It’s a sunny Friday afternoon in Los Angeles, and what better to do than grab one of the free-for-guest-use bikes at the Everly (a hotel I highly recommend) and bike east on Hollywood Blvd., past the first Thai restaurant I ever went to upon moving to LA in 1986, at 2am natch, with a bunch of people who would wind up famous and a few dead; past the $90/month office I rented in an earthquake-condemned building over the 101 Freeway, past the tire shops and the weed shops and the spot where Thai Elvis used to perform, where I’d eat plates of wild boar with galangal and peppercorns still on the branch, to Jumbo’s Clown Room, a strip joint about I would need seven more pages to tell you all the things that went inside and in front of so let’s leave that for another day, to today’s destination, Friends & Family Bakery, owned by Roxana Jullapat, whom I met and interviewed back in Portland in 2007, when we were both part of the food scene, a scene she amscrayed from within the year.
As I made my way through a fresh-baked cheddar scone, an apple hand pie, and a big chewy oatmeal-date cookie, Roxana told me how she became a baker (she thought she was becoming a journalist!), why LA is the best food town; how Portland really didn’t like people from California, and how, in a perfect food world, the customer meets you halfway. She also offers three baking tips that will help every home baker.
Enjoy out conversation! Stop in when you’re in LA! Grab her book and there’s another on the way xx
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