Bar Avalon Review - Echo Park - Los Angeles - The Infatuation

"Eat out at enough restaurants, and tiny secrets begin to reveal themselves to you. Hidden menus, special toppings, and surefire strategies for bypassing hour-long lines - they’re the little bits of insider knowledge that can make dining out feel like the congregation of an underground food society. Here at The Infatuation, we uncover these tiny tips all the time, but rarely, if ever, does the restaurant itself feel like a full-on hack. That changed when we started eating at Bar Avalon. From the second you walk into this restaurant/wine bar/coffee shop in Echo Park, it’s apparent you’ve discovered one of the biggest secrets in LA. The casual dining room feels like your living room, the wine list is so affordable you’ll wonder if you’re getting a friends-and-family discount, and on most nights, you’ll be the only one in there. But as the food begins trickling out of the kitchen, you’ll also realize that, unlike most secrets, Bar Avalon is one you can’t keep to yourself. We are no strangers to eating inside empty restaurants, but in most instances, there’s a clear issue at hand - bad location, bad concept, or most obviously, bad food. Bar Avalon is guilty of none of these. Now, we could hypothesize all day about why no one is hanging out at Bar Avalon right now (it is sort of hidden behind a Verizon store), but frankly, that’s not our job. We’re here to make sure you understand why you should be. Even if Bar Avalon’s food was only mediocre, we’d probably still come here every week just to drink wine and chat up the sommelier. The lengthy list features mainly South and North American wines listed by latitude (geography and drinking is always an exciting combination) and has an ideal mix of both regular and natural wines. Also, it’s insanely affordable. A lot of the bottles fall in the $30 range, and if you’re just looking to get a glass, they start at $5. That’s not a misprint or a Happy Hour special, it’s just one of the many secrets of Bar Avalon. The food, you’ll quickly find out, is an even bigger one. When Bar Avalon opened in the Fall of 2019, it was a daytime-only spot, serving coffee, wine, and solid sandwiches to eat while you worked at your computer. A few months later came the dinner service and suddenly, this neighborhood hangout morphed into a place worth leaving your own neighborhood to experience. Whether it’s the caponata toast with chocolate mint, a Caesar the waiter tells you eat with your hands, or one of our favorite roasted chickens in LA, Bar Avalon’s menu is comprised of dishes you’ll definitely recognize, only with slight tweaks that make them more interesting than other versions around town. We love the blue prawns in a thick, fragrant piri piri sauce, and the chili cauliflower with anchovies strikes the perfect balance between salt and spice. Even the deviled eggs will be something you’ll remember the next day, thanks to their crispy chicken-chicharron topping Bar Avalon serves food that you can eat with anyone, on any occasion - a lunch with picky co-workers, a classy date, or all alone in a late-in-the-week shame spiral. It’s a place that impresses, comforts, and excites - because finally, you have a place to tell all your friends about. And that’s way better than any secret topping. So what are you waiting for?" - Brant Cox