Do you love or hate brunch?

Los Angeles Times

03-05-2025

The meal with a slice of cantaloupe at the end. Plus, breakfast burritos, Issa Rae's new pizzeria, remembering the Napa Valley icon at the middle of the 'Apostrophe War' and 'the art world's strange relationship with food.' I'm Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week's Tasting Notes.
Chefs famously hate brunch. It's not considered a 'serious' meal. All that day drinking. All that hollandaise sauce. And, in recent years, plate after plate of avocado toast. Would their Blood Mary-soused customers even notice if the food wasn't as sharp at brunch as at dinner?
And yet, here in Los Angeles some of our best chefs are making brunch a meal to take seriously. As senior Food editor Danielle Dorsey points out in our newly released guide to 32 great L.A. brunch spots, the same scallop tostada, crudo and lobster bisque roll you find at dinner at Ari Kolender's Found Oyster, is served at brunch. Jenn Harris says 'Top Chef' star Brooke Williamson is serving elevated versions of brunch classics at Playa Provisions. Betty Hallock loves the Japanese breakfast picks at Azay, in Little Tokyo (where I'm also a regular). And at Neal Fraser's Redbird I love the tender biscuits with strawberry-rhubarb jam, duck confit chilaquiles plus shrimp and grits.
Then there is the excess of Baltaire in Brentwood, 'with tableside mimosas, a Champagne cart, a Bloody Mary cart, caviar bumps and a raw bar,' Harris writes, as well as prime filet Benedict and a 'Wagyu cheeseburger stacked on a buttery brioche bun with truffle mayonnaise.' The whole thing 'feels like a lavish party, with music from a DJ and a crowd that arrives dressed for the occasion.'
It all fits with what Dorsey says in the guide's introduction: 'Weekend brunch invites us to suspend belief. It's easy to pretend that eggs don't run $10 for a dozen as we order forearm-length breakfast burritos and plate-sized scrambles. Furthermore, it's an excuse to say yes — yes to adding avocado, bacon and another round of drinks.'
Of course, 'The Simpsons' nailed the idea of brunch back in 1990 when Marge's bowling instructor Jacques (voiced with a full sitcom French accent by Albert Brooks) tried to seduce her with a brunch invitation: 'You'll love it. It's not quite breakfast, it's not quite lunch, but it comes with a slice of cantaloupe at the end. You don't get completely what you would at breakfast, but you get a good meal.'
Columnist Jenn Harris focused this week on the breakfast burritos of Pasadena. Namely, those of the storefront spot BBAD (her current favorite) at the Pasadena Hotel and Pool lobby and content creator Josh Elkin's breakfast chimichanga available this month at Dog Haus, with special mentions for Lucky Boy Burgers and Wake and Lake. Plus, she throws in the West L.A. spot Sobuneh for good measure. 'What makes a great breakfast burrito great,' she writes, 'is the insides, the way the melted cheese fuses with the crispy potatoes on a cushion of fluffy eggs. And the construction accounts for half of the burrito's appeal.'
I knew Carl Doumani only from afar, through one of his daughters, Lissa Doumani, who ran one of Napa Valley's great now-gone restaurants, Terra, with her husband, Hiro Sone. (The two fell in love when they were young chefs in the kitchen at the original Spago in West Hollywood.) At Terra, Sone was known for his exquisite fish dishes, though I was most drawn to his earthier tripe stew, which at one point he made with Rancho Gordo beans and topped with Hokkaido scallops. I also once had the chance to stay in a guest house on Doumani's Stags' Leap Winery estate (now owned by Treasury Wine Estates) when Jonathan Gold and I were asked to speak at a food writers' conference with a few other journalists, including Ruth Reichl and the Atlantic magazine's Corby Kummer at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena. I remember a brigade of Weber grills set up on the grounds near the main house as the sun set over the vineyards for a wine-and-barbecue dinner that we attended as workshop participants. When I heard that Doumani had died last week at 92, I thought about the beauty of the land he once owned and understood one of the reasons the Los Angeles-born developer uprooted his family and moved to the Napa Valley.
Food contributor Patrick Comiskey met Doumani when he was researching the Petite Sirah chapter of his book 'American Rhône.' In his obit and appreciation of Doumani, he writes about the confusion between Stags' Leap Winery and Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, which was founded by the late Warren Winiarski and won the famed Judgment of Paris. Winiarski sued Doumani when the dormant Stags' Leap Winery was revived, leading to what became as the 'Apostrophe War' when Doumani didn't back down. (Both names were allowed to stand.) Doumani's 'general obstreperousness,' as Comiskey put it, attracted other 'like-minded winery owners' who 'came to be known as the GONADS, or, the Gastronomical Order for Nonsensical and Dissipatory [sic] Society.' The wine icon 'lived the life of a bon vivant and raconteur that amounts to a fading breed in the Valley.'
We loved talking with so many readers this past weekend at our Food x Now Serving booth at the L.A. Times Festival of Books. We'll have more on the authors who appeared next week. Meanwhile, Stephanie Breijo wrote about the new initiative launched this week by cookbook store Now Serving to help those who lost their homes in the Eaton and Palisades fires rebuild their cookbook collections. You can help by either buying requested cookbooks or participating in a series of raffles to raise money to replace the books that burned.
Last week's Cooking newsletter, which is sent out on Sundays — here's a link if you don't subscribe to the free newsletter — came from Food contributor Carolynn Carreño, who wrote about 'the simple and decadent combination of bread and chocolate' and included four recipes from the Times archives: Nancy Silverton's Bittersweet Chocolate Tartufo With Olive Oil-Fried Croutons, Ray Garcia's Chocolate and Banana Bread Pudding and Pinot Bistro's Chocolate Croissant Pudding and Emily Alben's Chocolate Gelt Babka With Hazelnut Amaretti Filling and Chocolate Espresso Glaze.
Thanks to the sorely missed Carolina Miranda, who used to write this paper's Essential Arts newsletter (plus many more essential stories), for sending me this essay from ArtReview by Chris Fite-Wassilak, which looks at 'the art world's strange relationship with food.'
'Food is art, great,' Fite-Wassilak writes. 'So why does it need to be constantly reframed as something transgressive or new to art?'