A minimal brunch cafรฉ with a 70s arcade game-themed website wasnโt exactly the next anticipated move for Los Angeles chef Jordan Kahn, the sweet-turned-savory chef who last made waves at Beverly Hillsโ now shuttered Red Medicine. But after a two-year pause from those intricately plated garden sculptures built to taste like Vietnam, heโs back, this round in Culver City.
Daily-changing breakfast and lunch fare that looks artfully arranged with tweezersโserved from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.mโis the fine dining approach Kahn is giving to avocado toast and beef tartare with smoked egg cream at Destroyer. But that shouldnโt be entirely surprising considering the chefโs prior time clocked in the kitchens of pros like Thomas Keller and Grant Achatz. Plus the year and a half he helmed pastry for Michael Minaโs at XIV in West Hollywood.
Naturally, for a morning place, thereโs several caffeine options: filter coffee plus espresso-based beverages pulled on a new MAVAM Espresso machine are brewed with beans by way of San Franciscoโs newly installed Coffee Manufactory (the coffee component within Tartine Manufactory) and Portland, Oregon micro-roasteryย Roseline. Beyond herbal infusions of foraged botanicals, Kahn sources teas via Song Tea, profiled previously on Sprudge.
Within a black, white, and gray-toned 40-seat space in Culver Cityโs more creatively-minded Hayden Tract area, Kahnโs plates pops thanks to a dusting of lovage powder here, and a pile of sunchoke petals there. And yet, despite the apparent complexity and sophistication of dishes ($6-$16), plus the care and visual intrigue each conveys, this is anything but a white tablecloth place. After all, Destroyer is counter-service only and ditches dinner.
Photos courtesy Destroyer.
Kat Odell (@kat_odell) is a freelance writer based in New York and Los Angeles. Odellโs forthcoming book,ย Day Drinking,ย comesย out in 2017 fromย Workman Publishing. Read more Kat Odell onย Sprudge.ย