The truth? We'd 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, incredible weekday breakfast.
THE SPOTS
In a space that’s about the size of a studio apartment, this all-day cafe near the Third Street Promenade somehow nails everything on its Korean and Korean-remixed menu. And that makes Interstellar the best sit-down breakfast option in Downtown Santa Monica. We're talking pork katsu sandos listed next to breakfast linguine with truffles and a poached egg. You can usually walk right in and get a table on a weekday morning, plus they offer free parking for 1.5 hours in the structure on 2nd and Broadway.
Phnom Penh Noodle Shack is a Long Beach institution and a tentpole of the city’s Cambodian population. Come Saturday and Sunday mornings, the place will be full of people eating velvety rice porridge and house noodle soup. If you want to skip the crowds, head over on a weekday when the dining room empties a bit and snagging a table upon arrival is almost guaranteed. That just means more time alone with some of the best dishes in LA.
At Loupiotte Kitchen in Los Feliz, the air smells like coffee, there are knick-knacks galore, and you'll probably see a five-year-old wearing the contents of a chocolate croissant on her face. This is the kind of cute, comforting French cafe you want on a weekday morning. Order something simple like fluffy scrambled eggs and a pesto-slathered vegetarian sandwich, or cheesy polenta with a deep-fried egg that's still runny in the middle.
There's something about an old-timey diner that softens people. Maybe it's something about the black coffee and the sounds of hashbrowns sizzling that get people to decompress before their lunch break. Whatever it is, Clark Street Dine has it. Come to his Hollywood spot (previously the iconic 101 Coffee Shop) to sit in a vintage leather booth that sinks under your butt just a bit. It's an ideal place to read the news by yourself or have a morning meeting over juicy patty melts, corned beef, and excellent sugar-dusted pastries that get all over your shirt, including some chewy monkey bread.
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.
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.
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.
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 post them on Instagram, it’s fine) but you should also get the kouign amann. It'll ruin your life.
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.
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.
