Bread Winners

Amazing signature bread served warm to your table soon after you are seated and order.  Is there any greater welcome gift that a restaurant can bestow upon a hungry patron?  Great bread is often the reason for choosing a restaurant (or if you’re watching your carb intake, a reason to avoid a restaurant where you simply can’t control yourself).  Here’s my list of the top 5 winners in the category of best signature bread in LA:

Garlic Cheese Bread from The Smokehouse

1. Garlic Cheese Bread at The Smokehouse (442 W. Lakeside Drive, Burbank).  This is hands down the best garlic bread you will ever eat.  It’s salty, cheesy, garlicky awesomeness.  Enjoy it with dinner and martinis at The Smokehouse, the iconic dimly-lit, red boothed throw-back which has sat for the past 65 years across the street from the Warner Bros. lot.

Pizza Dough Bread at Angeli Caffe

2.  Pizza Dough Bread at Angeli Caffe (7274 Melrose, Los Angeles).  These are small round loaves of piping hot perfection.  If you’re dining with a hungry group (or kids), once this incredible bread is brought to your table, propriety will be abandoned, burns will be risked and this right-out-of-the-oven treat will be ripped apart and devoured instantly.

Garlic Knots at Caioti Pizza Cafe

3.  Garlic Knots at Caioti Pizza Cafe (4346 Tujunga, Studio City).  Hot, buttery, garlicky, soft and chewy.  The garlic knots at Caioti Pizza Cafe, a small rustic neighborhood eatery, are extremely addictive.  The one drawback:  they sometimes run out.

Grilled Pita at The Great Greek

4.  Grilled Pita Bread at The Great Greek (13362 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks).  This is not the free (and good) bread they give you when you arrive at the Great Greek.  You have to actually order the amazing grilled pita bread here and it would be a Greek tragedy to not do so.  The pita is exclusively flown in from Chicago. Eat it with fresh whipped Hummus, tangy Tzatziki, or my favorite — Tarama, Greek caviar dip.

Popover to Neiman

5.  Popovers at Neiman Marcus (9700 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills in their Mariposa restaurant; also 6550 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Canoga Park in their NM Cafe).  Who doesn’t like popovers?  The ones at Neiman’s are consistently perfect. Light, cripsy and flaky on the outside, soft and buttery on the inside.  Served with strawberry butter!

That’s what I call WINNING!
Angeli Caffe on Urbanspoon
Great Greek on Urbanspoon
Caioti Pizza Café on Urbanspoon
Mariposa on Urbanspoon
Smoke House on Urbanspoon

12 Comments

Filed under Beverly Hills, Burbank, Canoga Park, Mid-City, Sherman Oaks, Studio City

12 Responses to Bread Winners

  1. Annabelle

    Wow! These look so amazing. I am going to try all of these places. This week!

  2. Tom Cohen

    Yeah, yeah. But where can a New Yorker get a decent bagel in this town? And why is that so difficult?

  3. ConsumingLA

    This is a very good question. I’ve never had anything here that comes close to H&H Bagel in New York.

  4. Carolyn

    How is Mastro’s bread basket not on this list?? Their pretzel bread alone brings me back there.

  5. Jason

    La Maison du Pain http://www.lamaisondupain.net/ has really good baguettes.

    How does one subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed, and not just to the comments for any particular post?

  6. chris maxwell

    LOVE your blog – I would crawl on my belly across broken glass for the Angeli bread!!!!

  7. Really enjoying your post and LOVE bread (an occasional treat for me). Just wanted to recommend the garlic knots at Tarantino’s in Pasadena. They are insane – fresh from the oven and floating in a pool of olive oil, crushed garlic and parsley. You can even dust with parmesan if you like.

  8. yummy!! Also go hang at Prizzis on Franklin next to Birds and across the street from the evil scientology celebrity center (hope i didnt offend anyone)…Prizzis Garlic sticks are to die for…you get three…trust me its more than enough ..they are about a foot long each…and are dripping in garlic and olive oil…worth just having that over there!

  9. bread is my kryptonite – there’s nothing in the world I love as much as bread. Thank you for this!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *