Lord Windsor Roasters in Long Beach

Long Beach has a surprisingly good coffee scene, with Lord Windsor Roasters and Rose Park Roasters leading the charge. It’s worth checking them out if you’re in the neighborhood.

Lodge Bread — Great Bread, Meh Everything Else

They say that in France a bakery can be great at bread or great at pastries, but not both.  Lodge Bread in Culver City stands as a testament to that principle.

Let’s get this out of the way: Lodge Bread makes a great loaf of bread. A real rival to Clark Street Bread for the title of best loaf in the city (and by that, I mean, best Tartine imitator in LA). I just wish I had gotten my bread and gotten out of there.

Apple Tarts Recipe



Beautiful apple tarts are not hard to make at home. I found this recipe years ago in the LA Times Magazine and pull it out on occasion.

Stumptown Coffee in DTLA – Third Wave Coffee Slouching Towards Bethlehem

In light of the recent news that Blue Bottle is going to open up at least four sites in LA, let’s celebrate the third wave coffee titan that has already started to take over LA, Portland’s Stumptown Coffee. The Arts District roastery and shop is situated near Bestia and Bread Lounge, forming an emerging power center in LA’s culinary landscape.

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.

Starbucks Pastry Erratum – La Boulange Is Looking Good

I think I’m ready to admit I was wrong.. I happened to be back at Starbucks this weekend and tried three more La Boulange pastries. Not incredible, but they are actually pretty good.

Starbucks Pastry Update – La Boulange Is La Okay

I have nothing but admiration for Starbucks as a corporate entity. Despite being a mammoth, they pay their workers fairly, give them benefits, try to do some fair trade, and let people lounge around their shops for hours buying little to nothing. I would be a meaner giant.

But I pretty much hate their coffee and feel even worse about their old pastry program. It was an affront to carbs.

But in their infinite wisdom, the overlords at Starbucks recognized that they were forcing terribleness down America’s throats. We, ‘Merica, were buying those terrible pastries anyways, so it is all the more impressive that Starbucks decided to make a change.

Enter La Boulange. Via a $100 million buyout, Starbucks is rolling out a totally revamped menu of baked goods with recipes from the La Boulange kitchen. Was that money well spent?

Sycamore Kitchen – A New Contender for Best Brunch

Maybe this title is getting ahead of me. One visit is not enough to take the crown from Huckleberry (I’ve been meaning to write up Zoe Nathan’s place for a long time). But I was kind of blown away by how great Sycamore Kitchen was.

85°C America – Imagine a Starbucks Where People Waited in Line for an Hour for Pastries

85°C is the Starbucks of Taiwan, with a branch on every corner and people from all walks of life stopping in a couple times a week for drinks — boba milk tea or sea salt lattes. 85°C has since opened 4 branches in America, all here in Southern California, but the draw is a huge assortment of breads, pastries, and fancy cakes — as well as a drink bar with many of the drinks that made them famous in Taiwan.

[* apologies for the lead photo. 98% of the clients are Asian, so this photo of the white girl in the inappropriate shirt is not representative.]