The Chateau Marmont was still passed out. The only activity on the nearby RockWalk, where Tommy Lee's paw prints are set in cement, came from a pair of pigeons. Nary a needle was buzzing at Tattoo Mania.But one outpost on this hard-partying stretch of Sunset Boulevard was not only up and at 'em on a recent Saturday morning, it was attracting such a crowd that tourists were arriving to take pictures. At 10:30, 24 people were waiting to get a table at the bustling Griddle Cafe. Within an hour, the line had swelled to nearly 50.
Pancakes that seemed to be the size of truck tires and every egg in the chicken coop are ostensibly the lure. (As the menu says, "Get Ready Luv!!!") But the Griddle, as it is known, also serves up the occasional bed-headed celebrity for the masses to ogle. "Glee" stars Lea Michele and Cory Monteith carb-loaded there less than two months before his July heroin overdose. Jessica Alba, Anne Hathaway, Alexander Skarsgard and Megan Fox have been photographed coming or going."Yes, we get stars who haven't been to sleep yet, a lot on weekdays, actually," said Daryl Orenge, one of the restaurant's managers. "No, I won't tell you who. We don't judge." (It's not a predawn soak-up-the-debauchery spot, either; the Griddle opens at 7 a.m. during the week and at 8 a.m. on weekends.)Every big city has its share of one-of-a-kind canteens with weird cult followings, restaurants where the scene on the sidewalk rivals anything the kitchen serves up. Without them, the bulbous Guy Fieri would have no gravy to belch on "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives." When it comes to breakfast on the West Coast, there is Hash House a Go Go in San Diego and, in San Francisco, the Red Door Cafe, which the owner has decorated with old doll heads and sex toys.But sunny Los Angeles seems to have no qualms about waiting in line. Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that people here grew up with Disneyland queues? (Maybe?) Along with the Griddle, Los Angeles has mobbed comfort-food institutions like Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles, Tito's Tacos and Pink's Hot Dogs, which has dealt with its snaking line by installing stanchions and ropes."People come for the show," said Mary Melton, editor-in-chief of Los Angeles Magazine, speaking of the Griddle in particular. "It's like Katz's Deli in New York. That bowl of so-so soup is kind of beside the point."
She added: "Plus, there are so many people in LA who don't seem to work. They have time to stand and socialize."Another magazine editor, Janice Min of The Hollywood Reporter, offered this analysis, having moved to Los Angeles from New York three years ago: "There is no discovery in LA because you're always in a car headed to a specific destination. And because of that, people become very attached to the same few places, whether the food is edible or not, and it is usually not."
Could Min imagine people in New York waiting an hour or more for pancakes at a grungy spot
like the Griddle Cafe?Insert a shriek of laughter here.Even so, the show is going on the road. The Griddle's owner, Jodi Hortze, who refers to herself as "the Willy Wonka of breakfast," will open a Las Vegas location next summer. San
Francisco and New York extensions are possibilities, she said."Her customers include everyone from celebs and world leaders to soccer moms and college students, and everyone in between," said Sam Nazarian, chief executive of SBE Entertainment Group, a nightclub and restaurant company that is taking the Griddle to Sin City as part of its SLS Las Vegas Hotel and Casino. "To me, that's the very essence of LA culture."Diversity was definitely on display at the Griddle the other day, even if heads of state and stars were in short supply. Two male models sat at the U-shape counter next to a pair of groggy visitors from Tokyo. A gaggle of South Central church ladies drained containers of maple syrup in a nearby booth, while a guy with a pointy foot-tall mohawk chowed down near a pink-haired mom in a Black Sabbath T-shirt."Did the heavens open?" Michael Trotter, a manager wearing a backward baseball cap, asked a teensy woman in super-short shorts as she lit into an enormous wad of Chips Ahoy-covered French toast. "Let's all watch and find out," he said as she covered her mouth and turned red.
As the line outside grew, blues blaring on the sound system, two guys who were waiting - Phil Pham, 25, and Sean Shen, 26 - had no second thoughts about their decision. Pham, wearing a red stocking cap even though it was nearly 70 degrees, and Shen, hiding behind black Ray-Bans, were there for a breakfast burrito (menu description: "This one is HUGE!") and a stack of French toast."That's my jam," Pham mumbled sleepily.Hortze, who also goes by Miss Griddle, opened the 100-seat restaurant on a whim 10 years ago, but the place looks like it has been around since the Bee Gees topped the charts. One wall of exposed brick has the cafe's name spray-painted on it; photographs of the more desolate parts of California hang cockeyed on the opposite wall. A couple of slow-turning ceiling fans contribute motion, while slamming pots and pans add to the blues soundtrack. The servers - all guys - offer intricate handshakes to regular customers, bro."I loved eating breakfast out, but it was never quite what I imagined in my mind," said Hortze, estimating that 800 to 1,000 customers now churn through on a busy Sunday.
"My mom didn't really give us sweets," she said, recalling her childhood in the city's Van Nuys section. "So I guess the mad-scientist sugary menu is probably based on my deprivation."Sweet does not begin to describe it. One dish involves pancakes filled with butterscotch, caramel and walnuts and topped with whipped cream and powdered sugar.
And at least one item, Mounds of Pleasure, a stack of chocolate and coconut flapjacks buried in whipped cream, should come with a straw. After ordering it, Alicia Garcia, 28, decided her best plan of attack was to lift up the plate and drain part of the ooze into an extra coffee cup.Was it butter?"No," she said, "Just melted whip cream and chocolate sauce."Oh. Just.© 2013 New York Times News Service
Pancakes that seemed to be the size of truck tires and every egg in the chicken coop are ostensibly the lure. (As the menu says, "Get Ready Luv!!!") But the Griddle, as it is known, also serves up the occasional bed-headed celebrity for the masses to ogle. "Glee" stars Lea Michele and Cory Monteith carb-loaded there less than two months before his July heroin overdose. Jessica Alba, Anne Hathaway, Alexander Skarsgard and Megan Fox have been photographed coming or going."Yes, we get stars who haven't been to sleep yet, a lot on weekdays, actually," said Daryl Orenge, one of the restaurant's managers. "No, I won't tell you who. We don't judge." (It's not a predawn soak-up-the-debauchery spot, either; the Griddle opens at 7 a.m. during the week and at 8 a.m. on weekends.)Every big city has its share of one-of-a-kind canteens with weird cult followings, restaurants where the scene on the sidewalk rivals anything the kitchen serves up. Without them, the bulbous Guy Fieri would have no gravy to belch on "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives." When it comes to breakfast on the West Coast, there is Hash House a Go Go in San Diego and, in San Francisco, the Red Door Cafe, which the owner has decorated with old doll heads and sex toys.But sunny Los Angeles seems to have no qualms about waiting in line. Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that people here grew up with Disneyland queues? (Maybe?) Along with the Griddle, Los Angeles has mobbed comfort-food institutions like Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles, Tito's Tacos and Pink's Hot Dogs, which has dealt with its snaking line by installing stanchions and ropes."People come for the show," said Mary Melton, editor-in-chief of Los Angeles Magazine, speaking of the Griddle in particular. "It's like Katz's Deli in New York. That bowl of so-so soup is kind of beside the point."
She added: "Plus, there are so many people in LA who don't seem to work. They have time to stand and socialize."Another magazine editor, Janice Min of The Hollywood Reporter, offered this analysis, having moved to Los Angeles from New York three years ago: "There is no discovery in LA because you're always in a car headed to a specific destination. And because of that, people become very attached to the same few places, whether the food is edible or not, and it is usually not."
Could Min imagine people in New York waiting an hour or more for pancakes at a grungy spot
like the Griddle Cafe?Insert a shriek of laughter here.Even so, the show is going on the road. The Griddle's owner, Jodi Hortze, who refers to herself as "the Willy Wonka of breakfast," will open a Las Vegas location next summer. San
Francisco and New York extensions are possibilities, she said."Her customers include everyone from celebs and world leaders to soccer moms and college students, and everyone in between," said Sam Nazarian, chief executive of SBE Entertainment Group, a nightclub and restaurant company that is taking the Griddle to Sin City as part of its SLS Las Vegas Hotel and Casino. "To me, that's the very essence of LA culture."Diversity was definitely on display at the Griddle the other day, even if heads of state and stars were in short supply. Two male models sat at the U-shape counter next to a pair of groggy visitors from Tokyo. A gaggle of South Central church ladies drained containers of maple syrup in a nearby booth, while a guy with a pointy foot-tall mohawk chowed down near a pink-haired mom in a Black Sabbath T-shirt."Did the heavens open?" Michael Trotter, a manager wearing a backward baseball cap, asked a teensy woman in super-short shorts as she lit into an enormous wad of Chips Ahoy-covered French toast. "Let's all watch and find out," he said as she covered her mouth and turned red.
As the line outside grew, blues blaring on the sound system, two guys who were waiting - Phil Pham, 25, and Sean Shen, 26 - had no second thoughts about their decision. Pham, wearing a red stocking cap even though it was nearly 70 degrees, and Shen, hiding behind black Ray-Bans, were there for a breakfast burrito (menu description: "This one is HUGE!") and a stack of French toast."That's my jam," Pham mumbled sleepily.Hortze, who also goes by Miss Griddle, opened the 100-seat restaurant on a whim 10 years ago, but the place looks like it has been around since the Bee Gees topped the charts. One wall of exposed brick has the cafe's name spray-painted on it; photographs of the more desolate parts of California hang cockeyed on the opposite wall. A couple of slow-turning ceiling fans contribute motion, while slamming pots and pans add to the blues soundtrack. The servers - all guys - offer intricate handshakes to regular customers, bro."I loved eating breakfast out, but it was never quite what I imagined in my mind," said Hortze, estimating that 800 to 1,000 customers now churn through on a busy Sunday.
"My mom didn't really give us sweets," she said, recalling her childhood in the city's Van Nuys section. "So I guess the mad-scientist sugary menu is probably based on my deprivation."Sweet does not begin to describe it. One dish involves pancakes filled with butterscotch, caramel and walnuts and topped with whipped cream and powdered sugar.
And at least one item, Mounds of Pleasure, a stack of chocolate and coconut flapjacks buried in whipped cream, should come with a straw. After ordering it, Alicia Garcia, 28, decided her best plan of attack was to lift up the plate and drain part of the ooze into an extra coffee cup.Was it butter?"No," she said, "Just melted whip cream and chocolate sauce."Oh. Just.© 2013 New York Times News Service
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