The Counter Offer
In Los Angeles, chefs are saying ‘no deal’ to traditional service models and the high costs (mental, physical, and financial) that come with them. Instead, they are embracing the counter service concept while banking on their multi-faceted experiences, and serving up some of the city’s most impressive bites.
illustration: rachel krohn
Chef Rashida Holmes once had her career planned out, her future drawn up like lines on a résumé: culinary school, line cook, sous chef, chef de cuisine, and finally a fine dining spot of her own. Then, she met someone on a dating app.
Her first date with Shanika Honeycutt turned into hanging out for five days straight and, when they married in 2018, Holmes started to question the career path she’d carved out for herself.
“After 12 years of killing myself for other people, I knew I wanted to step off that track,” Holmes recalls. “For the first time, I just saw something different for my future.”
That’s when Holmes came up with a concept, Bridgetown Roti, based on the Caribbean dishes her mom and dad would take turns making. After a series of pop-ups that won her many accolades, Holmes started work on a brick-and-mortar location in East Hollywood, scheduled to open this summer. The plan is to be home by dinner.
These days, chefs across Los Angeles share the same idea. They’re opening counter service restaurants and putting out dishes far nicer than the salad bowls and burritos that dominate the space. These are concepts built around the high-end ingredients and techniques typically saved for fine dining restaurants. Chef Jihee Kim of Perilla L.A. opened her Korean takeout spot in Victor Heights, translating her years of experience—and the years spent cooking at Rustic Canyon—to craft a destination-worthy, banchan-focused restaurant. And in Silver Lake, Chef Daniel Matho, a Trois Mec and Dovetail alum, brought his classic French culinary education to Maison Matho, his walk-up-window cafe that offers viennoiserie, seasonal sandwiches, and a torched half-grapefruit with caper sauce, celery leaf oil, condensed milk, cocoa nibs, and tarragon. Skipping the typical restaurant model heavy on front of house staff, they say, means not only more reasonable hours, but also major cost savings and fewer issues hiring staff in a time when finding good servers can be like hunting for fresh truffles. And, coupled with rising rent prices and uncertainty about the longevity of traditional brick-and-mortars, makes the pared-down concept all the more appealing.
bridgetown roti’s Mom’s Curry Chicken Roti, Smashed Potatoes, Turmeric Cabbage Slaw, Pineapple-Habanero Hot Sauce
perilla’s Dosirak: Doenjang-Marinated Cod, White Rice, Potato Salad, Soy-Marinated Egg, Broccolini, Fermented Daikon, Collard Green Kimchi
The slim economic model of a counter service restaurant is what interested Chef Alejandro Guzmán. He grew up in the business, washing dishes as a teenager at El Taco Loco, which was owned by his mom. He spent time as a barista at Shortcake, beverage manager at SQIRL, and sous chef at Le Comptoir. Along the way, he had dreams of creating not just a single restaurant, but his own hospitality company. The first step, he figured, would be a counter service spot that could be easily replicated.
He opened Fabby’s Sandwicherie in 2023 as a counter service concept at The Grayson building in the Broadway Theatre District. Named after his mom, Fabby’s puts out made-nowhere-else sandwiches like a torta with beef bourguignon and a chorizo pambazo with fluff made from Oaxaca cheese. It runs most days with just two people: a cashier-busser and a cook-runner. Guzmán went back to his experience as a barista to help hone how it would work. “When you’re doing latte art while customers are asking you questions and there are 400 people in front of you, it creates this dual mentality of focusing on the details while also executing at volume,” Guzmán says. “The idea for counter service came from the economics of it, to be honest, but then I also like the idea that the person who cooked it for you is handing it to you.” Guzmán also believes that the face time with guests has helped spread the word of his other project, Fabby’s Bistro, a Mexican-inflected, French-bistro-inspired pop-up that he hopes to turn into a full-blown brick-and-mortar.
There’s also an advantage Guzmán didn’t plan. He’ll often see his main line cook look out from the open kitchen to the tiny dining room. “I watch him stare at guests taking the first bite of sandwiches he’s made,” Guzmán says. “I see him getting enjoyment out of that, and I guess I’d say purpose.”
With no investors and only his life’s savings to open a restaurant, Chef Francesco Lucatorto also turned to the counter service model. Lucatorto grew up in Chiavari, an idyllic Italian beach town in Genoa. At 14 years old, he washed dishes and cleaned mussels at a Ligurian seafood restaurant. In 2012, after culinary school, he came to the United States, eventually ending up as a sous chef at Angelini Osteria & Alimentari. He quit in 2019, intending to open a place of his own, but instead found himself unemployed as the pandemic struck. He started selling family-sized orders of classic Italian dishes from his home, developing a specialty with his lasagna and its ears of crunchy pasta jutting out along the sides. When he hit 65 trays of lasagna per day, he realized: “OK, this isn’t sustainable anymore. We need a restaurant.”
maison matho’s Omelette Sandwich, Trout Roe, Dijon-Tarragon Vinaigrette, Creme Fraiche, Preserved Lemon, Sourdough Baguette
Fabby’s Tiger Shrimp Ceviche Tostada, Avocado Aïoli, Serrano, Chives
He modeled his concept on the gastronomias of his hometown, places similar to delis—mom-and-pop spots that sell big platters of food for people to take home. Along with the lasagna, Ceci’s Gastronomia also sells focaccia rounds for Genovese-style sandwiches stuffed with caponata, meatballs, and zucchini parmesan.
Lucatorto and his partner in the operation, wife Francesca Pistorio, had just $75,000 to invest in the build-out, so they settled on a 375-square-foot-space in Silver Lake. And with L.A. being L.A., it still costs him $5,000 a month. To keep payroll down, he limited the staff to four cooks and three front of house team members who double as cashiers, baristas, and food runners.
The key, though, is that the small staff can’t compromise good service. “That’s the reason why we’re still in business after almost three years,” he says. “We bring food to you, we remember who you are, and don’t just call your number like a Starbucks. I look at reviews and they talk about how the service is fantastic, and we don’t have servers.”
The idea for the counter service restaurant by Chefs Alex Williams and Jordan Snyder came about one night as they drank wine by a campfire in Williams’ backyard. At the time, they were both regularly working 12-to-14-hour shifts at Trois Mec, the Michelin-starred tasting menu restaurant that closed in 2020. Williams and his wife had just had a baby, and Snyder was planning a family of his own. Williams said: “We’ve got to do something together, on our own.”
They came up with a sandwich concept they called Bread Head and began doing pop-ups. They tested and perfected their dishes: a muffaletta with an olive salad, a piled-high BLAT with iceberg lettuce as crispy as the bacon, and a roast beef layered into pastel pink slices of rareness.
Walking away from their esteemed jobs wasn’t easy, but Williams says they both saw the model as broken; with employees expected to work their lives away, margins too narrow, and few returning customers. “The sustainability of a fine dining restaurant isn’t quite there, as far as you having to be there day in and day out to maintain the vision. It’s not something you can really scale,” Williams said. The key to walking away from it: “It’s just letting go of the ego a little bit.”
Unexpected construction problems and inexplicable delays from the power company moved back their projected opening date from last summer to this spring. The end result will be a concept, on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica, that relies heavily on orders from delivery apps and has a self-serve kiosk for customers to order quickly. “The whole goal,” Williams says, “is to crank out sandwiches.”
ceci’s gastronomia’s Il Mortazza: Mortadella, Salsa Verde-Marinated Grilled Eggplant, Burrata Stracciatella, Arugula, Focaccia Genovese
bread head’s BLT: Neuske’s Bacon, Iceberg Lettuce, Tomato, Duke’s Mayonnaise, Head Bread
In the first few weeks, Williams and Snyder know they’ll fall back into their workaholic ways, but they’re hopeful they can develop a schedule that means they’ll spend more time with their kids: Williams’ is four now, and Snyder has a one-year-old.
“The light bulb went on at some point, and you know what, this is much better,” Williams says. “We are going to figure out a better work-life balance here.”
That’s the hope too for Holmes, who says her decision to leave fine dining has already paid off. “When I stepped off that path and went down the pop-up route and started making this Caribbean food that’s more authentic to me, that’s really when I found myself as a chef, and when all the accolades came.”
In designing the menu for her place, Holmes realized she needed recipes that could be repeated quickly. The texture of stewed oxtails may not hold up cooking all day, so instead she chops them and wraps them in patties. “The idea is really, really good food at volume,” she says. “I’m always thinking, ‘What can I prep in five minutes?’ So my food brain has shifted.” She ended up with a rotating menu of classics, like curried shrimp wrapped in roti, just-fried doubles that serve as boats for spiced chickpeas, and an occasional oxtail pie collab with Quarter Sheets Pizza.
The concept is also being built around a core idea: Holmes will teach her staff how to run the place, meaning she’ll be in by seven o’clock, out by four o’clock, and by dinnertime, maybe out with her wife at someone else’s restaurant. If another chef wants that future for themselves, Holmes recommends first finding something that’s true to them. “I’d say go with your gut if you think the non-traditional path is for you, because you never know what you’ll find.”
