LAGuide
Where To Get Weekday Breakfast In LA
Whether it’s a breakfast meeting, or just quiet time on a Thursday, these are our favorite weekday breakfast spots.
Can we let you in on a secret? We'll take a simple weekday breakfast over a fancy weekend brunch any day. Before you start composing an angry email defending the world of mimosas and burgers, hear us out. You won't have to wait two hours for a table on a weekday and the service is far less hectic. And you'll usually be surrounded by calm, caffeinated people instead of hungover and irritable weekenders. Whether you’re scheduling a morning meeting, grabbing a meal on the way to work, or just decided to start your day with some eggs and a pastry on a Wednesday morning, here are our favorite spots for a quick and satisfying weekday breakfast.
THE SPOTS
If you’re in the mood to eat something pan-fried, cheese-filled, or just extremely satisfying for breakfast, Angry Egret has you covered. This semi-hidden Mexican lunch counter inside Chinatown’s Mandarin Plaza serves innovative breakfast dishes that are just a bit too much, in all of the right ways. Between 9am and 3pm, Tuesday-Sunday, you can order at their service window and eat beneath a foliage-shaded canopy. We love their two-fisted tortas like the Baja shrimp po’ boy with pico de gallo, or the “Hey Porky’s” breakfast burrito with roasted pork, scrambled eggs, black beans, queso Oaxaca, and a slightly spicy salsa verde.
On weekends, it’s not uncommon to wait in line for hours at this tiny Virgil Village shop, known for baking some of the best bagels in LA. But arrive on a weekday, especially right around opening time, and you can pick up a chewy, Montreal-style burnt everything bagel topped with cream cheese and colorful ingredients like marinated salmon roe, heirloom tomatoes, and a fistful of fresh dill without waiting more than a few minutes. This order-at-the-window spot is open 7am to 2pm, Thursday-Monday for all your carb and coffee needs. Post up at one of the small sidewalk tables outside and savor your bagel in (relative) peace.
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Located in the terrifying depths of Hollywood, Otus is an extremely pleasant Thai cafe that’s open for breakfast. You could come to this bright white space with your laptop, or with a friend who, like you, is interested in ordering garlic chicken wings for breakfast. The menu is a mix of American and Thai breakfast options, so if you’re doing it right, you’ll end up with a table full of french toast, eggs, rice porridge with shitake mushrooms, and, yes, garlic chicken wings. Everything is very tasty and costs about $10.
Coffee for Breakfast
This tiny Venezuelan cafe works well for anything from a pre-work pit stop to a holiday when you wake up at 7 because your body doesn’t know it’s President’s Day. The space looks like any other cafe in North Hollywood, but rather than day-old pastries, they have fantastic things like empanadas, arepas, and cachapas (corn pancakes stuffed with cheese). It gets crowded quickly on weekends, but you won’t ever have to wait for a table during the week.
Eating weekday breakfast at All Time is the restaurant equivalent of that one friend who is always too put-together at 8am. It always looks nice in here, with lots of freshly-baked things at the counter, and stoneware coffee cups that the little devil on your shoulder will try to convince you to steal. The breakfast burrito is going to immediately convince you to abandon your grain bowl aspirations, but you won’t care by the time you’re eating it out on the patio. There will likely be a line, but it moves quickly, and while you wait you can stare at the dinner menu on the wall and wonder if it’s weird to come back later on tonight.
With its green ivy-covered patio, Cora’s feels like a little secret garden, but that’s also because it’s kind of a secret in general. Tourists somehow haven’t gotten to this cafe on Ocean in Santa Monica yet, so there’s never a wait to get inside. The food is what you’d expect from a fancy boutique hotel on a beach: bruschetta poached eggs, Turkish style breakfasts, and bagels that come with burrata instead of cream cheese. But you’re here for the best huevos rancheros on the Westside. The eggs come in a perfect puddle of beans and ranchera salsa that we would be perfectly happy eating on its own like soup.
Sure, most of us can handle making toast on our own. But sometimes you just want to outsource your breakfast making, and Lodge is one of the best places in the city for it. They’ll load up your toast with almond butter, cinnamon sugar (yes, you read that right), or our favorite, a few different types of cured fish. There are heartier options like shakshuka or a cinnamon roll the size of a child’s head, and the whole process is a lot quieter than the very busy brunch situation that happens here on weekends.
Friends & Family is an excellent all-day cafe in East Hollywood with two huge rooms where you can always find a place to sit. It’s pretty quiet in here, so if you need to clear your head before you stare at your computer screen all day, you can sit by the window and scroll through Twitter. Walk in any morning, and you’ll find a bunch of people eating great short rib hash, very filling grain bowls, and some of the best egg salad in LA.
If the Grand Central Market Wexler’s feels like eating at an old-school lunch counter, the Santa Monica location is more like your neighborhood diner. And while we could eat an Uncle Leo sandwich every week, we’re also not mad about the bigger menu they’ve started serving in Santa Monica. Alongside all the bagels and smoked fish you can handle, they’re doing things like babka french toast, cheesy scrambled eggs, and a soft boiled egg toast with potato and green goddess dressing. This is by far the best breakfast option in downtown Santa Monica, especially because the tourists haven’t found it (yet).
West Hollywood is ground zero for over-the-top breakfasts. Which is why we’re all about Breakfast by Salt’s Cure, a (you guessed it) breakfast-only spot in the original Salt’s Cure location on Santa Monica Blvd. And when we say breakfast-only, we really mean griddle cakes. Sure, you can get a breakfast sandwich here, but if you’re not loading up on these best-in-town pancakes, then you aren’t doing this place justice. They’re also open until 3pm, ideal for those breakfast-for-lunch situations.
Much like Courage Bagels across the street, weekend plans for Sqirl usually mean encountering a line wrapping around the corner and abandoning said plan for something mediocre and less difficult. Weekday plans for Sqirl, however, mean walking straight up the counter and ordering more brioche toasts with ricotta and jam than you could possibly eat.
Huckleberry is another place that goes from total insanity on weekends to almost library quiet on a weekday morning. The roasted mushroom scramble and some of the best pastries in town taste so much better when you haven’t waited in line and then battled with a Santa Monica mom for a table.
Republique is one of the city’s best French restaurants at night, but is also one of the city’s best bakeries during the day. You should probably get some eggs (go ahead and Instagram them, it’s fine) but you should also absolutely get the kouign amann because it’s one of the most delicious things you’ll ever put in your mouth.
Weekday mornings might be the best way to experience Gjusta. Things are so quiet, they dispense with the ticket system entirely, so you can stroll straight up to the counter and order your breakfast bialy without waiting approximately a million years. You might even get a seat out on the patio. The egg bialys are great, but our go-to is always the pastrami gravlax with herbed cream cheese on a bialy, and a baklava croissant chaser. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and we are ready and willing to take advantage of that.
You know why this is on the list: that breakfast burrito. It why we’re here, it’s why you’re here, it’s why your coworker makes any excuse to swing by Fairfax on their way to work. So yeah, get the breakfast burrito.
We’ve spent more time and money at Sycamore Kitchen than we care to admit. But we are suckers for the multiple charms of this bakery and cafe on La Brea: a big courtyard out front, many excellent egg dishes, and the fact that you practically are forced to order a pastry after staring at the huge selection while you wait in line.
Nick’s is one of those places you walk into and instantly imagine becoming a regular. The nearly 70-year-old Chinatown diner is a flat-out breakfast institution and kind of greasy spoon spot where you post up at their U-shaped counter, eat some ham and eggs, and listen to the two guys next to you talk about their issues with Nixon. You head to Nick’s completely for the experience, but walk out thinking the food was pretty damn good too.
Millie’s is the Eastside breakfast spot that rules them all. The place is 90 years old, so it’s safe to say they know their way around an egg. Millie’s isn’t doing anything particularly special or different, but she’s always there when we need her, probably with a perfectly acceptable omelette in hand.
