Give brunch a chance at Majordomo
The Chinatown restaurant's Exec Chef talks to No Bad Days.
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Inside: I try the brunch at Majordomo and talk to Executive Chef James Bailey about why they added pancakes to the menu. Events at the bottom!
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Everyone is really upset about this Spencer Pratt feature in Interview Magazine. I’m not sure this story meant to glorify him—the photos make him look pale and flushed, bloated and small, and extremely unstylish. The quotes (and it’s just a collection of quotes in the actual link—not an interview) illustrate a man obsessed with his own fame and myth-making. But they reveal nothing new or interesting. It’s boring!!! If you’re going to do this for Andy Warhol’s Interview, really go for it. Give us something to bite our teeth into. Ultimately neither the photos nor the copy are clever enough to land as anything but a passive endorsement of a man who will likely destroy the city once given the power to do so. It’s a flaccid trolling effort, and I wish so many people didn’t take the bait.
The Intercept covered the Nithya vs. Rae struggle happening with LA’s left right now. They mention Rae’s X.com gaffe from yesterday, where she inadvisably retweeted a Spencer Pratt endorsement. Between that and the matching funds controversy, among other things, Rae’s campaign has suffered a couple of devastating setbacks these last few weeks. I’ve talked to a couple prominent friends and supporters of Rae over the last few days who’ve recently pulled back from her campaign. (More on that in my primary post-portem, coming soon.)
Speaking of nihilistic edgelords, Tenants of the Trees has since deleted their endorsement of Mayor Pratt after uproar and turned off the comments on all their posts. Did you know that Jason Alan Lev, the owner of this establishment, infamous for its drink-spiking allegations, also owns Honey’s, the queer bar on Western where Janelle Monae once filmed a music video, and where one leftist magazine recently had a party?
LA novelist Allie Rowbottom talked to Interview about her new novel, Lovers XXX. It’s “a porno chic romp through 1980s Los Angeles with a turbulent sapphic romance at its core.”
I’m excited to try Padi. It’s a new Indonesian all-day cafe in Hollywood.
Here’s how to have the best Sunday in LA, according to I Love Boosters star Taylour Paige. Do celebrities know there are other brunch restaurants that aren’t All-Time?
The Angel talked to a number of prominent LA food industry people about the proliferation of pop-ups and restaurant collabs. I just saw a Cafe Tondo x Lasita collab on my timeline, and a Budonoki x Mini Kabob collab as part of a summer series the presented in partnership with Opentable.
The treasured Olvera Street restaurant Cielito Lindo, famous for their taquitos, is in danger of closing. They’re asking the community for help. This is just the latest in a series of blows to the historic Mexican micro-neighborhood, whose character and charm is getting rapidly erased by LA’s broken bureaucratic system and troubled economy. Earlier this year, a judge ruled to evict the iconic Olvera Street donkey stand, which has been there for more than 60 years. (They also have an ongoing GoFundMe campaign.) La Luz del Día, a taqueria which has been on that street since the 1950s, is also having trouble staying open. Protect Olvera Street!
Upscale Korean restaurant Danbi—brought to you by the team behind Liu’s Cafe—has reopened after closing for renovations for more than a month. Last year, they were on the LA Times’ 101 list.
Melrose is getting a Daybird location. This one looks like it will have seating, finally.
Give brunch a chance at Majordomo
Depending on who you are, brunch can be a painful proposition, evocative of cheap prosecco and pancakes served at a significant markup on the price of eggs and flour. Brunch at an upscale dining establishment can feel like getting robbed in broad daylight. And as much as a curmudgeonly diner may hate a brunch menu, you can trust that the chefs hate it more. Anthony Bourdain was famously a hater. (This distaste can feel a little gendered, given that brunch’s biggest mascots are depicted as wine moms, bachelorette parties, and gay men.)
So when I was invited to try the newish brunch menu at Majordomo and interview exec chef James Bailey about it, my dining partner was less than enthused. (“Can you try to get us in for dinner instead?”) But even the staunchest brunch hater may find themselves charmed by Majordomo’s brunch offerings. Their corn pancakes, topped with palm syrup and whipped creme fraiche, may be my favorite in the city right now. And the steak and eggs with crispy rice was so addicting we ate the leftovers cold, with our hands, while waiting for the train on the Chinatown platform. I talked to James about his work within the Momofoku empire and why you should maybe give brunch a chance:
How did you get involved with Momofuku?
I’ve always loved Dave. I grew up watching Mind of a Chef on PBS, and the way he talked about food—the lens he spoke from—was something I didn’t have in my life at the time. So I followed him throughout my career. When I heard he was opening a restaurant in Vegas, I thought my dreams had come true. But I didn’t get the job. I just didn’t have enough experience. I went to another restaurant, applied again, got denied again. Then I traveled abroad, worked in Copenhagen for a bit, and came back to Vegas. There was still only one restaurant I wanted to work at, so I applied a third time. Third time’s a charm. That was seven years ago now.
How does your own background—your family, growing up in Vegas—show up in the kitchen?
That’s one of the things I love most about Momofuku, and part of why I gravitated toward it. We’re always pulling from different cultures—techniques, ideas, philosophies, ingredients—in the right context, of course, all in service of making something delicious. My mom is Filipino and my dad is African American from Louisiana, so I find myself pulling from both in my menus. I also had an uncle with a German-Dutch background, and visiting his house every summer in Vegas gave me these very specific food memories I still draw on.
How does the Louisiana side show up?
I had to come up with some chicken dish at Momofuku Las Vegas that was literally half and half—like, the chicken came from my mom’s side—inasal, a Filipino way of marinating and barbecuing—and underneath it was straight-up collard greens with coconut milk and other aromatics. Being at Majordomo now, with the smoker and leaning into everything under the barbecue umbrella, I’ve been able to lean more into my dad’s side.
You spent time at MAD Academy in Copenhagen, the program focused on sustainability and food systems. How does that shape the way you build a menu in California?
The easy part here is the abundance—the produce, the creativity, learning to be mindful and tactful and to respect those ingredients. The bigger lesson from MAD was learning to engineer a menu backwards. Say we’re doing a tasting menu: the question becomes, how do we mitigate the waste? What are you going to do with the trim? You start building the dish around that from the beginning. That’s one of the biggest things I took away, and it still stays in my mind all these years later.
Momofuku has a distinct identity, and people walk into Majordomo expecting something specific. How do you cook within a house style while still expressing yourself?
There’s often a bit of tension, and I like that. Each concept has an identity. So for Majordomo, for example, it’s about California and we have the smoker. Those are the things I want to stay true to. Then I insert myself and give a little context about who I am. The number one thing is just making it delicious. If it’s delicious, it can speak to anybody, and everything else folds in more naturally without my having to explain it so much.
You came from Vegas, which has its own high-spectacle, high-volume dining culture. But LA is obviously a little different—especially recently, with this trendy shift toward “neighborhoody restaurants”. What surprised you about cooking for LA?
I don’t think I could’ve answered this fully without leaving Vegas after being there so long. The most surprising thing is the sense of community. In Vegas the clientele is transient—people are there for a reason, and the city tries to grab at every kind of palate. LA is more specific. It’s seasonal, and the biggest draw is the produce. Being able to focus on those specific things has been the biggest contrast for me. And I love seeing regulars—the people who keep coming back, not just to Majordomo but to all the restaurants around here. You don’t really get that continual community in Vegas.
This year you turned the midday service into brunch—it had been lunch before. Tell me about that decision.
Lunch started as an operational choice. We wanted to make use of the space, which is beautiful in the daytime. The lunch menu cruised for a while and brought in a lot of new faces along with our dinner regulars, but we needed another injection of energy. The timing felt right, too, with me still being fairly new to the team and wanting to see what we could do beyond dinner. So the conversation became: how do we make this more fun, more fresh? Hence brunch. When people hear “brunch,” it’s exciting—there’s a culture around it.
Yeah, “lunch” is, like, businessy. Whereas brunch is like, bottomless mimosas. Which is part of why it has a reputation problem with a lot of serious chefs. How did you approach building this one?
I was a brunch cook myself, at Bouchon in the Venetian—that was my first real brunch experience. Waking up super early, doing a thousand covers. Brutal, even though the food was simple and tasty. Having lived that, I wanted to put the team through something different: how can we make interesting, tasty food without it being so gosh-darn hard? So we leaned into things that are easy to execute but still really tasty. Steak and eggs—super classic. I always thought of it as a Vegas thing; you get steak and eggs at some casino at 4 a.m., that’s just how the night goes out there. Pancakes. Everybody loves a good parfait. Simple, clean, easy to execute, very tasty.
What dish are you most proud of?
Tough one. I can’t take all the credit, but I’d say the steak and egg crispy rice. The mushroom crispy rice at dinner has its own following, and being able to take that and put smoked steak and egg on it has been really fun to watch. It’s our highest-selling item right now, the one people gravitate toward the most. It took some inspiration and some collaboration, and now it’s the star of brunch.
Where are you eating when you’re not at Majordomo?
Lately I’ve been frequenting Found Oyster. Sqirl—I was around back when they were doing the rice bowls, and now they’ve opened for dinner. Thunderbolt is a favorite too; the Koji Killa is just… I keep wanting to go back for that nightcap.
What does LA do better than anywhere else, food-wise?
I’ll go to the far end of the spectrum and say fine dining. I recently visited Chicago and New York and had some of those experiences, and coming back, I think being lucky enough to visit some of the Michelin-starred spots here has been really inspiring. It’s the level of execution, but also the style of service—it’s relaxed, not stuffy or super buttoned-up, while still being professional. I’m a huge fan of service that’s fun and casual and engaging. LA does that best right now.
An ingredient or producer you’re most locked in on?
Chinese mahogany—I found it at the Santa Monica farmers market. This unassuming-looking herb. I was just curious enough to ask the person at the stand, and when I tasted it, it was something I’d never had before: oniony, garlicky, super umami. One of those things where you think, does anybody know about this? It’s seasonal, I think spring. If you can find it, it’s a revelation.
TONIGHT: The election’s not over yet. Join Kate Berlant, Atsuko Okatsuka, Joel Kim Booster, Guy Branum, Aparna Nancherla, Rachel Scanlon and more for a show at the Pico Union Porject. They’ll be fundraising for Estuardo (for CD9), Faizah (for CD11), and Marissa Roy (for LA City Attorney). Tickets here.
TOMORROW: The Greater Sudanese American Alliance of SoCal is hosting a Sudanese Culture and Folklore Day at the Torrance Cultural Arts with food, cultural performances, henna, art, and more. Tickets here.
SUNDAY: NBD reader Michael O’Neill Burns (who is actually quoted in that Intercept piece above) is screening his new film, Leave a Comment, at the Eastwood Performing Arts Center. It’s about “trying to understand what the internet is doing to our brains by watching one man descend into digital madness.” Tickets here.
finally, thank you for the correct spencer pratt interview mag opinion
this election has gotten so messy and i cannot wait until it's over.