Plugs — Bryan Carter

L.A. food and drink recs from a well-seasoned GM

Plugs is The Angel’s recs column. Every week, you’ll get six picks—a restaurant, a bar, a shop, an ingredient, a person, and a treat—from someone in Los Angeles who knows what they’re talking about. (Plugs are for paid subscribers of The Angel only. However, if you’re in the restaurant industry and want a free subscription, hit me up. :))

#24 is Bryan Carter, the general manager of Echo Park’s Italian trattoria Bacetti and next-door wine bar Tilda. Bryan is a seasoned front-of-house operator with an impressive resume that includes a lengthy stint at NIGHT+MARKET, the excellent (and sadly now-closed) Flora Bar in New York, Brooklyn institutions Marlow & Sons and Franny’s (RIP), and The Ordinary in Charleston. Prior to getting into restaurants, he was a musician, and he keeps that muscle working by curating playlists for restaurants on both coasts. Great taste equals a great candidate for Plugs, and so here are his!

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Restaurant — Doubting Thomas

Since I usually work through dinner, I do a lot of my dining out during the day. There’s nothing more pleasurable than indulging in a late breakfast with a great cup of coffee while catching up on the NBA or finishing a crossword. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time at Doubting Thomas, a sleeper amongst L.A.’s cafes. With its focus on high quality produce and seasonal spins on comfort classics, DT more than deserves to hang its banner in the rafters with L.A.’s more heralded champions of breakfast like Sqirl and All Time. Its small but mighty kitchen cranks out the best breakfast burritos in town (the pork shoulder gets all the love, but the veggie burrito is near perfect). You also can’t go wrong with anything from their pastry display, as the owner Naomi got her start as a pastry chef for many of L.A.’s finest. My girlfriend is obsessed with the passionfruit pie with graham cracker crust and crème fraîche chantilly.

The famed passionfruit pie at Doubting Thomas. Photo by Bryan Carter.