Restaurants Worth Crossing the 405 For
If you don’t know Los Angeles, “the westside” is kind of a loose term but I think it’s supposed to cover everything west of the I-405 freeway like Santa Monica, Venice, Marina Del Rey and all the coastal cities. However, “the eastside” isn’t everything east of the 405, I’d say it’s everything east of Western Ave, which is a 29-mile road that starts in East Hollywood and goes south all the way down to San Pedro. In moderate traffic, you’ll need to drive about 30-60 minutes in traffic to get from the true westside to the eastside. I live in West Los Angeles, not the westside, but I have tried hundreds of LA restaurants across the county. Here are the ones that I think are worth the commute.
- Fondry: This is a bakery in Highland Park that will rival anything you’ve had in Europe. There will likely be a line, but Saturday mornings seem better than Sunday mornings. You can’t go wrong, but I recommend the croiffin.
- Villa’s Tacos: This is also in Highland Park and it’s in a small unassuming strip mall. It was the place featured in Bad Bunny’s halftime show, and rightly so (and now it’s expanding yay!). Get the Villa’s Trio taco sampler for a good time.
- Porto’s Bakery & Cafe: Porto’s is super affordable Cuban fast casual food and is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and it’s everything you didn’t know you needed. There are no locations within 45 minutes of Culver City, so I will trek out to the valley or Long Beach. There will be a line, but it moves fast. You must get the refugiado (guava and cheese strudel)!
- Courage Bagels: I have been in East Hollywood by 7am on a Friday morning to get bagels before work. It doesn’t matter which bagel you get, but you must eat it hot and crispy, don’t bring it home.
- Quarter Sheets: Is it crazy to drive 50 minutes to Echo Park for pizza? Maybe, but it’s also worth it for the dessert!! The menu is always changing which is fun but also frustrating when they served a delectable grapefruit tart I may never get to experience again. If they have a sourdough sesame crust pizza, get that one and don’t skip dessert. It’s a small restaurant, so you’ll need to bring your A-game and set a reminder to make a reservation when they drop.
- Girl & the Goat: Thankfully, this is in a part of DTLA that has pretty easy street parking. It’s an Asian fusion restaurant in downtown LA. You must get the potato crepe at brunch!
- Bavel: This is a Middle Eastern restaurant in DTLA with incredible spreads and breads. You must get the malawach (ancient grain crispy layered bread, grated tomato, dill crème fraîche, soft egg, strawberry zhoug), maybe even 2 orders. Definitely make a reservation!
Pandemic Steals & Heals
For some reason, I opened Twitter (it will always be Twitter, the way T-Mobile Park will always be Safeco Field in my head) for the first time in a year or so and went down the rabbit hole and read hundreds of my old tweets. I guess I had been doing a tweet a day during the pandemic and it took me back to those wild times.
This March marked 6 years since the world shut down. I flew home when my office had closed, expecting to be there for 2 weeks, but that turned into 2 years. I was 22 at the time, and the pandemic took up years 22-25. In some ways, it’s still very frustrating to think about. No one can know what we might have done in those years. From what I’ve seen in movies and heard from other people, my early twenties should have been exciting and chaotic and confusing and transformative. And to a degree, they were, just not in the ways previous generations had described it.
I remember going on so many COVID walks in my neighborhood. I memorized every cul de sac, noticed when there were new books in the little free libraries. I had booked flights for a summer Europe 2020 trip with my sister, but instead, my world was a dozen blocks wide. I didn’t see my friends for 2 years. I cried more than I had in years and got an EKG because I was worried my heart palpitations were serious health concerns – it was just anxiety. With no one to photograph, I basically dropped my main passion since 2014. The pandemic was basically the end of my @ lauraclaypool_photo era and in true Gemini fashion 8 months later I started my new personality and blog/Instagram account. Physically I was in the worse shape of my life and gained like 20 pounds. I was underwater at work for about a year, working late every day and on weekends. But what else would I do with my time anyway?
I don’t think the pandemic stole the best years of my life, not at all, and I’m obviously glad I was in good health, survived getting COVID (wasn’t until NYC in 2024), and I wasn’t laid off from my job. After reading through all my silly tweets, I also think it healed me in a way. My life was kind of insane in 2019, and it didn’t seem like it was slowing down in the first few months of 2020. I spent my time in college always kind of missing home, and so I got my wish to live in WA for two more years and spend time with my parents. I re-learned how to ride a bike. I saved a lot of money from not paying rent. I started this blog. I hiked with my parents. I fell back in love with reading. I got quieter. Less judgmental. If being chronically online for 2 years showed me anything, it’s that we all have a lot going on and we need to give each other grace. I learned to enjoy a slower pace of life. I felt alone and was in a rut, but I got myself out of it (Exiting My Flop Era). Resilience. I thought I had some pre-pandemic, but I think this was the ultimate test. I feel like it’s a stretch to say I’m grateful the world shut down for a bit, but I definitely learned a lot.
The Best $28 I Spent This Month
I got MoviePass in college and when that inevitably went bankrupt ($10 for 30 movies a month was obviously too good to be true), I got AMC Stubs A-List in 2019 and saw over 50 movies that year. I cancelled my membership during the pandemic and then briefly got it back in 2024 but just wasn’t going enough. My boyfriend is quite the cinephile and as of November 2025, I am so back, and I think Hollywood finally is too! I’ve seen 3 movies this month, and saw Reminders Of Him (not good), Hoppers (great), and Project Hail Mary (good). There are a lot of movies coming out soon that I’m going to see, like The Drama, You, Me and Tuscany, Michael, and The Devil Wears Prada 2.
Apparently AMC A-List is priced differently by state, so in CA and NYC it’s $27.99/month but it’s a little cheaper in other parts of the country. In LA, it’s a great deal since a Saturday night movie ticket can be – no joke – $21.
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