I’m still picketing, I’m still on strike, but today I’m writing about going to a stupid LA café because why not!
My friend Caitlin is in town and wanted to go to Sqirl, which is a restaurant in my neighborhood that is famous for a lot of reasons. At first it was famous for making delicious “California” cuisine (they were a progenitor of the overpriced avocado toast), then it was famous for starting a wave of local gentrification, and then it was famous for jam mold. It has survived success and scandal, and today (like many cancelled entities) is not just surviving but thriving.
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It’s on Virgil Avenue, a street in my neighborhood where pupuserias and carnicerias are slowly but surely being replaced by natural wine bars and vintage t-shirt shops. There’s also now a bagel place where a bagel with fixins is, I kid you not, twenty dollars, and you will have to wait an hour in line for the privilege of purchasing it. It’s called “Courage,” something you’ll need in abundance to go through with the transaction.
Anyway, back to Sqirl! It’s a small, sparse space. Everything costs a lot of money but tastes delicious. The restaurant recently expanded and has a little shop next door where you can get things to go and buy mold jam as a gift.
Like most LA restaurants, it’s hard to parse the young, beautiful staff from the young, beautiful patrons, mostly because everyone exudes both an insouciance about life in general and eating in particular, which seems like an odd attitude for people who have chosen to go to / work at an eatery.
We got our food to go, which was fortunate because it spared us dining at the rickety al fresco set up (the flimsy metal patio is precariously close to the LA street and its abundant trash). We still had to linger another twenty minutes, however, since my sister ordered a matcha latte. This is a drink that as far as I’m aware involves mixing powder into milk, a task that seems like it should take less than twenty minutes. But the excess time afforded us some people watching.
Among the observed was an extremely chic mother daughter pair; both dressed in red boleros and black wide leg pants, off to (I assume) discuss the state of contemporary art. A group of models or actors near us asked the waiter to take a photo of their group with a film camera, which caused my friend Caitlin to whisper, “Are you serious?” under her breath or really a little bit over her breath, but it was okay because the sound was drowned out by passing garbage trucks and motorcycles.
Finally a model or actor who worked there delivered my sister’s latte and we were off to enjoy the fruits of our waiting safely at home, where any mold we encountered would be our own.
It's not an English muffin slathered with Marmite, so can't be found in my household.
They’re not models or actors, they’re wanna be directors!