Echo Park has a hip new breakfast, lunch and dinner spot: Winsome. Winsome has charmed the likes of our favorite food writer, Jonathan Gold, and Bon Appétit, having recently made the magazine’s “50 Best New Restaurants” list. Grab a cappuccino and brown butter mochi cake to go or sit down on the airy patio to try the buckwheat and semolina yeast-risen pancake. Jonathan says it’s one of the best pancakes in town, being delicate, crisp along the edges and soft as pudding at the center. The hotcake is served with seasonal preserves and chestnut honey and is dusted with powdered sugar.
If savory breakfasts are your jam, try the duck egg toast. It’s a thick slice of toasted rustic bread topped with a fried duck egg from JF Organic Farms, spicy ‘nduja spread and melted raclette cheese. Hearty, rich and satisfying.
Chef Jeremy Strubel comes to Winsome from Rustic Canyon. His shaved cauliflower salad is the perfect umami bomb, says Jonathan, thanks to the Bragg’s Nutritional Yeast and Parmigiano-Reggiano sprinkled over mustard frills and lola rosa lettuce.
For dinner, order the fennel pollen-crusted pork short ribs. Best eaten between sips of aromatic natural white wine.
The thick-cut Kennebeck potato chips are fried fresh-to-order and sprinkled with kaffir lime and spiced chile salt.
Jonathan says the dessert to order at Winsome is the “Baked Japan,” a fancy variation on — you guessed it — the Baked Alaska. Winsome’s version features La Colombe coffee-flavored ice cream in a ball of torched meringue. It is served over Japanese nigori sake fondue and miso butterscotch with a toasted, puffed rice cracker.
Recommendations: Try the buckwheat and semolina pancake, the potato rösti, the duck egg toast, the shaved cauliflower salad, the Kennebeck potato chips, the whole roasted branzino, the pork short ribs and the Baked Japan.
Location: 1115 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90012 | (213) 415-1818
Find more of Jonathan Gold’s restaurant recommendations here.
Header image (top) of buckwheat and semolina pancake photo by Skandia Shafer.