Whipped McGrath Farms Tahitian squash soup with coffee-chile crème fraîche and whole-wheat croutons? Hand-chopped arctic char tartare turned out like a terrine with quatre épices? Spicy chocolate-chipotle mousse with avocado purée and crushed sweetened tortilla chips? The past few months have seen a lot of fascinating new restaurants open in Los Angeles, but the most interesting of them all may be a coffee shop in the restaurant-starved heart of Silver Lake, a place whose menu is designed by Providences Michael Cimarusti and Adrian Vasquez, and whose owners are devoted to the cult of coffee in the same way that a chapel might be dedicated to its saint. The cinnamon French toast is pretty good too, as are the salmon-pink slices of cured Tasmanian sea trout sprinkled with crème fraîche, tiny rice crackers and crushed wasabi peas; the Asian BLTs constructed from spiced pork belly; and the drink called Coffee and a Doughnut, which tastes exactly like a jelly doughnut dunked in joe.
