious than the ache of my lower back. Which, somewhat ironically, dramatically affects my experience of dining out, especially if the restaurant in question has uncomfortable dining chairs. It started like this—my fascination with restaurant seating—from a purely practical perspective. What seat is the most supportive for a drawn-out dinner? Can I determine cushion thickness from a Google Maps user-submitted photo alone? Why would any restaurateur opt for a Lancaster Alloy Set if they could possibly help it? “Seating can make or break a meal, especially one meant to last for more than 30 minutes,” says food writer Khushbu Shah. “If you are uncomfortable because your hips are jutting into the arm rests, or the back of the chair is so stiff you start to feel your lower back cramp, or the stool is so slippery you keep sliding off, you’re not fully present.”

Most of our time spent in restaurants is spent sitting down (unless you’re at a pintxos bar in San Sebastián). Crafting a space that works with the contours of the bodies that flow through it is an art, with comfort being the obvious first box to check. But what else is to be considered? Think of how many suited Hollywood rear ends have brushed up against the thick red leather of the studded seats at Musso & Frank Grill. Or how many cumulative hours have been clocked on the cushioned banquet chairs at Atlantic Seafood, listening to the clickity clack of dim sum carts circle the room. Think of how many New Yorkers on dates have uncomfortably shifted their weight from side to side in an austere Shaker banquette while pondering another round at The Commerce Inn. The wear we leave on these living pieces of furniture, and the wear they leave on us, is significant, as should be the thought process behind their selection.

In my quest to investigate the very consequential matter of restaurant seating, I spoke with a handful of restaurant owners, as well as other experts, whose choices I’ve admired over my years of dining in New York and Los Angeles. I’ve broken down their insights (and mine) by chair type.

Fit for a king; seating so special and considered that it becomes a highlight, rather than a facet of the dining experience.

“We wanted the interior to look like your classic chophouse but with a feminine feel to it,” says Suzanne Tracht, chef-owner of Jar Restaurant in Beverly Grove. “Like somewhere your dad would take you when you were little. But I didn’t want those big old red booths, I wanted to think outside the box.” Her answer came during her collaboration with the late Bret Witke, interior designer to the stars: big, plush, deep armchairs…on wheels. Perhaps Witke’s memories of visiting Disneyland with his theme park designer mother and background as a storied club proprietor led to a design choice so equally luxe and whimsical. But no matter the inspiration, the wheeled chairs at Jar (opened in 2001) remain iconic. Their existence compromises neither comfort nor functionality, and should the restaurant book out for a private party or a film shoot, they need only be corralled to the side like a herd of sheep. “Jar is the type of place where customers know one another, so sometimes, yeah, they do roll over to another table. And I always joke that if they’re too full, I’ll wheel them out!” says Tracht.

At Bistro Na’s in Temple City, a different type of throne welcomes diners eager to experience the restaurant’s dedicated interpretation of imperial Manchu cuisine. The seating, carved from dark cherry rosewood in a Qing-style design with satin cushions, matches the rest of the dining room, which is spacious and ornate. The room takes on a museum-like feel, with traditional musical instruments and intricately engraved wooden beams lining the perimeter. Here, the seating is a reminder that the food you’re eating has its origins in royal banquet halls; the chairs follow suit, deeming every guest a member of the court.

Seating built for two or more, cushioned or otherwise (I’m looking at you, banquettes).

Draw a map tracing the red leather booths in and around L.A. and you’d wind up with something that looks like a beating heart, veins and all. New York City’s map would be less veiny, but similar. While few booths are as renowned as Musso & Frank Grill’s red leather hideaways, many named for their corresponding starlet (Charlie Chaplin’s booth faced the street so he could allegedly keep an eye on his horse), the list of storied red seating is long and cuisine agnostic. One can dine on spaghetti and meatballs at Colombo’s or La Dolce Vita, jap chae at The Prince, walnut shrimp at Formosa Cafe, and chile rellenos at Casa Vega—all from the comfort of a red leather booth.

A booth, if not at a diner, tacitly admits your establishment is, at the very least, trying to be sexy. Sometimes that admission grows to a yell. You’d think spherical space age booths would have been enough for the Westin Bonaventure’s rooftop Bonavista Lounge in 1977, but—call it pre-Olympic jitters or a downtown revitalization effort—the whole floor was hooked up to a motor and set to rotate over the then-growing Los Angeles skyline. The Dresden’s back dining room sports a series of witchy white leather booths and chairs embossed with a massive “DR” monogram—very ‘80s, although the restaurant and cocktail lounge has been a fixture of Hillhurst Ave since 1954.

“I like a really tight little booth where knees are all folding together uncomfortably at first, and then you stop really noticing,” says Andy Schwartz of Baby Bistro, whose interior couldn’t be anything further from classic kitsch, down to the wood banquettes. “I’m specifically thinking about HMS Bounty’s corner pocket,” he adds, referring to the booth in the back left corner of the nautical-themed Koreatown dive bar, a favorite haunt of the late Anthony Bourdain. At Schwartz’s own restaurant, the interior design was largely dictated by the original structure, a Victorian house constructed in the early 1900s. “When we got the space, it was just white walls and this old Doug fir subfloor, and we wanted to honor that as much as possible, so we sourced a bunch of old-growth wood and milled it down, then [artist and designer] Grayson Revoir went about laying the floor and building tables, shelves, speakers, window frames, baseboards, and banquettes.”

Could a banquette be the booth’s perfect foil? Or maybe its sophisticated older cousin? The two nurture the same type of closeness with varying levels of restraint.

Chairs built from wood, from the deepest depths of an old oak forest to the farthest reaches of the Webstaurant website.

The Vienna Chair, found in restaurants like Cafe Mogador (East Village) and Sam’s Place (Highland Park), may be the king of this category; anything that maintains design relevance after 167 years deserves such a title. You’ve seen Vienna chairs in bistros and on back patios—they’re lightweight, easily stackable, and reasonably comfortable for prolonged gathering. Other less dominant examples of wooden restaurant chairs include splay-legged Windsor Chairs, midcentury-style with their low curved backs, and clunky Shaker schoolchairs a la Ukrainian East Village Restaurant or Philippe The Original—an obvious choice for operators looking to invoke a sense of American nostalgia.

Otherwise known as… plastic chairs. As ubiquitous as they are necessary.

I’m no Bryan Ropar, but I know my way around a plastic chair. I like folding chairs specifically, no armrests, who needs them? If you’re sitting in a plastic chair, your arms should be occupied with something handheld and delicious. It would seem that this chair archetype reigns supreme in Los Angeles. They dot the sidewalks beside taco trucks and pupusa stands, and stay propped up in the backyards of MEHKOs, such as Comedor Tenchita and Mariscos El Chito. It’s not unlikely to find chairs with price tags and stickers still on them plopped next to a spit or a flame. The plastic chair represents ingenuity and hustle. In the case of Angel’s Tijuana Tacos, these chairs turn into hot commodities, quadrupling in value during the busy hours as customers search for somewhere to prop their plate; at the Eagle Rock location specifically, tables are fashioned out of just about anything in the busy neighboring Target parking lot. Then, at midnight, much like a carriage into a pumpkin, they return to their original form.

Often backless seating with little to no arm support. Sometimes up high, sometimes down low, rarely in the middle.

Bar seating is polarizing, and for good reason. Bad bar seats, of which there are many, can feel like balancing on the head of a pin. But when mastered, they are the most intimate in the house, offering an eye to the action. Shah loves the bar seats at Hermon’s, Last Word Hospitality’s latest edition to the Eastside heatmap: “Foot rest on the stool, foot rests under the bar, backing on the stool, easy to climb in and out of, and they are plush.”

Further noteworthy classic and comfortable bar seats include The Apple Pan’s red leather variety with a short supportive back panel and a hook underneath the bar to hang your belongings; Grand Central Oyster Bar’s high-backed swivel seats, mounted to the floor on a circular silver column and boasting a front row view of the perpetual shuck; and El Colmao’s forest green stools that barely levitate off the ground.

But bar seating does not make up the entire category of stools. Take the plastic, brightly colored Vietnamese variety, an ultra-recognizable symbol of the country’s hospitality. In the late 1800s, when French colonization led to an influx of paved roads, stools and benches became more popular than woven mats due to their comfort and practicality. To this day, they are the preferred vehicle for eating low to the ground and close together, ideal for sharing and talking throughout mealtime. In the late ‘80s, during a surge in plastic production, lightweight, waterproof versions of these stools emerged en masse. Easily stackable for transport or potential street ordinances, these stools can be found far and wide in Vietnam and on a small section of Forsyth Street at Mắm, where hungry New Yorkers adopt a new posture, eagerly munching on crispy blocks of housemade fried tofu and elegant stuffed snails.

These seats are novel, exciting, and sometimes the sole reason to eat out (RIP Myrtle Ave Burger King Taxi-shaped booth).

At Cafe Lily in Bensonhurst, the best seat in the house is in the back garden. There, under a wooden canopy, sits an Uzbek tapchan, draped in jewel-toned, patterned textiles. A tapchan is a multipurpose piece of raised furniture, part table, part bed, dressed with a thin mattress (or thick blanket) known as a kurpacha and comfortable pillows. Cafe Lily serves dishes that are Koryo-saram, ethnically Korean but from Uzbekistan. As you recline into your lunch, new patterns emerge on the tapchan’s surface, composed of plates of food: plov, kimchi, the tangy carrot salad known as morkovcha, and manti the size of the pillows propping you up.

For a flicker of childhood nostalgia, or just a moment of respite from New York’s Chinatown bustle, duck into Lucky King off Grand Street and pop a squat in one of their dining chairs, each shaped, sized, and colored like M&Ms. They are as delightful as they are uncomfortable, but the good news is you need only to sit in one for the few minutes it will take you to devour a flaky egg tart or chewy sesame ball. Unfortunately, these chairs are welded to the tables in front of them. The owners must’ve gotten word of my plan to make off with a few for my own home and decided to make the necessary arrangements.

#13 is , a food writer, podcast host, and entrepreneur. Born in Ghana, raised in Canada, and now firmly rooted in New York City, Abena has made quite the name for herself in both the local and national food scene. She hosted The Future of Food is You on Cherry Bombe's podcast network, earning the James Beard Award for Broadcast Media Emerging Voice in 2023, and last year took home IACP's prestigious Toni Tipton-Martin Award. She's the founder of The Eden Place, a community-based dinner experience company, and currently works on special projects for the comms agency Daly. On Substack, she writes Your Friend in Food, and she has bylines in Vogue Mexico, Synonym, and Resy. Here's Abena with her Plugs.

Restaurant — Dean's

Someone recently told me that NYC has 25,000 restaurants and counting, so that made responding to this prompt even more challenging. Dean’s is my current pick because it’s a beautiful representation of NYC dining vibes. Annie and Jess have blessed us with such incredible establishments as King and Jupiter, which focus on elevated expressions of seasonal produce. And while Dean’s is an English pub, a restaurant format known for menus that can feel bland, this powerful restaurateur duo has managed to make it delightful and not lose the grungy charm of pub fare.

It’s hard to even decide what dish is the star of the show. Sure, you’re coming for the classics like the fish and chips with the mushy peas, the quail scotch egg, and the boiled ham. As a child of the commonwealth, they manage to feed the nostalgia with authentic presentations. And as a cosmopolitan who has a high bar when it comes to being dazzled, they knock it out of the park with dishes like pork scratchings served in a silver cup, akin to long breadsticks, and the gin-cured, drunk salmon. And when it comes to beverages, I feel like it’s Pavlovian to reach for a pint of Guinness but the carrot margarita is inching its way up to the top spot.

Also, I would consider Dean’s to be a multimodal restaurant. It doesn’t matter if you’re going for a quick pint before another dinner or staying for a two-hour adventure that trails wee into the night, you can still get the full experience and be doted on by their incredible staff.

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Guest chef series, pop-ups, takeovers, collabs—call them what you will, but they’re absolutely everywhere right now. I can’t open my inbox or Instagram without being bombarded with flyers for restaurants hosting other restaurants, always for a limited time only. Bell’s Los Alamos welcomes Henrietta Red from Nashville! London’s Rochelle Canteen takes over Sailor in Brooklyn! SingleThread x Kato x Harbor House: one night only! The pop-ups keep popping up, coast to coast, with pairings that can feel either intuitive or random, or anywhere in between.

Sometimes I’m tempted, often I am not. As a diner, I can appreciate the chance to try a visiting chef’s food, especially if they’re someone I either know and love from elsewhere, or have admired from afar. But I’ve also been burned by chaotic services, disjointed menus, and overwhelming crowds at poorly planned collabs. If dining out is like live theater, pop-ups are the improv of the genre—exciting when executed well; deeply cringe-inducing when not.

Although pop-ups have existed in various forms for at least the past decade (i.e. cookbook tours, guest chef residencies, bars partnering with chefs), Covid was the undeniable turning point in pop-up history. With restaurants shuttered, out-of-work chefs got creative, cooking in unexpected places and advertising via social media.

The current moment—of restaurant-on-restaurant pop-up saturation—is a relatively recent phenomenon. Is it an outgrowth of the pandemic-era spirit of collaboration, or a shrewd marketing opportunity in an increasingly crowded restaurant (and food media) landscape? A bit of both, I’d posit, along with the simple truth that chefs like hanging out with other chefs, and this is a formal route to doing so that also enables them to drum up a little attention along the way. The fact that reservation platforms, credit card companies, and deep-pocketed brands are now competing to subsidize these events? Icing on the cake.

Still, I have questions: How do these events come together? Who’s organizing them (Chef-owners? Publicists? Brands with $$$?), and how do they ensure things run smoothly for all parties? Even with corporate sponsorship, is anyone making money off this equation? And, more existentially: Why do chefs continue perpetuating pop-ups, and have we reached the point of no return?

I, as merely one part of the equation (the occasional guest), don’t have all the answers. So I assembled a panel of experts—chefs and restaurateurs in Los Angeles and New York who have been on all sides of the setup, to unpack why we’re living in this moment of peak pop-up, and where we go from here.

Brooks Headley, owner, Superiority Burger in New York, who has popped up at several restaurants in L.A.: Chi Spacca, the erstwhile Cafe 2001, and a few weeks ago, at Salazar in Frogtown, where he teamed up for a supercharged collaboration with Quarter Sheets, Diego Argoti (Estrano Things), and pastry chef Lo Hoang (Largwa). He’s also hosted several visiting chefs at SB, including Lion Dance Cafe (Oakland) and Salty Lunch Lady’s Little Luncheonette (Queens).

Nancy Silverton, owner, Mozza Restaurant Group, whose collected restaurants have hosted dozens of visiting chefs, ranging from Headley, above, to L’Industrie Pizzeria (New York) to Masala y Maiz (Mexico City) to The Publican (Chicago).

Mackenzie Hoffman, co-owner, Stir Crazy, which has hosted local L.A. restaurants including Baby Bistro, below, and Yess, along with visitors like Rita’s (London); and recently traveled to Ojai to pop up at Pinyon.

Nick Tamburo, owner, Smithereens in New York, who recently popped up at Troubadour Bread & Bistro in Healdsburg and Baby Bistro in L.A.; and has hosted restaurants including Oyster Oyster (DC), Pickerel (Providence), and Locust (Nashville), among others.

Brian Bornemann, owner, Crudo e Nudo, which started as a roving pop-up before finding a permanent home in Santa Monica. The restaurant recently celebrated its 5th anniversary by hosting a weeklong pop-up series with visiting chefs and winemakers, including the teams from Little Fish (L.A.), Betsy (Altadena), and Scribe Winery (Sonoma), among others.

Andy Schwartz, co-owner, Baby Bistro, which began life as a pop-up at L.A. restaurants including Normandie Club and Dudley Market before opening in Victor Heights last year. Since opening, they have hosted visiting chefs like Tamburo, above, and Elijah DeLeon of Rustic Canyon (L.A.), and have popped up at other venues such as Snail Bar (San Francisco).

These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

The Angel: Pop-ups sure seem like a lot of work. What’s the appeal?

Brooks Headley: Well, first thing is, I despise the word ‘pop-up’ [mimics vomiting noise]. I just call them events. And I like to do them because I learn a lot. Whether people come to SB or I go to other places—if you don’t learn something, like one really good thing, then what’s the point?

Nancy Silverton: Strictly from a business perspective, all of us in the struggling restaurant world are constantly trying to figure out ways of bringing business or attention to our restaurants. Whether it’s just business or it’s just attention, pop-ups are something to talk about.

Some collaborations will involve situations where I get so excited about eating the food at a restaurant and I have this unquenchable thirst to share these discoveries. I taste a bite at Masala y Maiz and I’m like, I need to bring that to L.A. And what that trickles down to is: an opportunity for our staff to learn and get excited by somebody else’s food, for our customers to be able to share in those flavors, and for more marketing opportunities. There’s really no end to the benefit.

Mackenzie Hoffman: The benefit first and foremost is staff retention and excitement. The joy and pride that the team gets by hosting is really cool—I quite literally see them showing up with their laces a little bit tighter, they’re buttoned up a little bit more, and they want to show off. They want to host, and make sure that they’re providing the visiting team the utmost respect and support.

Each one of these pop-ups turns into this convivial, communal party of sorts…I think it generates excitement, generates community, generates trust, and just makes our community a little bit bigger, and smaller at the same time. More friends, if you will.

Nick Tamburo: The main thing is just being able to connect with these people and learn from each other. When you’re a younger cook, you can stage in someone else’s kitchen to keep learning, or go work somewhere else. But when you’re later in your career, pop-ups are basically another opportunity to either travel somewhere and learn in someone else’s kitchen or bring someone to yours. There are definitely techniques or ideas on our menus that are inspired by some of these visiting chefs.

I mean, this is, you know, why we get out of bed in the morning—to do stuff like this.

How do you decide who to collaborate with? Is it born from organic, mutual desire, or is there a matchmaker component from an external party?

Brian Bornemann: [For the birthday pop-ups], I had a bunch of chef friends already in mind to reach out to, who were already connected to the space so it felt organic and not forced... In general, I find, if it’s another chef who has a restaurant, and you can collaborate on a menu for a day and you guys get along enough to communicate well, [pop-ups] are a good way to lighten the load, and just hang out and drink wine and talk shop, which is really half the point.

Tamburo: There are a million different ways these things come together. Sometimes I reach out cold to a chef I’ve always admired but never met [which was the case with Dylan Watson Brawn of Ernst, who recently visited from Berlin]. Others are more organic—the one we did with this ramen shop in Providence called Pickerel happened because their owner, Scott, came in to dine at Smithereens a bunch of times. We got to talking, he’s a cool dude, a great guest, so we decided to invite him down… What we’re really looking for is someone who’s going to complement what we already do, or someone that we’re inspired by and want to learn from.

Headley: We make sure we only invite people that we either love as people or we love their food. We don’t do anything in between. I wouldn’t do it for somebody who I didn’t know, or somebody whose food I don’t love. We’ve done it for a lot of people whose food I love, and sometimes we’ll do it for people I love even if I’m not that crazy about their food, but that’s rare.

Let’s talk about the logistics of pulling off a pop-up: you have one restaurant essentially invading another one’s space, bringing unfamiliar people, ingredients, and ways of working, for a meal you only get one chance to pull off. How do you ensure things don’t go off the rails?

Andy Schwartz: We have a tiny space. We really only have room for one other person on the line, and no one else in the front of house. And we cannot do something where the guest suffers. So now we have a system, a format. One chef comes, they collaborate with [chef and co-owner] Miles [Thompson], they get to represent their restaurant and their food, and we fold it into our exact style of operation… If we had to remake the restaurant and service in order to give the level of service that we want to give, it would not be worth it.

Hoffman: I approach it like I do any sort of private event, which is a lot of planning, so that execution is very seamless. There’s a lot of information exchanged in the beginning… I appreciate a lot of collaboration beforehand to get on the same page, because everyone is so invested in this, and neither person really comes out winning financially [Editor’s note: more on this in a minute]. We do a lot up front to make sure everyone feels super confident and very comfortable when the actual day comes, because there’s nothing worse than you having one shot and it going off the rails.

Tamburo: We usually split the menu. We’ll ask the guest chef to contribute four to six dishes, then we’ll plan our dishes around that to make a balanced menu. And we’ll give them first pick of ingredients, so we don’t have, like, multiple asparagus dishes.

I think both parties have to go into it with the right spirit, or it can be a little trying. When Locust came, it was so fun and celebratory. They brought almost their entire team, and a lot of their equipment, plus costumes and masks to wear during service… To make one of these happen, logistically, it does involve a lot of work on both parties. But if the excitement is there, then it makes it a lot easier.

If you’re hosting the pop-up, is there anything you can do to make it easier on the visiting restaurant?

Headley: I make sure that if a restaurant is coming in from out of town, we take fucking care of them. We make sure any help they need, we do it. You want us to make all your food? We’ll make it. Do you want us to make part of your food? We’ll do it. I want them to come and have an excellent time. I don’t want them to have to work the line—I want them to work the room, have fun, and make sure it’s a great experience, because I’ve had many experiences where I’m doing events elsewhere and they couldn’t care less.

Silverton: I do feel responsible to be in town when these collaborations go on, so I never schedule them when I’m not and I never make plans when I know somebody is coming. I think it’s so important to be a host. I am with them to make sure that their experience is as positive as possible, with all the support that they need. I love to curate food from around the city that they might be interested in tasting, whether it’s a Langer’s pastrami sandwich or a burrito from Burritos Las Palmas. Whatever we can to make the experience memorable on their end and make them feel that they’re not just here to work hard.

I want to understand if there’s a financial benefit to either side for a pop-up. Who’s paying for it, and is anyone making money off of it? Who’s covering travel, food costs, and labor? And how do you divvy up the revenue from your event?

Silverton: There’s a phenomenon happening in the restaurant world right now, in which credit card companies and reservation platforms are very competitive [...] and they’re offering all sorts of opportunities to attract and retain customers. They’re offering huge dollar amounts to join them, but they’re also offering to support events such as bringing in restaurant tours from around the world. So we’re using those available dollars to help market our restaurant.

The visiting chef does not make money, and they know it, but they’re there to market their restaurant, or they want the excuse to come to L.A. They get their travel paid for, they visit a new city, and we always give a food stipend, so they’re not leaving poorer than when they arrived.

Bornemann: There are a million ways to split it up, but here are the main two: As the visiting chef, you show up with everything and manage your own food costs and do all of your own purchasing and labor. You get the place that’s hosting to give you a check for all of the food sales minus sales tax, and then you do the math. I spent 900 bucks on product, I made $2,000 in sales, easy. Another way is: you work with the hosting restaurant and say, Hey guys, I don’t want to lug anything. Let’s order these ingredients. Let’s put together this prep list, and when I show up, I’ll expect these things to be here in this condition, and I’ll do this part and we’ll do that part together. In that case, the host orders all the product, and keeps all of the revenue, but they might agree to pay you a chef fee.

[For the anniversary pop-ups] I was lucky enough to get Resy/AmEx to help cover the chef fees… I think if you’re a credit card company, if you’re able to make some good noise for your cardholders with an event, and all it takes is, here’s a few thousand bucks, that definitely helps.

Hoffman: For us, basically, all food sales go to the visiting team, and we keep all of the beverage sales. If we have to do some heavy lifting with ordering beforehand, I might take away the cost of goods. And based on a couple of other variables, I have charged a small “operational fee,” which accounts for things like credit card processing fees, linens, water, and insurance. But for the most part, they get 100% of the net food sales and we keep beverage.

Tamburo: The most traditional format I’ve seen is that the host restaurant covers the traveling costs for the visiting chef, and all the food costs, and might be able to provide a small stipend for the chef. Then they keep all of the sales. So the visiting chef kind of just gets a free trip out of it.

Headley: The point is not to make money. I mean, maybe some people make some money on them. I usually don’t. It is nice to get paid back for them. But I am also totally willing to do a pop-up where I get no financial reward from it. It’s just another kind of reward.

#96 (or #1 after Emily switched focus to NY and I stepped in here in L.A.) is Sarah Lewitinn, co-owner of Jacaranda, the highly anticipated fine-dining destination she oversees with her husband, acclaimed chef Daniel Patterson. Sarah and her fabulous homemade dresses are the first thing to greet you when you walk in, and she’s responsible for setting the warm, lived-in tone of the dining room—no small feat at a restaurant with a $295 price tag. But for a certain generation (ahem), Lewitinn’s name is forever synonymous with Ultragrrl, the wildly influential indie music blog she started in New York in the early aughts, and parlayed into a successful career as a music journalist, producer, label owner, and DJ, among other things. (Suffice it to say the playlists at Jacaranda are very much within her purview.) Although Jacaranda is her first official foray into the restaurant world, she’s a natural host, with an eye (and ear) for detail that dovetails beautifully with Patterson’s next-level kitchen skills. Here’s Sarah on where she (and Daniel) go when they’re off the clock.

Restaurant — Crossroads Kitchen

I was a vegetarian for many years, so when Daniel (Patterson, my husband and chef of our restaurant, Jacaranda) and I became friends with Chef Tal Ronnen (the chef and owner of Crossroads Kitchen), it became our new weekly date spot. The food is amazing, and the service is incredibly warm and inviting. From Miriam the host to Matthew the bartender, we love it there.

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#12 is Sue Chan, founder and chief creative officer of Care of Chan, aka New York (and L.A.)’s preeminent party planner. Sue grew up in Southern California but came up in New York City, working for Momofuku for 7 years, ultimately as brand director, and eventually founding her namesake agency. She's represented majorly influential restaurants and chefs, from Ignacio Mattos and Enrique Olvera to The Four Horsemen and Wildair, ultimately evolving Care of Chan into a hospitality-driven experiential agency. Nowadays, she and her team collaborate with big-time brands across food, fashion, and culture, including A24, AmEx, Dior, J.Crew, Sweetgreen, the New York Times, and the Office of the Surgeon General. And, as of last week, Care of Chan is on Substack, under the monikor : a weekly newsletter dishing coveted intel on how to host, entertain, and gather. Here's Sue with her Plugs.

Restaurant — Omen Azen

If a restaurant survives five years, it’s a miracle. If it survives ten, it becomes a legend. If it’s been around for 45 years, like Omen Azen, which opened in SoHo in 1981, it may be beyond classification altogether. Iconoclast doesn’t even begin to cover it. Omen has the exact qualities you want in a memorable New Yorker: timeless, deeply itself, and unassumingly powerful. Technically it’s an izakaya, but unlike the casual bar-food version most people associate with the category, Omen feels refined and singular. The decor is chic without trying too hard (I believe the cloud-like paper lamps and blue polka dot cloth napkins are handmade), the recipes are deeply craveable, remarkably consistent, and never disappoint. Its regulars are also the right kind of New York famous. Not scene-y or performative, but true creatives who quietly shape culture without concern for cheap fanfare. There’s a beautiful T Magazine piece on the restaurant and its regulars by Patti Smith and my dear friend Thessaly La Force, who write about Omen far more eloquently than I ever could.

Don’t sleep on the salads, the agedashi tofu, and the wine jelly for dessert.

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Plugs is The Angel’s recs column. On most Saturdays, you’ll get six picks—a restaurant, a bar, a shop, an ingredient, a person, and a treat—from someone in New York who knows what they’re talking about, plus a selection of Angel-curated links. Plugs are for paid subscribers of The Angel only; upgrade your subscription to receive all six!

#11 is Arden Shore, the EIC of The Infatuation and one of the most well-dined, well-opined bicoastal eaters I know. Arden is from Los Angeles and has lived between here and there throughout her adult life, regularly ping-ponging between the two cities. She's officially based in New York, where her job is running food media's most SEO-successful business—and having lots and lots of takes on restaurants and cuisines. I first met Arden over breakfast at Sqirl while I was in the middle of reporting Salad Forever, and she proved to be an essential source (putting me onto Fresh Corn Grill). When I was in search of actually good Westside restaurants a few months ago, she sent me upwards of a dozen recs, including specific vibes and notable dishes, which is much more than most people residing on the Westside (even those who care about food) can do. As for her taste in and knowledge of New York restaurants? Excellent, too. It’s only fitting that she kick off the first-ever bicoastal edition of Plugs. Here's Arden.

Restaurant — CheLi (New York)

When I think about my favorite restaurants in NYC, my mind always wanders back to the hookah-hazy stretch of St. Marks between 2nd and 3rd, up a set of stairs, and left into CheLi. When people care about food but don’t want anything too fussy or trendy, this is my rec. It’s Shanghainese, with each table protected by its own thatched roof, like a forcefield protecting you from the vape stores and pajama-bottomed NYU kids outside. You’ll eat a tingly and sour fish soup alongside a chicken ceremoniously wrapped in lotus leaves that steams like a fog machine. A water feature gurgles in the background. Butterflied prawns lay in vulnerable repose on top of the garlickiest glass noodles ever. It’s bonkers good, the whole experience. A reason to love New York. And somehow, you can always get a last-minute res or not wait too long for a table.

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Here’s something fun for warmer nights: Bar Oliver is kicking off a Pintxo Series on the first Monday of every month, featuring guest chefs collaborating on five small dishes available for one night only. The first is next week, 5/4, with Elijah Tarlow, a sous-chef at Borgo. Here’s a tiny scoop: is slated for June.

I’m calling it: it’s going to be the summer of the marg. The Mexican wave is not slowing down, with recent arrivals including Bar Chucho from the Corima/Vato crew (where the focus is more on micheladas, but I’d bet they mix an excellent margarita) and a rehabbed Bar Bruno promising “better margs.” The ever-popular Santo Taco, ripe for swift expansion, specializes in tacos and margaritas. And the first cocktail on the drinks menu at Dean’s, arguably the buzziest new opening in town, is a luminous—and from what I hear, very good—marg, laced with chili and carrot. Martinis are forever, but the trend is worn out, and after the worst winter in recent memory, New York is ready for something with a skip in its step. Plus, in a world where we’re drinking less—in part because hangovers have become too much to bear—it’s well-known that agave spirits offer a cleaner buzz. My preference? Spicy mezcal.

Is it just me, or is BoCoCa the “region” of the moment? Sure, I live here, and yes, I’ve been a bit of a homebody lately, and yet… Sam’s Restaurant is being revived, the Ferdinando’s Foccaceria revamp is here, the new owners of the aforementioned Bar Bruno (also of Greenpoint Fish and Lobster) have brought it new life and a predilection for quality fish and seafood, the Ingas Bar sequel is on its way, and Taqueria Ramirez is arriving late summer. Meanwhile, Brooklyn Granary & Mill just celebrated its one-year anniversary, cementing Carroll Gardens—also home to the phenomenon that is ACQ Bread Co.—as the preeminent destination for Very Good Bread. Tragically, however, as reported by , Caputo Bakery, makers of my favorite rainbow cookie in the neighborhood, suddenly closed this week after 124 years in business.

Which leads me into our profile today, featuring a man too few New Yorkers know, who quietly makes the city’s very best rugelach—a cookie too few New Yorkers are familiar with—from a commercial kitchen in, where else? Carroll Gardens.

It’s 6:30 p.m. on a Tuesday in Carroll Gardens, and Larry Finkelstein, clad in a white apron over a navy blue t-shirt, his stark white hair freshly cut, is rolling out a sheet of cream cheese-enriched dough on a stainless steel counter. He’s surrounded by tubs of coleslaw, tuna salad, and pickled jalapeños, which makes sense, given that he’s working out of the commissary kitchen of Court Street Grocers, the cult-favorite sandwich shop co-owned by his son, Eric Finkelstein. The task at hand? Making raspberry-raisin rugelach, his signature flavor of the flaky, filled, and rolled Ashkenazi cookie—once easy to find in New York’s myriad Jewish bakeries, and now something of an endangered species.

Next, he slathers Polaner raspberry preserves on top of his thin rectangular canvas, using an offset spatula to paint the jam to the edges, then sprinkles raisins all over, before rolling the dough into a neat spiral. “I use Polaner because my grandmother always had it,” Larry, who is 74 and a native New York Jew, says. Larry brushes his log with heavy cream, coats it completely in cinnamon-sugar, and cuts it into 30 pieces. He barely counts, relying instead on muscle memory: “What’s amazing, after cutting I don’t know how many thousands of these things, is that it just happens,” he says.

Larry’s recipe produces what, to me, are perfect rugelach: flaky and rich, with a crisp crust and caramelized bottom—the result of the preserves seeping through the cookies’ seams and coalescing into a glassy sheet of sugar—and juicy raisins in each bite. The flavor is pleasingly tart, a tad salty, and appropriately sweet. They’re available for $2.50 a pop (or $8.00 for 4) at S&P Lunch, the lunch (and now dinner) counter in Flatiron owned by Eric and his partner, Matt Ross—and you can also find them at the original Carroll Gardens location of Court Street Grocers, where, on some days, they also sell Larry’s chocolate variety, replete with silky ganache and miniature chocolate chips.

Yet Larry’s rugelach have remained something of an if-you-know-you-know phenomenon. This is partly because people have, largely, forgotten about rugelach. Back when Larry was growing up in Borough Park, Brooklyn, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, every neighborhood where Jews were living had a Jewish bakery, usually several. Now, shops that sell challah and hamantaschen are few and far between, even compared to when I was a kid in downtown Manhattan in the ‘90s, chomping on rugelach at family gatherings. You can still find particularly good rugelach at Zabar’s, naturally, and at Zoë Kanan’s New York Jewish-inspired bakery, Elbow Bread, where they’re filled with crunchy cocoa nibs and sprinkled with demerara sugar. But for me, Larry’s are the best rugelach left in New York.

“He’s the master of rugelach in my eye, and he’s a rugelach baker, that’s his title,” says Kanan, who met Larry when she was opening Elbow Bread in partnership with the Court Street Grocers duo. The first time she tried his raspberry-raisin cookie, she was in awe. “It was the perfect [homemade] specimen,” she recalls. “The raisins absorb the jam and cling to it, creating these little gaps, and the cinnamon-sugar on top adds a crispy texture, which is key with the flakiness of the pastry and the chewiness of the raisins,” she says.

Kanan and Larry once taught a rugelach class together for the nonprofit organization Hot Bread Kitchen, demonstrating his old-school style versus her more new-school approach. “The attendees had no idea what they were in for,” she says. “Half of them had never heard of rugelach before, and they came away as experts.”

Before he turned to baking, Larry was a career lawyer raising Eric in Hollis Hills, Queens, alongside his ex-wife. Then, in the 1990s, after divorcing Eric’s mother, he moved to Long Island City, came out of the closet, and taught himself to cook by watching the Food Network. Along the way, he developed a knack for baking and invested in his first appliance, a KitchenAid. His sweets know-how would become one of the defining pleasures of his new life. At first, he specialized in cakes, his favorite being Ina Garten’s buttery coconut cake. But his rugelach journey began in 2003. “My aunt Esther died, and at her shiva, my cousin got rugelach from Costco. It was disgusting. I thought, ‘You know, I could do better than this.’”

Larry went online, found a few recipes, and got to work, eventually developing a bulk rugelach dough that calls for one-and-a-half pounds of flour, one pound of butter, and one pound of cream cheese, contrary to the typical 1:1:1 ratio—which, he thinks, works better for the crescent shape associated with Israeli-style rugelach (his produces the more rustic rolled spiral). Once, he won a rugelach bake-off against a woman in his bridge class at the Upper West Side Jewish Community Center. “She never came back,” Larry says, laughing. “Hers were soft and gushy; it was just not this.”

Today, he makes 360 cookies a week—270 raspberry-raisin for S&P, and another 90 for the sandwich shop—arriving at the Court Street commissary in the evenings, after the prep cooks have wrapped up for the day. As he bakes, he often listens to podcasts (only those made by Carroll Gardens residents, he jokes: Ilana Levine’s Little Known Facts, Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out, and Francis Lam’s The Splendid Table).

Larry has been selling his rugelach since Court Street Grocers opened in 2010. “Eric came to me and said, ‘Dad, would you make rugelach for the opening?’’’ He recalls. “I said, ‘Sure, but people in the neighborhood aren’t going to know what it is. And he said, ‘Dad, just make it.’ People loved it, and 15 years later, I’m still doing it.”

Larry was kind enough to share his recipe with The Angel. I tested them at home last week. They’re irresistibly delicious.

Makes 30 cookies

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#4 is Robert Sietsema, a veteran New York City restaurant critic who has written for Lucky Peach, (old) Gourmet, the New York Times, and dozens of other outlets. Robert launched his food writing career in 1989, with a newsletter called Down the Hatch, focusing on affordable, under-the-radar restaurants serving international cuisines. In the 90s and aughts, he was a staff critic for the Village Voice, and then went on to work at Eater for another decade plus. He’s lived in the West Village for 35 years, as long as he’s been a critic, and, as you can imagine—given his rigorous approach to chronicling the city’s inexpensive eats across the five boroughs and New Jersey—his neighborhood go-tos are not the same as the West Village Girls. I’ve been a reader of Robert’s since I was a teen growing up in the Village, obsessed with restaurants and voraciously reading local food writers. It’s an honor to have him on today. Here he is with his five go-to West Village spots.

Panino Giusto

With its tidal wave of tourists and regular visitors, little in the West Village can remain secret for long, but this shoebox-sized coffee shop remains the closest thing we have. A wooden communal table hosts authors, small tables are favorites of dating couples and married old-timers, and outdoor seating is for transients and sun worshippers. Panini that utilize the usual Italian ingredients are pressed and delicious, while the coffee is just so-so – but nobody cares.

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And not new, but still notable, and as a reminder, if you haven’t been in a while: Mariscos Jalisco? Still unequivocally got it. I stopped by for a pre-trip fix, figuring I wouldn’t have much Mexican food in Taiwan (accurate), and even after all these years, the golden-fried, salsa-topped taco dorado de camarón is still one of God/Raoul Ortega’s most perfect creations. Never forget.

[Editor’s note: I’m feeling generous, so today’s on-point issue from Jamie is free :)]

If the first wave of beautifully merchandised, artisan-leaning, local producer-championing food retailers like Cookbook Market, Gjusta Grocer, and L.A. Homefarm (aka Shoppy Shops v 1.0) offered breadth (a little bit of olive oil here, a pile of extremely photogenic local produce there), the new wave of specialty markets in L.A. is going for depth (i.e., twelve kinds of pork sausage).

That’s because some of Southern California’s best farmers, fishers, and growers are taking retail into their own hands by opening their own dedicated storefronts. Think luxury farmstand, in the heart of the city. And considering this city basically pioneered the form—Cookbook opened its first location, in Echo Park, in 2010—the fact that the Shoppy Shop 2.0 is happening right here, right now, makes all the sense in the world.

Chief among them is Peads & Barnetts, Mariposa-based purveyors of incredibly delicious, pasture-raised, richly marbled Berkshire pork and beef from mature cattle, along with gorgeous, weird (I say this with deep affection) flowers like proteas and banksias. They’ve been selling at local farmers’ markets for years, and are a favorite of virtually every A-list chef in town. But despite being stocked at a handful of other specialty grocers, they’ve never had their own dedicated brick-and-mortar presence, until now. Third-generation owner Oliver Woolley, along with his wife Daniela and partner (slash produce liaison and queen of the farmers’ market) Sam Rogers, decided to transform their current storage facility in West LA into a beautifully-stocked, public-facing market and community space, appropriately dubbed Good Things.

When the market soft opens on May 7th (just in time for Mother’s Day), it will be fully stocked with a wide selection of pork, beef, and flowers, along with oils, vinegars, salts and spices, a gardening section (natch), new and used cookbooks, and well-sourced housewares, including, per Woolley, “dreamy” French glassware and handmade knives from Catalan bladesmiths Pallarès. “We don’t want to have a massive variety of anything—just simple, good things that have been around for forever and deserve a place on your table,” says Woolley. They’ll also, thanks to linen partitions which divide the space into flexible quadrants, play host to a variety of events and workshops (they recently hosted a cookbook talk with Masienda, former tenants of the space, and Now Serving; and Rogers says upcoming programming will range from floral arrangement classes to incense making to after-school programming for kids).

Peads & Barnetts is not the only producer going the retail route. Last year, fellow farmers’ market favorite Weiser Family Farms opened what I can only describe as an urban farmstand in the Row DTLA, selling farm boxes, baked goods from Tehachapi Grain Project, and their cult-favorite Bonny Melon tees (plus the actual melons, when in season). And Liwei Liao, aka “The Dry-Aged Fish Guy,” just expanded his Sherman Oaks-based operation, The Joint, to a 4,000-square foot flagship speciality fish market/handroll bar/cafe/wholesale dry-aging facility, also in DTLA, that he’s calling “the world’s largest dry-aging hub.” (I stopped by the opening a few weeks ago; it’s cool to see the dry-aging cases filled with whole fish in various states of age, and then be able to buy the finished product by the pound, all while snacking on a handroll and sipping a matcha.)

Going brick-and-mortar makes sense on multiple levels: financially, it provides some cushion for producers, since retail customers purchase and pay full price on the spot (unlike wholesale accounts), and farmers’ markets take a cut of sales. Supply chain-wise, farmers have control of their own products. And from a community perspective, customers get a chance to get up close and personal with the people who grew their food, as well as their friends and neighbors. “There’s something really beautiful about being able to feel that connection to the land without having to drive three hours to go visit these places,” says Rogers. “Instead, we have all of that come to you.”

Peads & Barnetts Good Things
11515 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064
Thurs-Sun, 11 a.m.–7 p.m.

Weiser Family Farmstand
1320 E 7th St, Bldg M2, Suite 140, Los Angeles, CA 90021
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 11 a.m.–3 p.m.

The Joint Seafood & Uoichiba
600 1st St, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Tues-Sun, 9 a.m.–9 p.m.

I recently stopped by ’ first in-person event, a conversation between chefs/cookbook authors Ifrah Ahmed and Angel Dimayuga about Ahmed’s stunning new cookbook, Soomaliya (the first Somali cookbook to be published in 20 years!). The event was hosted at Flavors From Afar, the mission-based East Hollywood restaurant owned by Ethiopian chef Meymuna Hussein-Cattan, who has turned her kitchen into a place for fellow refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants to cook the foods of their native countries. Although I only sampled a few snacks from the cookbook (shoutout to the bajiye, little black-eyed pea fritters), I can’t wait to get back for a proper meal: the scene was popping on a Friday night, and the Egyptian koshari is calling my name.

There’s a new print food publication in town: To-Go Zine, an L.A.-focused magazine, with stories, quizzes, crafts, and more. The first issue is themed “Care Package,” with a cover story on Altadena food business, and now through 5/31, all proceeds are going to CHIRLA.

Sometimes we can have nice things: Chao Krung, one of L.A.’s oldest Thai restaurants, bought their building. [LA Mag]

on the celebrities and associated hotties taking advantage of the freakishly good lighting at Lazy Acres Natural Market. We need more of this hyper-local reporting (and, as Vanessa Anderson points out, a co-op on the East side, please!) []

Rachel Kushner’s list of where to eat now that Taix is closed is perfect. [Instagram]

Two contentious L.A. institutions under one roof: Erewhon smoothies x the new LACMA. [LACMA UnFramed]

#10 is Trinity Mouzon Wofford, the founder of superfood brand Golde and the author of Eating at Home, a beautiful debut cookbook released this past week (think The Gjelina Cookbook meets The Moosewood Cookbook). While Golde is known for its ceremonial-grade matcha and turmeric latte blends, Trinity’s cooking style is centered around care, presence, and ritual. When I received the galley for her book (written alongside Rebecca Firkser), I was immediately taken by its elegantly crunchy aesthetic and enticingly wholesome dishes like steaming miso nabe and puffy sourdough pancakes, but most of all, how it puts forward a philosophy around cooking as a simple, enriching creative practice. Trinity lived in Brooklyn for many years, but now lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and two daughters. Here she is with the first-ever (but certainly not the last) upstate edition of Plugs.

Restaurant — Lucoli Pizza

Lucoli Pizza in Red Hook is not much of a “dining in” kind of place — but they make some of the best pizza I’ve had, ever. The owner is an Italian man who is consistently waxing on about the importance of how to make a good pizza every single time my husband goes in there to pick up our pies. Bring a few back to the house where you’re staying and pair with a bottle of wine.

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Coffee scene update: Back in early January, I predicted a shift in New York’s specialty coffee scene—away from quality-meets-convenience and toward higher quality, plus community and nice pastries. Canyon’s opening in Prospect Heights proved me right. Lines have been constant, pastries often sell out by 10 a.m., and the crowd skews heavily work-from-home. Come warm weather and Prospect Park foot traffic, demand is only going to climb.

Interestingly, food is a much bigger draw at the Prospect Heights location than at the Echo Park original, according to Canyon co-owner Ally Walsh. New Yorkers are food-driven; Angelenos are often just looking for somewhere vibey to be. “It’s like people have never had toast before,” she said. (I told her they should offer takeaway toast platters for people picnicking in the park.) For whatever reason, I never tried the toasts in L.A., but I’ve been loving them here, particularly the smoked salmon with capers and dill and labneh with honey and buckwheat.

Meanwhile, I met at East Village mainstay Abraço last Wednesday, before heading to the Greenmarket, and it was booming. Jazzy music permeated the space, and almost every table was occupied. I can’t wait until the fig tree blooms on the patio. The vibes are high.

Aaand, more evidence for the bran muffin renaissance: Genevieve Ko has a new recipe in the New York Times for honey date bran muffins (yum), paired with a little lesson on bran, and the best practices for baking with it.

For this season's market report, I asked a handful of chefs and pastry chefs for their favorite springtime ingredient—down to the farmer who grows it—and what they're planning to make with it, at home or in their chef whites. Worth noting: if you're after something specific from a particular farm, check their website or Instagram to see which markets they're at on which days. Lani's Farm, for instance, is at Union Square on Mondays, Columbia on Thursdays, Union Square and Tribeca on Saturdays, and Carroll Gardens and Jackson Heights on Sundays. As for precisely when each ingredient will be available: talk to your farmers!

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#9 is Emilia Petrarca, a fashion writer with bylines in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and more—and the brains behind on Substack. Emilia has been covering fashion and culture for over a decade. She’s profiled Charli XCX, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Chloë Sevigny; written about the golden age of the name Emily (hi); and analyzed Anna Wintour’s go-to lunch. She also took this iconic video of Larry David at Fashion Week. Before going freelance, she was a senior fashion writer at The Cut. I’ve known Emilia since we were teenagers in the downtown scene, and it’s been fun to watch her career flourish. I look forward to her Repair Month package every year, and trust her taste implicitly. I’m thrilled to have her on Plugs today. Here’s Emilia.

Restaurant — Zimmi’s

It’s such a pleasure seeing your friends cook, and I mean that in every sense of the word. My very talented ami, Maxime Pradié, whom I’ve known since high school, opened Zimmi’s in December 2024 with Jenni Guizio, and he really put his whole heart into it. My favorite dish on the menu right now is the soupe aux artichauts, with a dollop of foie gras in the middle. I could eat it for every meal, in every season.

LOCAL BONUS — Gigino’s

Gigino’s (of Dinner Rush fame) is one of the few remaining restaurants in Tribeca that was there when I was a kid, and it still hits. I like to order the spaghetti del padrino, a bright purple beet pasta that was my dad’s favorite.

TAKEOUT BONUS — Silver Rice

Sorry, but I also have to shout out my go-to takeout spot since ~2016: Silver Rice. If you live in Crown Heights/Prospect Heights/PLG, you know what I’m talking about. I seriously think I’ve ordered from here once a week for the last decade. And I always get the same thing: the spicy salmon bowl with flaxseed rice and tempura crunch, plus a shrimp dumping soup (2x dumplings). It’s affordable, fast, healthy, and very satisfying to eat because the bowl comes in a coffee cup. I’m about to move to Carroll Gardens, and if it’s beyond my delivery radius, I think I might die.

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#3 is Eli Zabar, a grocer, baker, and the proprietor of the Upper East Side gourmet food empire that includes Eli’s Market (grocery store), E.A.T (deli and café), Eli’s Essentials (grab-and-go), Eli’s List (wine and spirits), and Eli’s Table (neighborhood restaurant and wine bar). He also runs Eli’s Bread, an artisanal wholesale bakery producing naturally leavened, slowly fermented loaves found across the city, including at FreshDirect, and Zabar’s, of course. Eli is the youngest son of Louis and Lillian Zabar, the founders of the Upper West Side appetizing institution; while his older brothers carried on the family business, he struck out on the East Side and built a world of his own. He’s currently excited about what’s seasonal at the market: jumbo white asparagus from Holland, fava beans, purple artichokes, purple asparagus, first-of-season California asparagus, white baby turnips, soft shell crabs, and prime ribeye steaks from Maryland, dry-aged 40 days. Here’s Eli with his five essential UES spots.

S. Feldman Housewares

Feldman’s solves almost any problem. Not every problem, but almost every one. It’s a hardware store and an appliance store and a gift store in one. It’s a family-run operation that’s almost a century old.

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Citrus, grapes, nuts: these are the crops synonymous with California agriculture. Avocados, dairy, and lettuces, too. But amber waves of grain? That is, traditionally speaking, a Midwestern thing.

But California has never been bound by tradition, which is why, about 12 years ago, a group of Kern County farmers decided to experiment with growing more whole grains. And not just any whole grains—ancient, heritage breed varieties like Red Fife and Sonora wheat that flourish in Tehachapi, a low mountain valley halfway between Bakersfield and L.A.—that would eventually become the cause célèbre of dozens of L.A.’s best bakers, pastry chefs, brewers, and distillers.

The undertaking, appropriately dubbed the Tehachapi Heritage Grain Project, is a joint effort between Alex Weiser of Weiser Family Farms, and biologist-turned-grower Sherry Mandell, an incredibly well-connected ball of energy who is largely responsible for getting the grains to said chefs and bakers. With encouragement from L.A.’s own Japanese food luminary Sonoko Sakai, and seeds donated by heirloom grain evangelist Glenn Roberts of Anson Mills, what started as a two-acre experiment has expanded to nearly 400, and resulted in Tehachapi-grown grains getting name-checked on menus from Providence to Petitgrain.

Growing landrace heritage grains is good for the planet: they’re drought-tolerant, with unique root systems that spread deep into the earth, functioning as a carbon sink and conditioning the soil between plantings of other crops. It’s also good for the diner: “We grow it because it’s delicious, and it’s delicious because of the way we grow it,” says Mandell. “Even if you only add 15-30% of a heritage grain or flour to your product, it makes a huge difference,” she says. “You can tell just from looking at it. And once you taste it, it’s life-changing, because that grain becomes a part of the flavor profile itself,” she says, describing items made with whole grains as “deeper” and “more luxurious.”

2,500 miles northeast in America’s other cultural capital, a similarly spirited local whole grain renaissance is underway, led by Brooklyn Granary & Mill, a bakery and mill opened last year by Patrick Shaw-Kitch, a grain whiz and the former head baker at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, alongside his wife, Laura Huss. From their facility on Huntington Street, just off the Gowanus Canal, they stone-mill whole grains such as spelt, buckwheat, rye, einkorn, and various strains of wheat—grown on regenerative farms across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic—for use in pastries and bread at their on-site bakery, and for an impressive roster of wholesale clients, including the restaurants Gramercy Tavern and Borgo and bakeries like Elbow Bread and Diljān.

Part of the impetus for Brooklyn Granary & Mill was the 2021 closure of Union Square Greenmarket’s GrowNYC Grainstand, which served as the hub for local, whole grains in New York City; professional and home bakers could purchase regionally grown grains and flour and learn how each variety performs. Furthermore, New York City lacked a milling operation that could supply bakers and chefs with flour milled to order, and just-milled flour means more nutrients, more texture, and more flavor.

Whole grains are perishable in a way many people don’t realize. Once a grain’s seed is cracked, its natural oils are exposed to air and begin to oxidize, eventually going rancid. This means grains are at peak aroma and flavor right after milling, when those oils are still intact. Processed white flour, by contrast, has the bran and germ removed entirely—and it’s precisely those elements that give a grain its color, character, and fat, and with it, most of its flavor.

Accordingly, working with local, freshly milled whole-grain flours requires a certain level of skill and patience. “You usually have to adjust your hydration with whole wheat flours…they’re typically thirstier,” says Navil Rivera, worker-owner at Proof Bakery in Los Angeles, who also notes that gluten levels can vary, so using a mix of whole wheat with AP or a high-gluten flour can help create a more balanced product. But the extra effort is very much worth it: “You’re replacing an ingredient that adds nothing other than structure to the mix with something that adds everything,” says Karen DeMasco, the longtime pastry chef at Gramercy Tavern in New York.

Shaw-Kitch’s lineup of baked goods pushes the boundaries of what the average consumer expects from a croissant or a loaf of bread (ancient grain bread comprised of emmer, einkorn, and spelt; Bolles hard red spring and Red Fife wheat-based kouign-amann; biscuit-scone hybrids made with spelt and a soft white winter wheat called Frederick, stuffed with ham or jam). “People don’t necessarily associate whole grain flour with tender, flaky, soft, sweet, juicy, luscious. It’s more like: dry, brittle…” says Shaw-Kitch. “We try to show that you can make dynamic, interesting things based on what is being produced in our region, and that you can have a diversity of offerings without having to buy ingredients that you don’t know the provenance of.” At the bakery, bags of freshly milled flour are available alongside local eggs, cultured butter, and maple syrup, for those who want to try their hand at whole-grain baking.

The response thus far has been extremely positive, and the wholesale business has been steadily growing. When the author Mark Bittman tried Shaw-Kitch’s 100% whole-grain bread at a conference last summer, he called it among the best he’d ever had.

Bittman isn’t alone in his reverence for the flavor, nutritional value, and environmental benefits of whole grains. As more chefs, bakers, and even brewers and distillers on both coasts experiment with locally farmed wheat, spelt, rye, and beyond, it’s become easier for diners to taste the difference themselves. To guide your journey, here’s our list of where to find a dozen of the most delicious whole-grain dishes in both New York and L.A.—from an Afghan flatbread to a nori-crusted everything bagel.

This is the Angel’s first-ever bicoastal collaboration, and we invite you to tear into it with abandon, like a warm, flaky croissant studded with—you guessed it—whole grains.

1. Morning Bun with Cultured Butter and Cheddar at Brooklyn Granary
   There are two types of morning buns: sweet, laminated rolls with a citrusy, cinnamon and/or cardamom filling and caramelized edges, popularized by the OG Tartine Bakery in San Francisco; and Danish morning buns, which are really more like breakfast rolls, comprised of a chewy, fluffy, generally sourdough mound of bread, sliced in half, smeared with butter, and stuffed with a hard, nutty cheese, like Comté or Gruyère. The savory latter version is one of Patrick Shaw-Kitch’s specialties at his mill’s bakery, made with his whole wheat bread flour blend that combines red winter wheats, hard red spring wheats, and spelt. It’s on par with the best morning buns you’d find in Copenhagen, but flatter in volume, with a crunchier crust and a richer, more wholesome flavor. Plus, the cheese inside is not from France, but instead, a sharp American cheddar (Cabot Clothbound from Vermont).

   
   

2. Olive & Polenta Sourdough at Radio Bakery
   Radio Bakery is best known for their seasonal croissants and focaccia sandwiches, but research for this story led me to their stellar olive-and-polenta sourdough. The loaf is extraordinarily hydrated—even a non-baker will understand what that means the moment they tear into the dark crust and find an ultra-plush crumb studded with black and green olives, citrus zest, and rosemary. The effect is that of a porridge loaf, achieved by folding a glossy, starchy cooked grain—here, Brooklyn Granary polenta—into the dough, creating a soft, bouncy, almost-wet texture. It’s a perfect dinner party gift and a brilliant base for a tuna sandwich, available Sunday through Thursday at both Radio Bakery locations, in Greenpoint and Prospect Heights.
   
   

3. Seasonal Upside Down Cake at Gramercy Tavern
   At Gramercy Tavern, Karen DeMasco takes the task of milling into her own hands, sourcing whole spelt, renan, whole wheat, buckwheat, corn, rye, and einkorn from Brooklyn Granary and using her own mill to make flour daily for desserts on both menus—the prix-fixe dining room and the more casual front-room tavern. Currently in the former, she’s serving an apple tart with puff pastry made from spelt, rye, and whole wheat, paired with goat’s milk, dates, and pecans. Her puddingy fruit-filled upside down cake (featuring pears when I had it in February, now Meyer lemon) is a crowd favorite that puts einkorn front and center. The cake is vegan, made with olive oil in place of butter and eggs, “so the flour really comes through,” DeMasco explains. It has a robust honey-nut flavor and a feathery, textural crumb; I could not stop eating it.

   
   

   

4. Potato-Sauerkraut Knish at Elbow Bread
   Zoë Kanan’s knish is a work of contemporary New York art rooted in Lower East Side Jewish history. To make it, she rolls a sheet of pastry dough paper-thin—on a tablecloth, to prevent sticking—and drizzles it with clarified butter before folding it over dill-flecked pillowy mashed potatoes, caramelized onions, and sauerkraut. A big bite off the top is at once shattery and cushiony. Because the dough-stretching is such a delicate process, it requires a smooth sifted flour; Kanan uses an all-purpose blend by Brooklyn Granary, a mix of three wheats that Shaw-Kitch rotates according to what’s seasonally available. Elbow Bread also makes use of BGM’s cornmeal, adding it to their chocolate chip cookie for nuttiness and crunch, and as the star of their rightfully popular salty honey butter-glazed buttermilk cornbread donuts, which reliably appear in the pastry case come summertime, and reliably sell out.
   
   

5. Naan Roghani at Diljān Bakery
   It’s fitting for Diljān Bakery to have found a home in Brooklyn Heights, a hub for Middle Eastern and Central Asian baking for nearly a century (Damascus Bakery opened in 1930, followed by Oriental Pastry & Grocery in 1967). Diljān, from restaurateurs Ali Zaman and Mohamed Ghiasi and baker Bryan Ford, focuses on gorgeously crafted Afghan baked goods: laminated pastries like the Saffron Shah, a crescent-shaped pastry stuffed with saffron cream; and a dense, almondy halwa sticky bun. They also serve naan roghani, hand-stretched into an oblong shape with three scored parallel slashes. The dough is made with 25% BGM whole wheat and 75% stone-milled flour from Cairnspring Mills, enriched with high-quality olive oil for a distinct grassy flavor. Cream cheese dips are available (halal beef bacon-and-scallion or sour cherry), though it’s best in its purest form.
   
   

6. Any of the pies at Ops
   Mike Fadem, chef-owner of Ops, was hesitant to mess with his pizza dough recipe, which had been consistently great for a while. But when he tried using Brooklyn Granary’s flours, he was blown away by the difference. “There’s this freshness and aroma that is unlike anything I’d experienced with flour,” he says. “There’s definitely a flavor difference, too, but so much of eating a freshly baked bread product is the smell.” He makes his sourdough pizzas with a bread-flour mix and spelt—in Neapolitan-ish style at the original Ops in Bushwick and, at the newer East Village location, also in thin-crust tavern form. Both crusts have a grounded, wheaty flavor, not in-your-face, but also far from boring, with some sweetness and a dose of tang. Recently, a marinara pie studded with anchovies, sliced garlic, and black olives delivered in airy pockets of crispy-crusted dough, an easy chew, and a heavy dose of funk and salt, cut by an acidic tomato sauce; while a classic, cheesy tavernetta pizza was cracker-y and pliant, with a just-right amount of oregano.
   
   

   

7. Buckwheat Chocolate Chip Cookie at Rigor Hill Market

   “I truly believe in the benefits of more whole grains in our diet, and that is reflected across our bakery program,” says Jonathan Sze, head baker at Rigor Hill Market. He incorporates a number of BGM flours into his pastries and breads, including a 7-grain loaf featuring renan and tom wheats, rye, oats, and emmer—which serves as the base for a roast turkey sandwich with Swiss cheese, thinly sliced kohlrabi, and pickled shallots—pain de mie and croissants made with sifted spelt, and a streusel of cornmeal and einkorn that tops muffins and oat bars. The standout is Sze’s buckwheat chocolate chip cookie: the earthy, nutty flavor of buckwheat pairs beautifully with chocolate, and the cookie’s ripple-textured top yields a crispy exterior that gives way to a gooey centermost layer. Simple and sophisticated, my ideal style of baked good.
   
   

8. Cardamom Bun at Gem Home
   Gem Home’s sourdough batard, also served in thick slabs with softened butter at chef Flynn McGarry’s fine dining counterpart, Cove, is a beautiful shade of beige, with a remarkably crackling crust, tangy undertone, satisfying chew, and satiny crumb. The bakers use a mix of Brooklyn Granary flours to achieve that texture and flavor: spelt for softness, whole wheat for rootedness, and bread flour for bounciness. On the sweeter side is Gem Home’s now-signature Scandinavian-style cardamom bun, twisted into sugary, spicy coils. The brioche dough, which incorporates some of BGM’s whole wheat, is so fluffy it’s cozy, and the tingle of cardamom lingers on your tongue after each bite.
   
   

9. Maple Oat Sourdough at She Wolf
   At this point, She Wolf is famous for so many loaves that favorites differ by New Yorker: miche, toasted sesame wheat, polenta pullman, sprouted rye. Mine is the maple oat sourdough, which recalls, nostalgically, a crusty, elevated version of store-bought Health Nut bread—warming and sweet from a dose of pure maple syrup. The cracked oats, sourced from Brooklyn Granary, yield a pleasingly gritty crust and a nutty, substantial crumb; the deep honey-colored interior is a bonus. I like it straight-up, toasted with butter, but it would be equally great in a PB&J or alongside a caramelly cheese like aged Gouda. Also worth ordering: the cracked oat cookie, with lacy edges, brown sugary depth, and no sign of raisins.
   
   

   

10. Rhubarb Tart at Borgo
    Everyone I know loves Borgo, in part because it’s a gleaming example of a mature restaurant run by bona fide pros. Also, the food is very good. During a recent solo lunch (my favorite time to dine at Andrew Tarlow’s Manhattan outpost), I finished with a rustic slice of rhubarb tart: silky, bright-pink strips of Yorkshire rhubarb paired with almond cream and encased in pastry chef Adam Marca’s tender crunch dough, made with Brooklyn Granary spelt flour, and plated with a dollop of softly whipped cream. The buttery, flaky crust, punctuated by crispy bits of caramelized sugar, combined with the puckery tang of rhubarb, conjures England while radiating intense spring energy. When there’s no tart on the menu, there’s often a strudel, also made with Brooklyn Granary spelt. Borgo serves BGM polenta as well, as a side on the dinner menu.
    
    

11. Seasonal Olive Oil and Cornmeal Tea Cake at Hani’s
    Across from the register at Hani’s, pastry chef Miro Uskokovic’s cheerful Astor Place bakery, coconut-cacao nib-and-sour cherry granola is sold alongside bags of freshly milled Wapsie Valley cornmeal, whole wheat bread flour, and rolled oats from Aurora Farm, each stamped with Brooklyn Granary & Mill’s intricate logo. These are the BGM products at work in Hani’s pastry case, including a lush olive oil cake made with cornmeal and almond flour and fashioned like a cupcake for a queen, currently crowned with a generous heap of fig leaf-infused mascarpone in the softest shade of green and a pool of jammy, sweet-tart rhubarb. Textural pops of grain run through the rich olive oil crumb, making this cupcake far more complex than anything you’d find at, say, Magnolia.
    
    

12. Bread & Butter at Confidant
    After an unsuccessful stint as the first full-service restaurant inside Industry City, chef-owners Brendan Kelley and Daniel Grossman have reopened their seasonal New American restaurant in the former home of Colonie in Brooklyn Heights. The menu kicks off with a bread and butter course that goes beyond the typical affair: a miniature boule made from a mix of Brooklyn Granary grains—subtly sweet spelt, earthy rye, and whole wheat—whose combined character comes through clearly in the finished loaf. It’s served with a squiggly mound of salted butter that borders on funky. There’s an option to add briny, extra-juicy pickles (recently long hot peppers, Jimmy Nardellos, and watermelon radish) and meaty, zesty boquerones. Order both.

1. Classic Croissant at Petitgrain Boulangerie
   Petitgrain owner Clémence de Lutz is encyclopedic in her baking knowledge, and readily expounds upon both the art and science of whole grains (“There’s this stretchy, extensible quality, and something really sensual, about spelt”). The appropriately petite bakery is fanatical about sourcing and technique; their viennoiserie is some of the most skillful in the city. The best introduction to Petitgrain’s capabilities is their classic plain croissant, made from a dough that combines Central Milling bread flour with rye, hard red wheat (Red Fife or Joaquin, depending on what’s available), and spelt flours from Tehachapi; plus “a pretty high ratio” of grass-fed cultured French butter. The result is a pastry with a deeply burnished crust, a perfectly honeycombed interior, and visible specks of nutty whole grains suspended in fine, buttery layers.

   
   

2. Rouge de Bordeaux Pain de Campagne at Two Rose Bakery
   I’ve written about pop-up baker Dave Wilcox’s fantastic breads before, and I’m writing about them again, because as his newly MEHKO-certified home bakery has settled in, they’ve only gotten better. The lineup rotates, but Wilcox can be counted on to offer 5-7 different breads weekly, made from a variety of flours. While his Tehachapi rye-enhanced baguette is a staple (and perfect for breaking off into hunks with your morning coffee at his backyard pickup), I’m partial to the hefty pain de campagne made with Rouge de Bordeaux flour. It’s not always available, but when it is, jump—each loaf has a tangy, robust flavor and an almost imperceptibly custardy crumb. Eat it with the best butter you can find, and a thick swab of Wilcox’s passionfruit curd, if he has any left.
   
   

3. Polenta with Chanterelles, Sunchokes, and Fried Herbs at Bar Etoile
   Most of the items on this list are breads or pastries made with one of Tehachapi’s whole wheat flours, but Mandell and Weiser also grow Otto File corn, a heirloom Italian varietal with a beautiful gold-orange hue (the result of extra carotenoids, the same pigments in carrots) and a deep, “corny” flavor. Polenta made from Otto File is creamy and buttery on its own, but at Bar Etoile, chef Travis Hayden ups the ante by cooking it in the surplus whey he has kicking around after making ricotta for another dish. The result is extra rich and creamy, and while I’d happily eat a bowl of it plain, it’s made all the more luxurious with the addition of seared chanterelles, thinly sliced sunchokes, and a dusting of crispy fried herbs.
   
   
   

   

4. Nori Everything Bagel at Mustard’s Bagels
   While brothers Kyle and Brent Glanville finish renovations on their Culver City storefront, they’re still offering their blistered, crackly, airy new-school bagels on weekends, loose or in sandwich form. After trying several hard red wheats, they settled on Tehachapi’s Joaquin variety, which has “a really nutty flavor that shows through in the bagels, but also a very tender crumb,” and “an aroma that hits you right away,” says Brent. They’re fermented for 72 hours to break down the heartier wheat flour, then boiled in malt syrup and served warm. Salted plain and roasted sesame flavors are available, but I’m partial to the Nori Everything, with roasted seaweed, sesame oil, black and white sesame seeds, Maldon salt, and a bit of MSG, for good measure.
   
   

5. Chocolate Chip Cookie from Sasha Pilligan
   Obviously, chocolate chip cookie preferences are deeply personal. I, personally, prefer a variety that falls more on the soft, chewy side of the spectrum than the thin and crispy. Baker-about-town Sasha Pilligan, though perhaps better known for her showstopping cakes, makes a CCC that hits all of my pleasure receptors. Available at Botanica, Chamberlain, L.A. Home Farm, Granada, Kaleido, and Canyon Coffee, these puppies are thinnish, chewy, and soft, with big pools of TCHO 62% dark chocolate and a pleasantly salty edge. In my tasting notes, I wrote that “there’s almost more chocolate than cookie,” and while the overall profile is obviously sweet, there’s a hint of a savory undercurrent to the cookie itself, with a nutty, toasty depth of flavor that can be attributed to a blend of Tehachapi rye and Sonora wheat flours.
   
   

6. Blue corn flour thumbprint cookie with strawberry jam at Proof Bakery
   On the other end of the cookie spectrum, I also love the petite, shortbread-leaning thumbprint cookies at Atwater Village staple Proof. They rotate between two Tehachapi-sourced flours for the dough: the hearty, red-tinged Rouge de Bordeaux, and the softer blue dent corn, then top it with a rotating cast of seasonal jams. I’m a sucker for the blue corn-and-strawberry jam variation, which has a lovely heft, crumbly texture, and just the right amount of crunch from a dusting of cane sugar on top. It’s not too sweet, not too big, and not too much—so you might as well get two.
   
   

   

7. Buttermilk Pancakes at Clark Street Diner
   I rarely order pancakes at a restaurant; they’re almost always flabby carbo-bombs that contribute nothing to the table. Clark Street Diner’s are one of the few exceptions. These are purist pancakes of the buttermilk variety, made with AP from ABC Milling and Sonora flour from Tehachapi, griddled on the well-worn flattop, and served crisp-edged and fluffy-centered in a stack dripping with butter and real maple syrup. They’re big and beautiful, best enjoyed in combo form alongside eggs and bacon. When I reached out to owner Zack Hall about his decision to incorporate Sonora flour, this is all he had to say: “The Sonora MAKES the pancakes. We thank Alex [and Sherry] for deciding to grow this really wonderful grain.” What more do you need to know?
   
   

8. Focaccine with Potatoes, Leeks, Tomatoes & Miso at Fuyuko’s Kitchen
   We are lucky to have Fuyuko Kondo (fun fact: Sonoko Sakai’s sister), a classically French-trained pastry chef and former owner of a baking school in Tokyo, offer lessons in her home kitchen in Pasadena. She also pops up at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market with pastries both sweet and savory, which is where you’ll find her focaccine (a round, individually-sized focaccia), made with a mix of AP and Tehachapi spelt flours, lending a rich, smooth flavor to the olive oil-enriched dough. Toppings rotate seasonally, but the gentle fusion of Japanese and European flavors is especially apparent—and delicious—in this springy variation. Pick up a mini pear tartlet (made with Tehachapi’s Sonora flour) for dessert while you’re at it.
   
   

9. Chilaquiles Burrito at Cafe Tropical
   The crew at Silver Lake’s favorite neighborhood cafe doubles down on Tehachapi products for this surprisingly well-balanced breakfast burrito, scrambling together house-fried TGP corn tortilla chips, eggs, tomatillo salsa, bacon, cheese, and stinger peppers and wrapping the whole unholy mess in a warm, stretchy Tehachapi Sonora flour tortilla. (The cafe picks them up weekly from Mandell, who works with a tortilleria in Boyle Heights to manufacture them.) “The grain blend has a flavor profile that isn’t single note,” says co-owner Ed Cornell. “I don’t want to sound too snobby, but it’s nutty, and tastes like the high desert”—a bit poetic, perhaps, but he’s not wrong.
   
   

10. Any of the pies at Wallflour Pizza
    The husband-and-wife pandemic pop-up formerly known as Quarantine Pizza Co. has gone legit with a charming counter-order storefront in Eagle Rock, perfect for family dinners or group outings. The 14-inch pizzas, from Ronan and Quarter Sheets vet Brandon Conaway, fall somewhere between New York and Neapolitan, and feature toppings both traditional (pepperoni) and not—the Broccaway Beach, with broccoli purée, mozz, big splotches of Calabrian chili paste, broccolini, and Meyer lemon, is the rare non-red sauce pie I actually crave. All of them are based on a naturally-leavened sourdough made with Tehachapi’s hearty Red Fife wheat, which bakes into a bubbly, blistered pie with enough structural integrity to stand up to whatever toppings you may choose.
    
    

11. Green Bowl at Fountain Grains & Greens
    Part of what makes this low-key but next-level grain bowl and salad shop stand out is Blue Hill alum Aric Attebury’s careful approach with ingredients. The base of the Green Bowl is a mix of TGP rye, Sonora, Rouge de Bordeaux, and Red Fife wheatberries (for now—Attebury will take pretty much anything Mandell and Weiser grow, which might include barley in the future), topped with a mix of seasonally-rotating local vegetables and a zippy zhug. The grains are soaked and sprouted—which plumps them up, lends a slightly sweeter flavor, and makes their nutrients more bioavailable—before being cooked, resulting in a bowl that looks, for lack of a better term, alive—no sad desk lunches here.
    
    

12. Focaccia Sandwich at Sqirl
    On its surface, Sqirl’s focaccia looks a little plain-Jane—there are no oversized salt granules dotting its surface, nor herbs to make it look pretty. But the color alone—a deep mahogany brown, with a shiny, dark, crispy crust—is a tip-off for the immensely satisfying experience of biting into it. Naturally leavened (with a sourdough starter that apparently came from Walton Goggins), dotted with air bubbles and visible flecks of TGP Joaquin wheat, and rich with olive oil, this focaccia performs best in sandwich form. I’m partial to the shaved turkey with kale pesto, little gems, and Comté, but there are also pastrami and prosciutto-based variations; all available pressed, an option you should avail yourself of to experience the full spectrum of flavor and texture the focaccia contains.