Bar Ama – Uh, It’s a Lot Better Tex-Mex Than Spoons

I don’t have that much to say about Bar Ama, Josef Centeno’s Tex-Mex restaurant in his growing dtla empire. I’ve only been once and it was fantastic. Centeno is always spot-on with flavors and always seems to have several tricks up his sleeves in creating new flavors. In this case, he dedicated this sophomore effort to his personal past — Ama is what he called his grandmother, and Tex-Mex is the cuisine of his youth.

MB Post – An Amazing Brunch with Maybe the Best Fried Chicken in LA

It’s old news now that David LeFevre has activated a formerly terrible are to eat (Manhattan Beach) with MB Post and most recently with Fishing with Dynamite. What had been an area full of chain restaurants and tourist traps has been gentrified with one of the tastiest new restaurants in years.

A-Frame – Roy Choi’s Food Almost All Grown Up

Another long overdue review. A-Frame is Roy Choi’s first (somewhat) serious table service restaurant after hitting it big with the Kogi trucks. Housed in a former IHOP, the space is an incredible reworking of an old tired building.

But the real story is the food. Choi’s food is always reworking classics with Korean and other influences.

FarmShop – $20 Egg Dishes in Yogamomland

People who say they hate LA (who don’t live in LA) usually are basing their biases off two stereotypes: the idiots who are obsessed with Hollywood and the yoga-granola Westside set. Most of us actually live in regular old LA — mini-malls, traffic, apartment buildings, smog. Well, this is a story about one of those other LAs. Gwynneth’s LA. Where size 2 moms drive their Audi SUVs to yoga class and then to pick up their pressed juice for a Goop cleanse.

It’s in this LA that Jeffrey Cerciello, an acolyte of Thomas Keller, has opened FarmShop. In the Brentwood Country Mart, Cerciello has dropped from the heavens a simulacrum of the platonic ideal of the current farm to table ethos. It wasn’t enough to try to recreate the French Laundry (or at least a less fussy version of Keller’s flagship), FarmShop is also a marketplace that is almost a museum of the best providers in California.

Huckleberry – the Best Bakery in LA

Apologies to my ones of readers for the lack of posts lately. I have a little breathing space for a couple weeks, so you should see more douchey comments via this outlet.

I have been meaning to update with posts about some of my favorite places, rather than just places I’ve been to for the first time. Which brings us to Huckleberry, the place I wind up comparing all other pastries in LA to.