My first dinner at the Bruce pop-up happened last month out of desperation.
I’d planned with a friend to arrive extra early at one of L.A.’s current impossible-to-book restaurants in hopes of snagging a couple of unreserved seats. Then: ugh. I’d forgotten I had a late afternoon doctor’s appointment. By the time I was free, we were scouting possibilities in different neighborhoods.
“Wilde’s isn’t taking any more names for the night.”
“At Hermon’s. Quoted a 90-minute wait for the bar.”
“Now at Vandell. About the same thing.”
It dawned on me: My colleague Stephanie Breijo had written the previous week about a pop-up formed by three chefs — Brittany Ha, Hannah Grubba and Alex Riley — banding together after they’d lost their jobs at Horses, which closed suddenly in December. Bruce is the name of Ha’s infant son. The trio had taken over the tiny open kitchen at Cafe Triste in Chinatown three nights a week through February.
This is the L.A. pop-up to try right now
The reservations had been snapped up for the night, but we agreed to meet there and take our chances. We scored the last two barstools before the space filled to standing-room overflow.
Tuna carpaccio arranged in a circle arrived first, the slices beaming ruby like sun through stained glass. Radicchio leaves had been dressed with kefir and gorgonzola, the tart and the sweet funk offsetting the bitter. Clams, splashed in bright and herby broth, were paired with a narcotic mound of thin fries.
Starry little specks of pastina had been cooked in Parmesan-enriched brodo, flecked with saffron and finished with a thick pat of butter. Perhaps risotto alla Milanese had been the inspirational spark, but the result ended up tasting like very savory, luxurious oatmeal. It was strange, and it was wonderful.
Brittany Ha, photographed at Horses in November 2021, now runs the Bruce pop-up with chefs Hannah Grubba and Alex Riley.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
In honor of Valentine’s week, Grubba had fashioned puff pastry into swans, poised tête-à-tête and filled with banana pudding for dessert. So fun.
We crunched through the last bites of crackly dough and I marveled, once again, at the specific goodness that can come from L.A.’s pop-up culture.
The tone of the cooking — bistro-adjacent and creatively liberated — orbits the menu style at Horses, and how could it not? These were the talents that sustained the restaurant through scandals that were the fault of the founding owners, not them. No one should lose their source of income without warning; the silver lining, though, is that the Bruce platform is how the city begins to better identify these chefs removed from a tarnished, convoluted name.
Bruce at Cafe Triste had some distinct pleasures: The view of Ha, Grubba and Riley focused, heads down, moving around one another with intuitive practice. The staff pouring left-of-center glasses of sparkling wine from Emilia-Romagna or something minerally but not too oxidized from the Jura.
Salt-and-pepper shrimp from the Bruce pop-up inside Justine’s Wine Bar in Frogtown.
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
February ended, and happily Bruce found a second home on Thursdays and Fridays through March at Justine’s Wine Bar in Frogtown.
These chefs have a groove: the always-hoped-for, too-little-experienced synergy of pros cooking the kinds of full-throttle food they’d make for themselves, attracting customers who are vibing with it. A relocation doesn’t disrupt the rhythm.
At Justine Hernandez’s wine bar, lined with floral, birds-of-paradise-themed wallpaper I envy, I began another Bruce dinner with tuna — this one with chunkier slices fanned over a sauce that evoked vitello tonnato and a quenelle of smooth caponata. Tuna reappeared later in the form of mousse-like conserva stuffed inside small, blistered peppers, booming the occasional note of fresh oregano. Wisps of cheddar covered a salad of celery hearts and avocado, cut so that the forms were indistinguishable until the ingredients reached the taste buds. An aioli of sorts, flavored with malt and curry powder, pooled over crisped, golf ball-sized potatoes.
The scene inside Justine’s Wine Bar during the Bruce pop-up on March 12.
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Servers here have the same instinct for drink pairings: Italian or French, flinty or herbal or citrusy-floral.
The menu changes every week, so it isn’t wise to form attachments, but I hope to again relish the sheer, snappy textures of salt-and-pepper shrimp tossed with capers, slivered garlic and roasted red peppers. Squeeze the halved lemon on the plate hard over everything.
The one carryover dish? The wacky-brilliant pastina, perhaps even richer and zingier with saffron.
And again, the joy of Grubba’s desserts: a modest parfait glass filled with velvety blood orange sorbetto and mascarpone cream (yes, it tasted like an urbane creamsicle), a healthy wedge of lemony milk cake, a slab of semifreddo scented with Marsala and toasted rice for caramel depths.
How will the juiced, free-thinking hive mind of Bruce evolve? Into a restaurant of its own, I hope. But as is the way of pop-ups in Los Angeles, we’ll have to keep following along on Instagram to find out.
Celery heart and cheddar salad from the Bruce pop-up.
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
This week in Noma
No, to answer the question of the moment, I will very much not be dining at Noma L.A.
In a world ablaze with war, soiled with AI slop and fractured by the addictive overstimulation of social media, it is powerful testimony that nothing could rightly distract the food sphere from the week’s news cycle focused on Noma.
At its center is Julia Moskin’s painstaking, revelatory reporting in the New York Times, describing allegations of physical and psychological abuse inflicted by chef René Redzepi on 35 former employees in stomach-turning detail. Her story comes after former Noma employee Jason Ignacio White, who previously ran its fermentation lab, started posting abuse allegations last month on Instagram from others who had also worked at the Copenhagen restaurant.
Stephanie Breijo relentlessly followed the story this week, reporting on Redzepi’s initial response to the online allegations, the residency’s resoluteness (written with Suhauna Hussain) to continue its 16-week, $1,500-per-person run, the sponsors that withdrew support of the L.A. pop-up and Redzepi’s decision to step away from the restaurant and his community-building nonprofit MAD.
My fellow critic Jenn Harris wrote about why she won’t be going. Gustavo Arellano thought through how Noma’s aims run counter to L.A. culture.
The story remains in play; there will be plenty more to parse. Nothing is remotely funny about this, but humor is good medicine: Read Lauren Saria’s smart take on Noma in the San Francisco Standard all the way to the end.
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