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Travel + Leisure Lets Griddle Café Rep L.A. on Best Brunches in America List
A giant strawberry waffle from The Griddle Café (Photo by pink_fish13 via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr)
This seems more like a prank pulled by the brains behind the site This is Why You're Fat and not a legitimate representation of fabulous late-morning eats in Los Angeles, but here we have it: Travel + Leisure's roundup of Best Brunches in America has The Griddle Café as their pick to represent the City of Angels. Really?
Okay, look: There's nothing wrong with The Griddle Café. People line up morning upon morning outside the tiny Sunset Boulevard mainstay to break bread and sop up hangovers with plates of pancakes in whackadoodle flavor combos poured into rounds as big as--well, it's bigger than your head. For the hair of the dog types, they will keep you at your table longer with sweaty glasses of Bloody Marys (much to the ire of the other hipsters and screenwriters waiting for a table). Incidentally, this is basically the exact description T+L offers in their intro: "The best brunches are drawn-out, indulgent meals in good company that inspire you to shake off those covers and then linger over another round of Bloody Marys."
Fine. Sometimes you need to feed your face with a massive carbo load to get your Sunday morning (or, um, early afternoon) off to a proper start. It happens.
But as one of the Best Brunches in America? No. No way.
It would have been great to have seen one of Los Angeles many fabulous brunch spots repping this down, from brunches with killer views of the Pacific, brunches made with locally sourced produce and eggs (this is California after all), or brunches with dishes with the avant garde flair of any one of our celebrated local chefs.
How did The Griddle get on this list, then? T+L says "America’s best brunch spots deliver that kind of pick-me-up first and foremost through their food, whether it’s reinterpreting classics, highlighting regional flavors, or simply churning out the most delectable comfort dishes around. But atmosphere counts, too, as does the approval of locals." Okey doke. The Griddle certainly churns out comfort dishes, and locals dig it. But specifically, The Griddle seems to have gotten the glossy mag's seal of approval because the starlets like it:
A Sunset Boulevard fixture since 2000, this simple brick space has become the go-to spot for young Hollywood starlets (Audrina Patridge, Jessica Alba), starving artists, and everyone in between. The reason? Sweet treats such as strawberry Frosted Flake or Oreo pancakes or a stack of peanut butter French toast generously dusted with powdered sugar. Refuel with the Griddle’s signature J. Gursey French-press coffee, and take a lesson from the starlets: count calories elsewhere.
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So do you agree with the starlets and Travel + Leisure?
Here are some other lists of L.A.'s best brunches:
- Refinery29's 8 Yummy Brunch Spots to Book Now
- Gayot's Top Ten Best Restaurants for Brunch in L.A.
- The L.A. Times' S. Irene Virbila's Brunch Roundup
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