What’s in Vogue for 2024
Standing reservations, dessert carts, wet martinis, pubs, wraps, and more.
It’s a new year and The Angel is back from a much-needed holiday break. Thank you, readers, who came aboard last year, and welcome new subscribers! I’m looking forward to sharing more exciting stories playing out within L.A.’s food scene, to toying with new formats, and to bringing on more contributors this year (!!!).
To kick off 2024, I’m writing to you with a Magic 8 Ball beside my laptop. This is not a data-driven trend report, but instead a roundup of predictions for what, how, and where I think people will be eating and drinking this year in Los Angeles and beyond. Some of these are food items and behaviors that I would like to see proliferate more than I am sure of their trendiness, but that’s what makes this exercise fun. When there’s a will, there’s a way, right?
Here goes.
Standing reservations
Reservation culture got gross in 2023. This was most felt in New York and less true here in L.A., thankfully. If I have a way into a hot restaurant, great. If I get lucky and snag a table off a Resy Notify (stay glued to your phone, and you’re likely to get into Anajak this way), also great. But desperation isn’t cute and there are plenty of excellent, accessible places to dine. More importantly, it’s really nice to be an actual regular somewhere. The more you visit, the better you’re treated. The staff becomes familiar faces. Imagine spending your birthday in a restaurant where you’re well-known, as opposed to taking a risk at a hyped new spot.
So, for 2024, standing reservations are in. Invest in becoming a regular at a restaurant you love: pick a day and a time to eat there once a week, every other week, or even just once a month. “See you next Friday,” sounds good, doesn’t it?
Dessert carts
Long live the Contramar dessert tray, the Ballymaloe House dessert trolley, the Vito’s dessert cart. Pastry chefs are geniuses. Sugar is my #1 enemy and my one true love. And if I’m going to have dessert, it must be really good. What better way to make an informed decision than to visualize all of the possibilities at once? Few things excite me more in a restaurant setting than a dessert cart overflowing with cakes, custards, and tarts. More of this in 2024, please.
Muffins
Lamination is wizardry, and I will never ever tire of a classic butter croissant. This year, however, I want our most brilliant bakers to focus on reviving the homely muffin. There is something so nostalgic and satisfying about a warm blueberry muffin, an orange-scented muffin reminiscent of grocery store minis, even a flavor-packed bran muffin. Muffins don’t have to be boring, textureless, or throwaway. Muffins can be great.
Wet martinis
Martinis aren’t going anywhere, but the extra-dirty moment is over. This year, vermouth is the spirit to obsess over, meaning martinis will be wetter than ever before. (Sorry, mom.)
Frisée
It is past time for the Caesar craze to die. We do not need a Caesar on every menu. I repeat: we do not need a Caesar on every menu. So, Romaine is out. I will always buy more arugula than any other green. Give me all of the radicchio in the wintertime. But how about bringing frisée back in 2024? Bistros are firmly in, snacky European wine bars are everywhere. Frisée is wild, frisée is fun, and frisée is a sturdy receptacle for hearty dressings, inviting plenty possibility for salads that can stand in for the Caesar excess.
Wraps
“L.A. needs better sandwich shops” is something I’ve heard a lot, especially from East Coast transplants. Last year was a pretty good year for filling that void. The Cheese Shop of Beverly Hills reopened in a bigger space with a first-rate sandwich menu. (Is the La Zucca the best vegetarian sandwich I’ve ever had? Probably.) That Guy’s Sandwiches arrived in Glendale. Bub & Grandma’s doled out many fantastic tuna salads on challah bread. Open Market kept on innovating. Now, it’s time to turn our attention to the wrap. We love sandwiches. We love burritos. Let’s bring back the wrap. If Caesars must live on, let it be with chicken in a wrap.
Pubs
My favorite restaurant that I visited in 2023 was Stissing House in upstate New York. It’s extraordinarily cozy and palatial at once, wood-fired, and thoroughly delicious, from drinks all the way through to dessert. Chef-proprietor Clare de Boer is a mastermind. Relatedly, Margot Henderson, the chef-owner of London’s wonderful Rochelle Canteen, is now overseeing the food at the 17th-century Three Horseshoes pub in Somerset, England, which functions as an inn and restaurant. Stissing House is not billed as a pub, but it’s certainly British-leaning, pub-like, and similar in nature to what Henderson is up to in the English countryside. This style of dining appeals to me in a big way, no matter the season. Thus, pubs, in any shape or style, are in. Bring on the pints.
Espresso
Oat milk is actually over now. Too much sugar! Whole milk is fine in small amounts (I have a Jewish stomach). Even better is to do away with milk entirely. Cold brew and hot drip are forever, but it’s espresso’s time to reign supreme. One shot and your day is off to a good start.
Colostrum
If you’re drinking any milk, have it be colostrum, which I’m predicting will continue to gain steam in health-conscious circles. For those unaware, colostrum is the first milk that mammals produce after birth and is loaded with antibodies. It’s increasingly available as a supplement and in powder form at places like Erewhon. I tried colostrum a couple of years ago, in a very expensive smoothie at SunLife Organics in Malibu, and felt a bit queasy about it. I’m not necessarily vouching for this, but I do think it will be a thing.
Cupcakes
We’ve reached peak cake, and yet cupcakes remain out of style. Until now. It was 1998 when the Magnolia Bakery episode of Sex and the City aired. This time around, let cupcakes be less sweet, more seasonally informed, simply decorated, yet utterly flavorful. My dear friend Scott vehemently disagrees with my prediction for cupcakes, arguing that they are “like the Ayn Rand version of cake.” He has a point. Still, I want them back.
Hotel bars
Tower Bar and Bemelmans Bar became increasingly sought-after along with the post-pandemic thirst for timeless spots with uniform-clad servers. Beyond the handful of recently popularized hotel bars, however, are myriad seasoned bartenders at the helm of luxuriously appointed rooms with a wealth of spirits at their disposal—and they are available to us city slickers as much as their job is to service hotel guests. Here’s a newly printed list from Jordan Michelman, writing for the Los Angeles Times.
The End of “natural wine”
I am not the only one forecasting this, but I am adding my name to the proposition. Wine made with little to no intervention by thoughtful, small-scale producers in both the New World and the Old is the new norm. “Natural” is a somewhat meaningless umbrella term that conjures notions of kombucha-like flavors and copious orange wine for the imbibing masses, which is both reductive and stale. This year, I want to drink more elegant wines, more classic wines, more balanced wines. Sure, they’ll be “natural,” but I don’t need to be told that. Wine bars will be wine bars, not natural wine bars.
Thoughts? Feelings? Hit reply and let me know what you think.
“Sugar is my #1 enemy and my one true love.” Same!! 😂