Ok, everyone needs to eat a good breakfast, so why is it so difficult to find? If you’ve read my blogs before you know I’m a big fan of hotel concierge. I’m at the JW Marriott at LA Live and these guys are second to none! They send us down to The Pantry, a Los Angeles culinary institution.
The restaurant is a typical 1970’s soda-style diner that sits in the heart of Los Angeles amid the modern glitz and glamour of the convention centre, theatres and LA Live. The Pantry serves breakfast 24 hours a day and from the day it opened, maintains business on a cash only basis. Their no-fuss menu hangs on the wall but ask a waiter dressed in crisp, white shirts, tie’s and black aprons, about their specialties. They reserve a few of the best and most popular dishes for those who ask.
Breakfast is served with your choice of white, whole wheat or sourdough toast. The sourdough loaf is massive and the toasted slices hang off the sides of the small plate. The yeasty, soft bread is fried on the griddle, soaking up the essence of bacon past – yum.
Behind the soda bar is a galley kitchen that stretches almost the entire length of the diner with cooks dressed in the same crisp, white bettany hughes pokies dress shirts as the waiters and small soda bar hats reminiscent of the 70’s. On the giant griddle sits a mound of white potatoes cut up crudely waiting to be fried into their famous home fries that accompany every breakfast.
Waiters scurry quickly serving tables with large plates piled high of pale yellow eggs, some studded with golden brown sausages of the delicious kind. Others have stacks of pancakes, links of large sausage, gnarly strips of crispy bacon or giant slices of French toast, perhaps made from sourdough because it suffers the same problem of being too large for the plate.
Inside the diner the room is filled with good conversation mixed with loud clanging plates coming from the kitchen as the chefs grab and fill the plates faster than the dishwasher can stack them. My Chorizo sausage scramble that is not on any menu, is hot, spicy and delicious and can’t imagine any better eating than with the fried slices of sourdough toast.
Breakfast comes with a bottomless cup of coffee for 50 cents. Cash isn’t the only unique through-back at this restaurant. Take your hand written bill and walk to the front cashier who sits in a wicket behind steel bars. It’s an utterly charming diner and over the top delicious!
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