My first introduction to brunost, a brown cheese popular in Norway, was through my good friend Jo Stougaard in the summer of 2019. She had recently returned from a Viking Ocean cruise around northern Europe. And she couldn't stop raving about brown cheese.
He tried it with waffles during a visit to a local home in Stavanger, Norway, and then continued eating whole wheat cheese throughout the trip. He was offered as a topping at the ship's waffle station in the form of curled cheese cones. She described it as having a cheddar and caramel flavor and declared it “incredibly amazing.”
When we saw “whole cheese toast” on the breakfast menu at the new Little Fish in Echo Park, we didn't hesitate.
Whole grain cheese toast and fish soup at Little Fish
“We probably get the most questions about that,” says Niki Vahle, co-owner of Little Fish. “You don't get much information from something that's just called whole wheat cheese toast.”
The Brown Cheese Toast is a thick toasted slab of Bub and Grandma bread with an over-the-top smear of good butter, thick curls of Ski Queen brown cheese and a pinch of Maldon salt.
When Vahle and his partner Anna Sonenshein were coming up with a breakfast menu for their new restaurant, they focused on foods they like to eat at home. The two founded Little Fish as a pop-up shop in their Echo Park home in 2021 and recently opened a brick-and-mortar store nearby, inside Dada Market on Sunset Boulevard.
“Toast is very much our low-high vibe,” Sonenshein says. “We use really beautiful bread and basically the Norwegian equivalent of American Kraft cheese, another product we love.”
Chowder is on the breakfast menu at Little Fish in Echo Park.
(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)
Ski Queen curls are sweet and rich with nutty and brown butter notes associated with a good caramel. It sinks into the warm bread and holds its shape like a chocolate chip that's about to melt. It is sweet, but not as sweet as you would expect from a cheese with a caramel color and flavor.
The toast was the ideal opening act for a bowl of fish soup.
“I would say that rice soup and various types of rice porridge are the number one food made in our house,” says Sonenshein.
It's also a great way to use up all the leftover striped bass from the restaurant's popular fried fish sandwich. (Imagine a chef's fish fillet on steroids.) The bones are grilled and used to make a broth with kombu, ginger and chives for the porridge. The lost bits of bass sway in the rice soup like little treasures. The rice is soft, comforting, and feels like it can heal something. On top is an appropriately oozing six-minute egg, a tangle of scallions, pickled shiitake mushrooms and a dollop of crunchy chili. If that's not a reason to get out of bed, I don't know what is.
The restaurant is also housed in a well-stocked superette, and there's a coffee program by Phil Kim, who also makes the beautiful ceramic mugs that hold their latte. If you arrive around 10:30 am, you can order breakfast and then stay for one of the fried fish sandwiches at 11 am
Taiwanese breakfast roll at Fatty Mart
Taiwanese breakfast at Fatty Mart in Mar Vista.
(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)
Any day that starts at David Kuo's Fatty Mart is a good day, especially for someone who often worries about where to find sandwiches, hot sauce, and tomorrow's dinner. Mar Vista Supermarket is a haven of prepared foods, condiments and snacks, serving breakfast all day.
Kuo says their Taiwanese breakfast bun is the best-selling item on their entire menu. That's high praise for a selection that spans pizza, banh mi sandwiches, bulgolgi dishes and breakfast burritos.
There's not much that takes my attention away from a good breakfast burrito. The portability, various fillings, and a warm flour tortilla always make it appealing. But the breakfast bagel at Fatty Mart is my current wrapped food obsession.
“It's an homage to all those dishes I ate when I was a kid,” says Kuo, whose Taiwanese restaurant Little Fatty is around the corner from the market. “We have a meat roll at Little Fatty that is very popular, so why not make it a breakfast item?”
The wrap is a green onion pancake that is fried until golden around the edges and still pliable. It's flaky and crispy, with layers you can peel away. Kuo spreads fiery pink chili mayonnaise made with Lao Gan Ma crispy chili. In a sea of chili sauces, it's the best-known crispy chili, with crispy fried onion and a dry, roasted spiciness.
The eggs are fluffy and scrambled, garnished with a drizzle of sweet and savory hoisin sauce. And the wrap is littered with slices of Taiwanese sausage, pickled mustard greens, slices of raw cucumber, green onion and cilantro.
As someone who typically doesn't eat breakfast during scheduled breakfast hours, the prospect of a Taiwanese bun at 1:00 pm, 4:00 pm, or even 7:45 pm is endlessly comforting.
