Food and drink

LA native Zach Pollack was studying architecture in Florence when he decided to switch his focus to food. He opened Alimento in 2014, a low-key but polished restaurant in Silver Lake that serves regional Italian dishes, from the obscure to the familiar, alongside a strong list of tasty natural wines. Grab a table on the ivy-clad patio and sample some of Pollack’s signature pasta, freshly made each day – the casarecce with burrata, tomato and basil, would be the highlight of any menu.

“There’s just so much you can do with toast,” says Nathan Katz, as a slice topped with jade-green avocado and a cloud of burrata emerges from the kitchen. He and Jack Della Femina quit their day jobs in property in 2020. Now their Beverly Hills café, Bravo Toast, boasts a refreshingly succinct menu. “We’re making avocado toast and matcha, which is to our generation what burger, fries and Coke were in the 1950s,” says Della Femina. “There’s no secret ingredient. It’s authentic and we create a good energy.” 

Horses on Sunset Boulevard is the latest opening by Noma alumni Liz Johnson and Will Aghajanian (also chefs at Nashville’s The Catbird Seat). The bolthole itself still resembles Ye Coach and Horses, a legendary bar that stood here before but Johnson and Aghajanian have done away with both the kitsch and the traditional kitchen hierarchies, instead encouraging their six chefs to collaborate. “There are no egos here,” says Aghajanian. Dishes tend to have several iterations before the team decides that “the simplest way is the best”. The chocolate tart, overseen by pastry chef Hannah Grubba, contains just four ingredients and the roasted Cornish hen with warm panzanella is a nod to one of Aghajanian’s childhood favourites. The menu changes seasonally but the burger will remain as a nod to the building’s roots. Guests can sit in either the Drinkery, the Sunshine room or Kacper’s gallery, which is named for artist Kacper Abolik, who put murals on the walls to complement the elegant blue banquettes.

The pared-back interior doesn’t stop this canteen in Culver City’s industrial park from standing out from the LA milieu. The neutral tones, jars of pickled vegetables and hand-thrown ceramics transport visitors to a place that feels more like downtown Oslo or Stockholm. Chef Jordan Kahn’s cooking has previously been the preserve of the dining elite but here you can get breakfast or lunch for little more than the price of takeaway tacos. The breakfast menu abounds with oatmeal, currants and spiced bread. At lunch, plates move up a notch with offerings such as beef tartare with smoked-egg cream and pickled mushrooms. 

Verve coffee can be found across LA, although its headquarters and roasters are in Santa Cruz. Owners Ryan O’Donovan and Colby Barr learned the ropes at a series of other ventures before starting their own business in 2007. The duo is committed to sourcing quality beans from around the world, with a focus on Latin America and Africa. Their industrial-looking shop in Downtown was designed by Studio Mai and does double duty as a coffee house and juicery.