Plugs is The Angel’s recs column. On most Saturdays, you’ll get six picks—a restaurant, a bar, a shop, an ingredient, a person, and a treat—from someone in New York or Los Angeles who knows what they’re talking about, plus a selection of Angel-curated links. Plugs are for paid subscribers of The Angel only; upgrade your subscription to receive all six!
Wine expert Thatcher Baker-Briggs boasts quite the resume: he started working in fine dining restaurants as a teen, first at West in Vancouver and later Coi in San Francisco, before passing the Court of Master Sommeliers Certified Sommelier exam at just 22. He put in two separate stints at Michelin-starred Saison in S.F. — with a stopover as Head Sommelier at Takazawa in Tokyo in between — all before decamping to L.A., where he launched Thatcher’s Wine in 2021, first as an online bottle shop and later as a brick-and-mortar in Brentwood. The shop carries a mix of super-rare bottles and more accessible deals, and Baker-Briggs also supplies wine to fine restaurants like Anajak Thai, Felix, RVR, Holy Basil, Jon & Vinny's, Kato, and N/Naka, among others. A true restaurant kid at heart, Baker-Briggs dines out constantly, and he recently debuted his first wine label, Maison Q, intended explicitly for restaurants to sell by the glass. Here are his Plugs (#103!).
Restaurant: Hayato
There are very few restaurants I could eat at over and over again and still get excited about, but Hayato is one of them. Brandon is operating at another level—the precision, ingredients, sake, and hospitality make it one of my favorite restaurants not only in L.A., but anywhere.
