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Sycamore Kitchen & The Tragedy of Lunch

(pictured: Yucatan Bowl, Cappuccino, and antibiotic) 143 S La Brea Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90036

Do you like dogs, babies, assholes and scones? Then Sycamore Kitchen is for you!

I know what you’re thinking: “But, Maggie, you love a chic alfresco cafe/bakery hybrid!” Yes, but the problem is nobody treats Sycamore Kitchen like the cafe/bakery it could be. Trust me, if I walked in and there were bearded depressives on laptops, angrily drinking black coffee all day and looking out the window mournfully at a world they’ll never truly relate to, I’d cross myself, thank Gaia, and never leave. But, instead, Sycamore Kitchen, by no fault of its own, has fallen under the worst of all categories: a “great lunch spot”.

Now, I am not a restaurant critic. I’m a people critic. And in my own simpering whisper of a woman’s life (do I even have a personality?), I aim my arrows inward ten times out of ten. So, truly, I do believe myself to be the least likable person in any restaurant at any given moment. That said, the people who eat at Sycamore Kitchen all collectively tie as a close second.

In my experience, the demographic is always 40% young mothers in diaphanous dresses who let their kids literally sit in the walking path of servers like they’re the fucking Lannisters (I’m on Season 2, so forgive me if that reference is now outdated), 30% men who talk too loudly about how they were surprised to have enjoyed themselves so much in Hawaii, 10% eco-conscious future-people who look like they all got dressed by falling into a pile of fabric and walking away, 15% infants that have a better sense of style than I do and 5% dogs in bandanas. If “limp handshakes” were a business, its fair to say that at Sycamore Kitchen business would be booming.

My biggest qualm with the clientele is the way they all flock to Sycamore Kitchen because they’ve heard the “great lunch spot” rumor. The concept of lunch alone is nauseating. I know you all think its part of life, but it’s actually an infantilizing half-meal and it has no place in a cultured society. Even the term “soups and sandwiches” makes my uterus feel weird, like I’m in a fast elevator. Its the same feeling I get when flight attendants ask adult men, “pretzels or cookies?” Or when somebody puts an L earbud into their right ear. There is something humiliating about the concept, like we are all too feeble to make it through the day without our noontime bottles. I’m not kidding. Think about a bunch of professional adults, in their work clothes, gathering in a crowd, and gorging themselves on basically-children’s-foods, so much so that afterward they get very sleepy and always want to nap. Its almost impossible to witness this process and not be reminded that we are all just a bunch of orifices being held together by skin, yearning to stick things in our holes all day long.

All of which is to say that the food at Sycamore Kitchen is a-okay! The coffee is undoubtedly their strong suit and their baked goods are just that: goods, not greats. As far as entrees goes, I’ve had a carrot salad that was about as satisfying as, well, a fucking carrot salad, so that was on me. However, I’ve also had their “Yucatan Bowl” that, nomenclature aside, was really quite good. So, I’m not going to call their menu anything less than “certainly worth trying”, from which point forward you can make your own judgements. To do otherwise wouldn’t be fair to the food. Food never ruins a meal. People do.

One Girl, Five Guys

Let’s get one thing straight: I have a real thing for Five Guys… and the burger chain aint bad either, am I right?

But, seriously.

The last time I had Five Guys in the afternoon, I had to be helicoptered to a Chicago hospital and was declared dead for three whole minutes.

But, seriously.

….I hooked up with five guys at once is what I’m saying.

Anyway. That’s pretty much the overarching “thesis” here. Sorry, but I’m not going to review Five Guys without a veritable cyclone of innuendoes in tow. Besides, its almost unnecessary to “review” Five Guys at this point. Everyone knows its good. They offer that divine arrangement of burger that can be deftly compressed in your hands so that it is no longer a stack of its separate ingredients but a unified whole. And, as somebody who grew up on In N’ Out, I have no qualms siding with Five Guys as the better burger. Anyone who says otherwise has based that choice not on quality of food but on a personal inadequacy of identity that compels them to attach themselves to popular causes like riding a bicycle or liking dolphins so that they might, then, exhibit what they assume to be “passion”. There are reasons I eat alone and that is one of them: everyone’s an idiot.

I visited my local FG at a prime solo-dining hour: four pm. There were other diners there, all alone. It felt a little like a self-help group who ate their feelings instead of talking about them. One guy had his dry-cleaning, which was a power move that I respected. Occasionally someone nodded to whatever alt-rock classic was playing, then immediately stopped, humiliated. If everyone at In N’ Out loves themselves for eating there, then everyone at Five Guys hated themselves similarly. But, nobody can be “the saddest person in the room” when “everybody is the saddest person in the room”. It's the land of the blind without any of those smug "one-eyes" around: heavenly.

I tried to imagine the same scene playing out a few hours later, with the sun down and Smashmouth’s All Star still playing, and was less optimistic. The vision felt a little uncomfortable, like watching a fly crawl into a horse’s nose and never come back out. But, if you can make it to Five Guys before seven pm, its a shameless experience. I give the whole dining experience five out of five cat food cans, which is actually a perfect score in the solo dining community.

There is also a new addition to the menu that needs to be honored: the Coca Cola Freestyle. For those who don’t know, this is the crowning jewel of the soda-dispenser community. If you haven’t seen or experienced one, you must. It is the ultimate in liquid dispensing. Simply: you have the option of your base—Coke, Sprite, Seagrams, Hi-fucking-C, water, etc.—and then a choice of flavor for each: plain, vanilla, black cherry, etc. The possibilities are literally infinite. And if ever you witness somebody choosing an unflavored Seagrams, be cautious. That’s pervert’s tonic.

Fuck Tiffany's: Breakfast at Republique

no. 624 south la brea ave, los angeles, ca

Republique, like me, has an asymmetrical face and body. It can be one of two restaurants depending on what time of day you visit. There is a deeply charming daytime vibe that always makes me feel a bit like Belle twirling through her sleepy provincial town, reading to sheep, engaging in tethered dance-offs with the busboys and befriending tea kettles. The restaurant is so beautifully rustic in the daylight that a mustachioed baker of yore could literally wheel a cart of gourds past your table and it wouldn’t be scary.

The nightlife, on the other hand, is just that: a nightlife. Peppered with hot older men in tan suits and curator’s glasses, but otherwise the clientele (not to be confused with the restaurant) is a bit Vegas-y. The last time I stopped in for dinner—it was nine on a Monday night, a safe hour I thought—I was swept up in a tempest of bootcut jeans and chain necklaces. LA lost a lot of good cologne that day. Like A LOT a lot.

Unfortunately, its for good reason. The dinner is impossibly satisfying, which has subsequently (or consequently, depending on how aware you are of the infinitesimal brevity of human life) landed Republique on almost every Top Ten LA list since its opening. Lists like these are like catnip for dickheads. I eagerly await the day these people begin to filter out of the dinner service and shuttle off to the next big thing, leaving just me and the tan-suited men to finally enjoy a lamb dish together….I'm already planning conversation topics for that occasion. Up first: “Kids These Days”.

Until then, I’ve found great purpose in the Republique breakfast/brunch. Its never crowded and— bless them all—composed almost entirely of solo diners. In some ways, it is the solo-dining destination: hearty, delicious, quiet, and private. Unlike the dinner service, you order at the counter, after passing a display of glistening pastries, all made-up like the greeting committee at the Moonlite BunnyRanch. I usually take a pastry, order a main dish, a Gibraltar, and a house made Agua Fresca. Then there’s a side room I can sit in so nobody has to actually see which pastry I’ve chosen (not all of us want the prettiest one, some of us are into the weirder looking ones that have to work harder to impress you).

For a while, I was very taken with the tomato-gruyere-bacon croissant. This croissant could wipe the fucking smile off a clown’s face, its that awe-inspiring. It has an heirloom tomato on top of it (I mean...come on!) and thick-cut bacon inside, with melted gruyere and a floppy leaf of basil. Like… that’s just so chic and creative. But, recently, by request, the bacon has been removed, because this is Los Angeles, and everybody’s a fucking asshole.

The silver lining is that I’ve found a maybe-even-better replacement: a savory little square tart with peas, tomatoes, caramelized onions, and a cheese that I dont know the name of and don’t need to. In the shadow of this tart, all language is eclipsed. Just order it. Take it to go. I honestly don't care how you do it, but get it done. In fact, order a lot of pastries: the Paris Brest, a donuty-hazelnut-bedazzled treat, is almost as good as as a real Paris breast, which brings the whole thing back to Belle, in her French village, walking by a hot peasant, who operates a water spout with her heaving bosom, which is maybe the dopest move in the book. Very Anthro.

Anyway, guys. Republique. Cant really go wrong if you get there before six. If you get there after six, just don't go alone, and maybe get tested after.

How to Order Delivery Without Getting (even more) Depressed

We live in a magical age. For the most part, I hate everything about it and think we’ve ruined this possible universe and can’t wait for “the big one” to slough us all off into the sea, however… did you know that you can literally have anything delivered to your home without having to talk to a single person? Its like a fairytale!

I’ve been laid up the past week with a kidney infection. You may ask yourself, as I did, how one gets a kidney infection. I will say only that it involves unfortunately narrow anatomical canals and leave it at that. Outside of the pain, being bedridden is the best. I think I was born to be bedridden. There’s a tweet in there maybe. The work that I’ve done during this downtime can best be described as “SOLO-DINING XXXTREME”. I have ordered delivery eleven times, from myriad vendors, and to say I’m proud would be an understatement. I’ve used: Grubhub, Postmates, Seamless. I got a thermometer and three bell peppers from Yummy dot com. Am I going to eat them? Probably not. Do I regret ordering them? Not for a fucking second.

It really boils down to: what is the least depressing way to request that a restaurant actually bring their food to my home—because I’m too lazy to drive—so that I can eat it out of the box like some divorced Sanda Bullock character—because I’m too lazy to get or wash a plate—while standing over my trashcan, wearing either a top or bottoms but rarely both? Believe it or not, there are ways to make this process less dark.

Make a day of it. People have it backwards. When it comes to delivery, they want to wallow and order cheap. But the very act of ordering in is already one of desperation, so it must be tempered with good food. You have to spin your decision as if its a declaration of luxury and not of surrender. What I mean is: no pizza (unless its chic pizza [chic pizza means handmade crust]), no Chinese (unless its chic Chinese), and no Thai, ever. Thai is just depressing. I don't know why. Something about it reeks of beanbag culture, like it was cooked under a blacklight from Spencer's Gifts.

No styrofoam. This is essentially an extension of the first, but really, guys, styrofoam is dark. The sound it makes when you have to shove it down in the alleyway trashcan. The way it looks in the bag. I don't know about you, but opening a paper delivery bag and seeing styrofoam containers inside always feels a bit like staring into the bleak cataracted eye of doom, or at least of the blind stage hand in The Prestige. There’s no way not to immediately experience some mental variation of “this is what my life has come to” in that moment. Avoiding styrofoam will cross most depressing delivery options off the list. Personally, I like my food packaged in a brown recycled-paper box. The kind of box that would use argan oil on its hair or subscribe to domino magazine if it could. Makes me feel powerful.

Destroy the Evidence. I once saw a bottle of Axe body wash in my father’s shower. That was depressing. But, second to that is seeing old takeout containers sitting in the bag, somewhere in your home. Also, they smell. Take the trash out as soon as you’re finished. If that’s too much work, leave it outside your front door for the next day. Insider's tip: I heard that, if you're lucky enough, and if you believe, Louie Anderson might come and take the bag away and leave his pocket change and a losing scratcher ticket in its place.

Never call. It's weird, it's traceable, it''s unnecessary, and its an opportunity for the restaurant to eventually recognize your voice and order--and that's a kingdom from which no man returns.

Zen & The Art of Avoiding Conversationalists

La Brea Bakery 468 S La Brea @ 5th

This isn’t really about La Brea Bakery; though its a great spot when I want something better than La Boulange and less crowded than Republique (and in one of life’s kinder gestures, La Brea Bakery actually sits between them geographically. So kudos, the Lord, to you on that clever arrangement). On the solo-dining scale, it passes. Most of the one-person tables don’t face the bigger tables, so you can suck tomatoes like the Steward of Gondor without any chance of, just then, locking eyes with a man you’ll now never date. But, this isn’t about that man.

This is about Sunday morning, when I sat down at their counter for breakfast.

Last week, I said that bar-counters are prime seating for people eating alone, and that’s true, but I failed to mention the risk involved: you have to sit with other people eating alone. Most of them, like you, are there to avoid conversation, but there are a few who are there to manufacture it, and this can be problematic. I made a Venn Diagram to better explain:

This all came to me at the counter. I was just sitting there when I felt a dark energy enter the room, akin to the strange Eastern winds in Chocolat, moorish and mysterious. I could sense it as a dog does an earthquake it is still unable to prevent: there was a conversationalist nearby. He sat a few stools down, but his urge to say something was palpable. On these occasions, the obvious reaction is to avoid eye contact, but also to know what you’re up against. A brief glance at this man revealed a lanyard dangling around his neck, covered in tourist pins and brandishing a plastic whistle. A chill went down my spine. A “conversation piece”.

What was I to do? I was a sitting duck.

I’ve found the best strategy is to stop a conversation before it starts. Build a seasoned awareness. Ask yourself, is this person…

• …whistling? • …wearing a vest? • …taking things out of their pockets and laying them out on the table? • …making unnecessary noises so as to elicit your attention? ie. tapping their fingers, moving silverware about, quietly saying words to themselves

If you get the feeling they want to talk, do not say even a word, do not look up, do not offer yourself up to anything. I know this may sound “funny” to you, but its not. You won’t be laughing when you’re stuck for two hours listening to some guy named Wernli tell you how The Alchemist ruined his life.

It takes practice and a thick skin to be cold. Sometimes you feel for the guy—I mean, we’re all lonely, right? RIGHT?!? haha you guys are fun—but that empathy will always fade the minute he starts bringing out weird laminated photos of celebrities, or pulls a quarter from behind your ear, or refers to a helicopter as a “whirlybird”, or, worst case scenario, sings.

Sometimes even coldness doesn’t cut it. A lot of people eat alone because they’ve crossed boundaries with everyone else in their life—they’d have no problem crossing yours. In this case, all you can really do is hope for some poor kid from Iowa to sit down and take the bait of the talker’s first question, which is usually a complaint about the barstools, like “Not the easiest things to get on, are they?” That kid has now signed on to hear about this man’s back problems, and subsequently, his issues with healthcare. I say “man” because, maybe being a woman myself, Ive never dealt with a woman weirdo, though, trust me, I know they exist. But, then, that’s another post: “How To Cope When YOU’RE The Weirdo”.

La Boulange

359 S La Brea @4th

Let’s start with the cafe behind my apartment—because not only am I a curmudgeon but I’m a lazy one, too. Rule number one of dining alone: If its before 4pm, cafes are the safest place for you. After 4pm, you can sit at the bar of any restaurant and nobody’s going to question your being there: you’re clearly just an alcoholic or a prostitute (eesh, my second prostitute reference in so many posts… eh, so be it. I’m setting a mood here). These are the grand pillars of dining alone: Cafes and Restaurants with Bar Seating. This is where we can really shine in our dysfunction, you guys.

Today let’s focus on “the Cafe”and on La Boulange, where I am having a “Parisian Omelet” that looks a bit like the iconic still in La Voyage Dans La Lune, replete with possible eyebrow:

I’m not so upset about it. I don’t need much from the first meal of the day (clinically proven to be the least important—ask any scientist). Usually my breakfasts exist to sop up some liquid dinner I had the night before (read: wine) or to provide me with a reason to leave my apartment, creating an illusion that I, too, am a part of the working world (read: I’m not). Cafes are great for these purposes. One can have a coffee, order food—or not order food! the options are endless!—sit alone, and do anything short of a live birth from their table in the corner without inspiring even a second thought from anybody else in the place. The only people who even go to cafes with others are usually there to meet each other for the first time or the last time—cafes are that rare golden field where a solo patron actually feels “better off” alone.

La Boulange is convenient as a cafe option, and not much else. If it wasn’t a hundred feet from my front door, I’d go elsewhere. But people keep asking me about it because for months it was a massive construction site on La Brea, and as the bandages came off the frame, exposing evermore mason jars and industrial lighting fixtures, people began to talk: what is this place? is it good? could this be the next big thing in mason jars and industrial lighting fixtures? La Boulange is owned by Starbucks and for some, that’s all the information thats necessary. If you think of it like going to a Starbucks you may actually be pleasantly surprised. Do not think of it as some chic new farm-to-table spot though, and don’t you fucking dare think of it as an alternative to Le Pain Quotidien. There is no alternative to LPQ. But maybe that’s a post for another day. A special post. A holiday post.

La Boulange does look nice-ish from the outside, but the interior is sort of like a sitcom set of a dwell magazine house. You feel as though you could lean on the wrong wall, topple the place and end up cartoonishly shrugging in a pile of rubble. Even though the interior is all wood and metal, nice lighting, chalkboard signage (let’s call this trend over), a DIY condiment bar (here the Starbucks lineage really shines through), there’s a feeling of 2D-ness to it all, like a phone plugged into nothing. I certainly don’t need organic or sustainable—it doesn’t offend me if their chairs aren’t made from the recycled canes of Polio survivors (I can say that, because I have Club Feet) or weathered barn doors. The only problem is: the food mirrors the interior. Its got a nice lacquer, but no philosophy or earnestness. Its what Disney would make if they decided to open a cafe called Gepetto’s on Main Street.

La Boulange serves my purposes just fine. Put it this way, I don’t even think I’d know a “good breakfast” if I had one. But, for everyone else, just go to LPQ instead. Tell them “Clubby” sent you. They’ll know what you mean ;-)

Table Of One vs. Table For One

I had a problem naming this blog. I knew the gist of the title but I couldn't figure out if it should be "Table OF One" or "Table FOR One". Normally when you go into a restaurant, unless you are holding up your fingers to represent party-size, you say "table for two" or three or four. I guess even I would say "table for one" in the heat of the moment. But, I felt that, for the purposes of this blog, Table Of One was the right choice. The difference being that "for" has a circumstantial air to it, as if the table is not yet set, as if you are requesting that the table be prepared for that number of people. "Of", on the other hand, has a sense of permanence, as if the table was set long ago, back when you came out of the womb already cynical and introverted, social anxieties locked into your DNA along with a grotesquely long torso and a penchant for older Jewish men. Of tells the host or hostess that you are a party fixed in size, that you always have and will be a table of one.

I am a table of, not for, one. I love to eat, and I like to do it alone. It isn't that I dislike group dining, only that I prefer the alternative. Eating is a pleasure for me, and not a matter of survival. That's probably something I ought to talk to my therapist about, but she's Greek, so I think she'd understand. That said, I can think of nothing that gets in the way of pleasure more than planning, and when you eat with others, it's all planning: where should we go? who wants to drive? what should we order? how should we divide the bill? what the fuck are we going to talk about for an hour? the economy? is that still a thing? is it okay to leave the minute we've paid? When I eat alone, the anxiety of these matters dissipates and all that's left is the meal and me, and that's the kind of visceral conversation I crave. Salty, textured, sensual, buttery, hot, and to the point. No bullshit. Its like a form of prostitution: I'm paying for the exact brand of pleasure I want, without any of the small talk.

I'm not a chipper person. That much should be clear by now.

But, I'm happy when I eat. I love all food, even if I don't love all restaurants, or any of the people that eat and work in them. This is a blog about my experiences eating alone, about the restaurants that best cater to those experiences and about the ones that don't. Eating alone takes practice. Many people tell me that nothing sounds more depressing to them and they express great sympathy for me. They don't realize that, in saying that, they are simply adding to the reasons why I'd rather be a table of one.

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