Description
Neal Fraser, best known for his restaurant Grace, has long been a bwana of complexity in fourth-stage Los Angeles restaurants, mixing so many national idioms on a plate that his customers are never quite sure whether they are reading a menu or looking at a departures board at LAX. But at his diner BLD, freed of the formal requirements of the destination-restaurant menu, he turns out to be a brilliant short-order cook, churning out exemplary, drippy hamburgers and moistening sandwiches with aïoli, using house-made smoky ketchup where he can and Heinz 57 where he must, and dropping coleslaw bombs like a 40-year fry cook with canola oil in his veins. BLD is a useful restaurant, open for quick breakfasts of croissants and cappuccino; for sybaritic brunches of fluffy ricotta pancakes and eggs Benedict; for salady lunches and meaty feasts, for serious date-night dinners and after-movie snacks. At its best, BLD's menu of fried-egg sandwiches is the kind of cheap-ingredient food that cooks make for each other when they think nobody else is paying attention.
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