 Breadbar has opened in Santa Monica. It's the third Breadbar outpost in L.A. The first Breadbar opened on 3rd Street in Los Angeles, followed by the Century City bakery. (None are affiliated with Paris master baker Eric Kayser anymore.) Expect more Breadbars....
Meanwhile -- for "bread-heads" -- the Century City Breadbar on Sept. 20 will host bread historian Steven L. Kaplan, Goldwin Smith professor of history at Cornell University and author of "Good Bread Is Back." He'll conduct a bread tasting, explain the process of tasting and discuss his extensive taste-testing research of bakeries across Paris. (Reservations required.)
Breadbar, 602 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 395-9490; 8718 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles, (310) 205-0124; 10250 Santa Monica Blvd., Century City Westfield Shopping Center, (310) 277-3770.
-- Betty Hallock
Photo credit: Breadbar
 Breadbar will hold its first annual "Jam Session" on Saturday, Sept. 13, at the bakery's West 3rd Street location in L.A. At the class taught by executive chef Rogelio Marhx, fresh fruit, herbs, flowers and vegetables from farmers markets will all get turned into preserves, jams and marmalades. After class, it's an hourlong tea party with Breadbar's pastries, scones and muffins. There's no fee, but space is limited to 30 participants. RSVP to events@breadbar.net.
Meanwhile, wondering what to cook for a Sephardic Rosh Hashana? Or for a Moroccan dinner party? Mélange cooking school has opened in Newport Beach and is offering classes such as, well, "Sephardic Rosh Hashana" (learn to make peppercorn-crusted roasted leg of lamb with pomegranate sauce; chicken braised with cinnamon, lavender and saffron; and wheatberry salad with apple and mint), "Kasbah Cooking" (lamb tagine with caramelized baby onions and quince; warm spinach salad with preserved lemons and olives; dates stuffed with almonds and pistachios) and "Savory and Sweet Tarts" (eggplant and goat cheese tart; Normandy apple and cream tart with Calvados whipped cream; dark chocolate and pear tart with crème fraîche).
Breadbar, 8718 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles, (310) 205-0124. Mélange, 1011 Camelback Drive, Newport Beach, (949) 812-8162.
— Betty Hallock
Photo of farmers market peaches by Robert Lachman/Los Angeles Times
 Ever have a food debate? A group of friends and I had one recently. The topic: cake.
Fittingly, it started over dessert -- a birthday cake -- with an offhand comment from my friend Miranda:
"My favorite cake is coconut. Soon after we started dating, [my boyfriend] Rod and I were walking past these cakes at a store. I spotted an amazing coconut cake, turned to him and said, 'I could stick my face in that for an hour and not come up for air.' "
Then someone else chimed in with their favorite cake: devil's food. Half a second later forks were flying as the cake debate ensued: Which cake rules, and which L.A. bakery reigns supreme?
For Miranda, the best cake bakery was a no-brainer:
Read on »
 Actually, chef-restaurateur Hans Rockenwagner is from a town in southern Germany called Schliengen, not Berlin. Nonetheless the Berliners (jam-filled donuts) at Rockenwagner's new Santa Monica bakery were flying off the shelves this morning. Maybe because the locals know that Friday is the only day they're made--or maybe because JFK's famous speech has been in the news of late, thanks to Barack Obama's current European tour and Obama's speech in Berlin. (Click to listen to both speeches, via YouTube.) Politicos need to eat too, especially those with a sense of place-name irony. Rockenwagner, who was behind the bakery's pretty wooden counter-top (which he made himself) this morning, pointed out that, technically, it should be "Ich bin Berliner." Unless one is wearing a jelly-donut suit. Rockenwagner's Berliners--pillowy, sugar-dusted, filled with Julius Meinl raspberry jam--were so yummy I wouldn't mind wearing a few of them, if only for the sake of German grammar.
If donuts aren't your thing, there's plenty to choose from, all made at Rockenwagner's Washington Blvd. location and brought in (sandwiches are assembled on-site) daily. Raspberry jam-filled Linzer cookies, all those pretzel rolls, and a catalog of tiny sandwiches: tuna on brioche, salami on a pretzel roll, turkey and provolone on tiny pretzel baguettes. The coffee is also from Vienna, Austria-based Julius Meinl; the house-made muesli is soaked overnight in a milk-cream combination and loaded with walnuts and grated apples. "The original muesli recipe," says Rockenwagner. "In Switzerland they put whipped cream on it." Ah. Something to wear with that donut suit.
Berliners, $2 from Rockenwagner Bakery, 311 Arizona Ave., Santa Monica. (310) 394-4267; also at 3 Square Cafe, 1121 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice. (310) 399-6504; and at the bakery at 12835 Washington Blvd., Los Angeles. (310) 578-8171 (where the photo was taken, since they were out of Berliners in Santa Monica by the time I got there).
--Amy Scattergood
photo by Amy Scattergood
 Pastry chef Kristy Choo, owner of Jin Patisserie in Venice, says she'll be opening a second location in Century City in the fall.
The new store will be in the InterContinental Hotel on Avenue of the Stars. It'll be tiny — 360 square feet — enough space for a tight-quarters kitchen area, a bar that seats four (with more seating available in the lobby of the hotel) and a retail counter and display case featuring Choo's gorgeous cakes, petits fours, truffles, macarons and cookies.
Jin Patisserie, 1202 Abbott Kinney Blvd., Venice, (310) 399-8801. Coming this fall: InterContinental Hotel Los Angeles Century City, 2151 Avenue of the Stars.
— Betty Hallock
Photo by Jin Patisserie
 I'm having a small-cake moment. In the past couple of days I've had a lot of little cakes, like the individual cakes that pastry chef Elizabeth Belkind (formerly of Grace and Campanile) has created for Cake Monkey, the bakery she launched with her partner, Lisa Olin, from a commercial kitchen (they're currently looking for a retail space).
Belkind makes individual layer cakes -- dense, moist cake (there's brown butter and buttermilk in the batter) with, for the most part, plenty of buttercream frosting. But the favorite around here is her lemon custard cake with huckleberries that's frosted with an Italian meringue (or "toasted marshmallow frosting"). The texture of the meringue is fantastic -- light and smooth and creamy -- and the combination of lemon and huckleberries is dreamy.
And then there are the petit fours from Valerie. Again, the lemon cake is a winner: four layers of lemon cake with layers of tart lemon ganache in between, finished with white chocolate.
Cake Monkey, see website; Valerie, 3360 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, (888) 706-1408.
-- Betty Hallock
Photos by Betty Hallock
 Anyone who thinks that vegan pastry is a contradiction in terms should try breakfast at Akasha, the new Culver City restaurant that opened last Tuesday. Dinner is up and running, lunch is coming in two weeks; in the meantime, Akasha's bakery opens at 7 a.m. every day except Sunday. Chef-owner Akasha Richmond creates the Asian-style shortribs and wild pepper scallops with black rice risotto on the dinner menu, but the bakery is pastry chef Verite Mazzola's domaine.
Culver City is familiar territory for Mazzola -- before a stint at the Huntley, she did the desserts at Ford's Filling Station, which is only a scone's throw (sorry) down the street. Akasha is in the historic Hull Building; after a lengthy redesign, the space now sports high ceilings, exposed brick-and-iron walls and enormous arched windows that provide the generous lighting for Mazzola's trays of goodies: vegan rustic apple tarts made with spelt, goji-mango-granola cookies, lavender shortbread cookies, vegan Meyer lemon scones, house-made poppyseed bagels, individual pumpkin-seed tea cakes. Everything is organic; many pastries are vegan and some are even gluten-free. And if you're not a morning person, you can always order Mazzola's crème brûlée with confit kumquats for dessert.
Akasha Restaurant Bar and Bakery, 9543 Culver Blvd., Culver City; (310) 845-1700.
-- Amy Scattergood
Photo by Amy Scattergood
 Until Christmas, I'd never heard of a gourmet treat coming from Redwood City, a town long mocked by its Bay Area neighbors as Deadwood City. (I suppose it was asking for that when it chose the dull city slogan "Climate Best by Government Test.") But thanks to St. Nick, I've learned about a Redwood City bakery that makes exceptional biscotti.
La Biscotteria is the name, and biscotti is pretty much its game, though it does sell panettone. It started out making classic anise biscotti, and then, in the '90s, introduced versions with lemon peel, orange peel and raisins. The raisin flavor is quite traditional, designed to go with wine rather than coffee. All flavors but raisin are avaiable dipped in chocolate (white chocolate, in the case of the lemon biscotti).
They're excellent: fresh, crunchy and buttery, not over-sweet and not stingy with the almonds. I've just about finished my chocolate-dipped anise biscotti, and lemon is next on the list.
-- Charles Perry
Photo by Charles Perry
 Macarons -- I thought Parisians might be over them, but I couldn't have been more wrong. On a recent visit, they were still everywhere. At Ladurée, they served as ornaments on Christmas trees, and at Sadaharu Aoki, they decorated little domes of green tea cake. At Pain et Sucre, the Marais shop opened by former Pierre Gagnaire pastry chefs (which also has an impressive display of marshmallows,  right), there were pistachio-and-griotte (sour cherry) macarons on skewers. Yes, macaron kebabs.
I happened to be walking past Pierre Hermé on Rue Vaugirard near closing time, and it was swamped as usual, by locals picking up holiday dinner party treats and Japanese tourists who already had stormed Sadaharu Aoki and were weighed down by bags of pastries.
I scanned the macaron selection, which included flavors such as 25-year aged balsamic vinegar (for 8 euros apiece!); black truffle (also 8 euros); white truffle, macadamia and hazelnut; and olive oil and vanilla. And then I saw the chocolate and foie gras -- really beautiful red macarons burnished with gold dust and filled with chocolate ganache and a daub of foie gras in the center. But I really wasn't in the mood to stand in line for precious macarons in weird flavors, some of which cost nearly $12 each. (Yes, the dollar is that bad, but the price in euros is outrageous too.)
So I left the shop ... but didn't make it past the Cacharel store before I thought to myself: "Who am I kidding? Chocolate and foie gras?!" I slipped back into the store just before they drew the silk curtain over the sliding glass door, and I bought a chocolate-and-foie-gras macaron, among others.
The verdict? Yes, I love chocolate, and yes, I love foie gras, but I don't need to eat them together. Though I'm certain Pierre Hermé's chocolate-and-foie-gras macaron is the most beautiful macaron in Paris (really, it made the gold-leaf-covered macarons at Ladurée look ham-handed), my favorite is still the plain chocolate macaron from Gérard Mulot.
-- Betty Hallock
Photos by Betty Hallock
 Stopped by the 20th annual Great Tastes in Brentwood festival yesterday. Lots of fun, lots of folks, lots of food. The Pecorino guys were there with porchetta, long-roasted pork that chef Raffaele Sabatini carved on the spot. (His twin brother, Mario, is center in the photo, and the third owner, Giorgio Pierangeli, is on the left.) They also had tiella di riso, a sloppy and delicious rice, potato and mussel dish from Puglia; and crisp fried zucchini blossoms stuffed with ricotta, basil and pecorino. Literati II was there with grilled corn on the cob with truffle butter, grilled hanger steaks and late-summer-fruit sundaes; Takao, the San Vicente Boulevard sushi bar, had some nice sushi.
 Bakeries made a good showing too: Susie Cakes brought red velvet cupcakes, and La Provence Patisserie & Cafe had this gorgeous array of pastries and macarons. Proceeds are to benefit Brentwood's public schools.
Pecorino, 11604 San Vicente Blvd.; (310) 571-3800; Literati II, 12081 Wilshire Blvd.; (310) 479-3400; Takao, 11656 San Vicente Blvd.; (310) 207-8636; Susie Cakes, 11708 San Vicente Blvd.; (310) 442-2253; La Provence Patisserie & Cafe, 8950 W. Olympic Blvd., Beverly Hills; (310) 888-8833.
-- Leslie Brenner
Photos by Leslie Brenner
 What's up with all the bakery crossover? BreadBar has started carrying Hans Rockenwagner's pretzel bread and, on weekends only, City Bakery's pretzel croissants, along with City Bakery's baker's muffins. How come a bakery partly owned by Eric Kayser, a premier French baker, is carrying other people's baked goods? I've also heard that Boule might start supplying BreadBar with viennoiserie.
Nonetheless, as an Eastsider, I'm glad not to have to drive all the way to Brentwood to get a pretzel croissant, with its flaky thin-crisp exterior and pillowy-soft layers inside. But get to BreadBar early. Every time I stop in at the shop on 3rd Street (OK, I sometimes get up late on Saturdays), the pretzel croissants have been sold out. No baker's muffins, either.
"I'll check on the numbers," says City Bakery owner Maury Rubin. "They must need more.
BreadBar, 8718 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles, (310) 205-0124; 10250 Santa Monica Blvd., Century City Westfield Shopping Center, (310) 277-3770.
-- Betty Hallock
Photos by Betty Hallock
 I learned my lesson. When you find out the time and location of the next Treat Street, the occasional mobile bakery that sets up shop on random street corners on random days at random times, don't show up two hours after the cookies start selling.
The e-mail sent out to Treat Streeters on Friday was labeled with the subject line "Location, Location, Location!":
"Streeters! Saturday, September 15th Treat Street will be baking Back to School moves on the corner of Armstrong and Lake Wood Avenues in Silver Lake. We'll be there from 10ish till the tables are empty. Hope to see you there! High five, T.S."
When the e-mail says 10ish, don't show up at noonish. Because all you'll get is a pretzel that's been frosted to look like a pencil. Which is something. (Former Treat Street goodies have included: individual cherry pies, pineapple tapioca bars, lemon madeleines, classy, bananarama 'nilla pudding cups, buckwild granola, even savory mushroom tarts.) Next time I'll be sure to wake up early.
-- Betty Hallock
Photos by Betty Hallock
 Boule's opening party last night was a parade of tiny green-tea cream puffs, croissants, mini pains au chocolat, Meyer lemon macarons and pink Champagne. New Boule pastry chef Roman Drocourt, most recently of Ortolan, passed trays of madeleines and financiers himself.
 Also on the new Boule team are Hide and Mariko Kubota from Osaka. Hide's baking breads (wonder if the new kitchen is gearing up for some wholesale bread business too), and she's working in pastry. Conspicuously absent was Michelle Myers. But Providence pastry chef Adrian Vasquez was there, and so was former Sona pastry chef Ron Mendoza, who recently left the French Laundry for L'Auberge Carmel and was in town for one night.
Boule Atelier is scheduled to officially open next week, as is Boule's Beverly Hills outpost. Any others on the horizon? "I would love to open a Boule in Tokyo," says chef-owner David Myers.
Boule Atelier, 408 N. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 289- 9977. Also, 413 N. Bedford, Beverly Hills.
-- Betty Hallock
Photos by Betty Hallock
The newly expanded Joan's on Third has finally opened (looking very sparkly and very Dean &  DeLuca) so I stopped in for breakfast this morning. Breakfast for me turned out to be a latte and gelato in brioche -- a big scoop of dark chocolate gelato (from the new gelato bar) sandwiched between a sliced brioche bun and sprinkled with powdered sugar and wrapped in white paper. "Just like on the streets of Palermo," said manager Chester Hastings.
But the real breakfast menu from the new kitchen includes a soft-boiled organic farm egg with toasted pain de mie, a French omelette with sour cream (owner Joan McNamara used to have an omelette restaurant in New York), buttermilk pancakes and chocolate French toast. An antique communal table is decorated with rosemary topiary. (Joan's planning to hit the flea market when she's in Rome next month for more of her final touches.)
 The cheese counter has expanded, there's more wine (and wines by the glass will soon be offered) and a new olive bar; you'll even find some fresh produce and frozen cookie dough in the back corner.
And they're now open at 8 a.m. (until 8 p.m.), for those early-morning gelato-in-brioche cravings.
Joan's on Third, 8350 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles, (323) 655-2285.
-- Betty Hallock
Photos by Betty Hallock
Since the introduction of the City Bakery's "Paris Hilton Visitor's Cake" last week, the cute little apple-spice cake with the nail file stuck in it made it not only to TMZ.com, but also to the Today Show, ABC, Fox News and German, Italian and Japanese television. "And tomorrow I'm an interview guest on a Kansas City commuter radio station," says City Bakery owner Maury Rubin.
"I'm having a bit of a what-hath-I-wrought moment," he says. "I can't believe how much media interest there's been. It's ridiculously trivial.... I don't have a television, I barely know who Paris Hilton is. I just wanted to stick a nail file in a cake."
Meanwhile, the "Paris Hilton Visitor's Cakes" are selling like, um, hot cakes. Grab them while you can. Rubin says he may stop making them this week: "I don't want City Bakery to be remembered for its Paris Hilton cake."
-- Betty Hallock
The City Bakery, Brentwood Country Mart, 225 26th St., Los Angeles; (310) 656-3040.
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