The L.A. breakfast sandwiches once delivered by bucket now have their own restaurant
- Plus, a Parisian-inspired restaurant and bar from one of the city’s best wine shops
- An Uzbek destination that hopes to build community
- A sleek new speakeasy hides in a Silver Lake strip mall, and more
For three years Cara Haltiwanger lowered foil-wrapped breakfast sandwiches down to customers from her apartment window, carefully distributing them to customers via red plastic bucket. Faced with moving out of her East Hollywood “bucket drop” apartment and growing the business to support a burgeoning hot-sauce retail line, in November she gave the sandwiches a bricks-and-mortar of their own.
“I just said to myself, ‘You know, you’ve been in L.A. 20 years,’” she said. “‘Let’s give this thing a full-circle moment and try it.’”
The Alabama-raised bartender moved to Los Angeles and, around 2008, wanted to explore food professionally. She learned in the kitchens of Animal and Fresh, and began popping up at Bar Lubitsch with fried chicken and other items — including what would evolve into her famous breakfast sandwiches.
“I was really poor, to be honest,” she said. “A lot of times I didn’t have money to buy food, so I would just sell grilled cheese sandwiches, but then I would add bacon, egg, grilled onions and avocado. That’s how the breakfast sandwich was born.”
When the pandemic hit, she continued slinging sandwiches from home, lowering sandwiches down to customers who waited on the sidewalk. It went viral, selling out nearly every weekend.
The popularity helped keep Haltiwanger afloat; she could sustain herself with sandwich orders, private-chef gigs and her line of hot sauces. She was never convinced she needed to open a storefront, but after touring a little white building with just enough space for her griddles, she knew it was the one.
“I honestly just fell in love with it,” she said. “I love how old it is, even though that’s costing me a lot. I love the vintage stools that are cemented into the ground. It’s so adorable and cute and has so much character.”
Now fans line up at the small storefront, wrapping around the roughly 250-square-foot restaurant with bright yellow awnings and a walk-up window. They’re there for Haltiwanger’s breakfast sandwiches, freshly baked biscuits made using her grandma’s recipe and, soon, bottles of her smoky-sweet dipping sauce and hot sauce. Calabama is open Thursday to Monday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
6751 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, calabama.la
Bar Etoile
A new restaurant and wine bar from the team behind one of the city’s best bottle shops is serving nouveau-French cuisine such as Gruyère tarts coated in emerald green chive dust, unctuous beef tartare spooned over Caesar dressing and cubed bread, and steak frites dripping with Montpellier butter.
When Julian Kurland joined Jill Bernheimer at her Melrose wine shop, Domaine LA, they quickly realized they shared the dream of opening a neighborhood wine bar. After years of searching, they renovated a former furniture store at the edge of Melrose Hill, and with roughly 2,400 square feet to play with, broadened the scope beyond wine — but they’d need a chef.
After a successful run at Voodoo Vin, executive chef Travis Hayden wanted to hit pause on his culinary career. “I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to cook in restaurants anymore,” he said. “I just wanted a break, and it was gonna take something really special to get me going again.” Hayden, who was raised on a farm, felt aligned with Bar Etoile’s owners, given their attention to the farming process in natural wine. The trio traveled to London and Paris, pulling inspiration from local cafes and wine bars there.
The through line between the bottle shop and the restaurant is how the wines are made: Kurland and Bernheimer gravitate toward organically farmed, minimal-intervention wines, using native yeasts. But the beverage program also offers martinis, Negronis, gimlets and other classic cocktails. Bar Etoile is open Tuesday to Saturday from 4 to 11 p.m.
632 N. Western Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 380-5040, baretoile.com
Zira Uzbek Kitchen
They’ve been married for more than a decade, but on one of their first dates Gulnigor “Gigi” Ganieva remembers her future husband told her that he wanted to open his own restaurant. Azim Rahmatov didn’t know where or when it would happen, but he wanted to bring traditional Uzbek cuisine to America. With Melrose’s Zira Uzbek Cuisine, the couple have finally done it.
“I thought, ‘Why not have a restaurant where I can serve good food from my culture, and also have a gathering place and sense of community for the Uzbeks?’” Rahmatov asked.
At first he thought they might open one when they lived in New York City. Then the two Bukhara natives moved to L.A., where they found less community and even fewer Uzbek restaurants. Curious friends would ask about the cuisine, and they would host dinners at their home; Rahmatov realized L.A. needed more restaurants dedicated to the food of Uzbekistan, where plump manti, or large hand-shaped dumplings, are filled with meat or vegetables and rich pilafs and braises are punctuated by bright pickles.
They tapped family and friends to head up the kitchen, with one chef focusing on doughs for manti, hand-pulled noodles, bread and more; another prepares the ingredients for the day and focuses on mains, such as pilafs; and the third helms the grill for kebabs and other two-day-marinated meats.
“We just wanted to make sure that every dish was represented, and show the variety of the food,” Ganieva said. “Just the dumplings themselves are cooked three times: We boil them, we steam them, fry them. We wanted to have a little bit of everything.” Zira Uzbek Cuisine is open Tuesday to Sunday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
7422 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 332-4086, zirauzbekkitchen.com
Tacolina and the Jaguar Room
A new two-in-one operation in Silver Lake is combining tacos with speakeasy cocktails. Santa Monica’s Blue Plate Restaurant Group (Blue Plate Oysterette, Blue Plate Taco) expanded east with Tacolina, a Baja-inspired restaurant on the lush patio that previously housed De Buena Planta and Tintorera. At dinner, find handmade tortillas that grip fried red snapper tacos; cochinita pork; skirt steak with tomatillo salsa; and juicy shrimp a la diabla. At brunch, look for chilaquiles, breakfast tortas and bloody Marias.
Attached to the patio restaurant but with a separate entrance via the adjacent strip mall, through a door next to a red light, is Tacolina’s sibling speakeasy, the Jaguar Room. Low-lit and lightly jungle-themed, this bar serves Latin-leaning cocktails such as carajillos, habanero-and-yuzu-laced riffs on palomas, and a guava tequila daiquiri. The Jaguar Room is open Monday to Thursday from 5 to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 5 to 11 p.m. Tacolina is open Monday to Friday from 5 to 10 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Tacolina: 2815 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, (424) 567-8226, tacolina.la; the Jaguar Room: 2815 W. Sunset Blvd., Suite 103, Los Angeles, jaguarroom.la
Fountain Grains & Greens
With grain bowls, salads and sides brimming with farmers market produce, East Hollywood’s new walk-up window serves bites that rotate based on the freshest bounty. At Fountain Grains & Greens, chef-founder Aric Attebery (formerly of Bouchon Bistro, Otium, Blue Hill at Stone Barns) offers dishes that might involve persimmon kimchi, tarragon cream, charcoal-grilled meats, beet greens, chicken-skin furikake or lacto-fermented corn relish.
Attebery comes from a lineage of Angelenos in the restaurant industry, with previous generations serving as a sommelier for the Brown Derby and a restaurateur in Melrose Hill. With his own background in fine dining, the chef sought to bring the same attention to farm sourcing to a quick-and-casual setting. It’s the first project for Attebery under new restaurant group Backyard Hospitality, which is already planning other concepts for L.A. Fountain Grains & Greens is open Monday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
4850 Fountain Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 522-3020, eatatfountain.com
Panda Inn reopens
The birthplace of one of the country’s most notable Chinese chains is back with a new look and new dishes. Master chef Ming-Tsai Cherng and his son and daughter-in-law — Andrew and Peggy Cherng — would change the face of fast food with Panda Express, but before the wok-fried noodles and vegetables spread through malls across America, there was the more upscale Panda Inn, which debuted in Pasadena in 1973.
In 2023 the original Panda Inn closed for renovations: an eight-seat sushi bar, a more modern aesthetic, ample bar seating, multiple private dining rooms, and new art and dishes that incorporate Ming-Tsai Cherng’s Taiwanese and Japanese culinary background. In addition to the signatures like orange chicken, the retooled Panda Inn serves new items like Taiwanese braised-pork rice and popcorn chicken, and Yangzhou-style lion’s head meatballs and shredded tofu. From the sushi bar find sashimi, oysters and inventive maki such as unagi with mascarpone or the classic honey walnut shrimp as a tempura roll. Panda Inn Pasadena is open Sunday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.
3488 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena, (626) 793-7300, pandainn.com
Ghirardelli Santa Monica
Ghirardelli, one of the world’s most famous chocolate shops, is now open across the street from the Santa Monica Pier with 3,900 square feet devoted to chocolate, milkshakes and more than a dozen varieties of ice cream sundaes, including some topped with hot fudge that’s made in-house daily. The new location boasts retail plus dine-in and items such as chocolate-covered strawberries, hot cocoa, fresh brownies and more. Ghirardelli is open in Santa Monica Sunday to Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.
1541 Ocean Ave., Suite 105, Santa Monica, (424) 490-0410, ghirardelli.com
