If you’ve followed the career of Daniel Patterson or glimpsed the chef’s ambition, whether at one of his restaurants—the Michelin-starred Coi, perhaps—or in TV appearances teaching David Chang how to modernize the egg, you already know that Patterson keeps one eye toward the horizon.
The Bay Area chef opened his first restaurant at 25 and has kept busy ever since with a handful of ambitious restaurants, a LocoL partnership with Roy Choi and even a nonprofit cook school. Now, his latest lucrative addition to his culinary empire has expanded, and its first Southern California location just landed in West Adams.
Alta first launched in 2013, a casual but modernized take on the seasonally-driven neighborhood restaurant, and within a few years expanded its reach to a second location in San Francisco—eventually sprouting into its own Bay Area restaurant family, Alta Group.
The first L.A. extension opened in two phases, with a café followed by a full-service restaurant. First came Adams Coffee Shop, which launched in early October with Coffee Manufactory drip and espresso, and a handful of cold-pressed juices, not to mention fresh pastries and an all-day menu from Watts native—and LocoL alumnus—Keith Corbin, who’s also heading up the kitchen at the adjacent full-service restaurant, Alta Adams.
Patterson’s been focusing his attention outside of the kitchen lately, championing the next generation of chefs, he told Time Out San Francisco earlier this year. He’s been aiding their education, skill sets and professional opportunities, and in L.A.’s Alta, that’s no exception. While we won’t be seeing much of Patterson in the kitchen, we appear to be in good hands.
Corbin’s coffee-shop menu is full of snacky and accessible fare, though the usual suspects such as overnight oats get dressed up with accoutrements like acai butter. There’s a welcome soul food undercurrent, too, with pimento cheese, country ham, collard greens, and red beans and rice alongside the grain bowls and house-made granolas.
The soul food continues on the full-service menu next door, though it’s impossible—and ill-advised—to pigeonhole it as a soul food restaurant. Corbin’s Alta Adams menu blends West African, Californian and Southern cuisine, giving L.A. black-eyed pea fritters; squash and peanut soup with red palm oil; grilled pork collar with chow chow; skillet-fried chicken; and sides such as candied yam gratin with spiced cashews, and collard greens with vinegar and smoked oil.
You can enjoy the cuisine in one of two dining rooms, on the back patio, at the chef’s counter and even at the bar. On the beverage front, look for produce-forward cocktails from Alta Group beverage director Aaron Paul, who’s showcasing the seasons in concoctions such as the the Lunchbox, made with butter-washed whiskey, huckleberry, peanuts and Aperol, and the Through the Grapevine, made of vodka, concord grapes, tarragon and East Imperial Burma tonic.
Take a peek inside both the full-service restaurant and the coffee shop, below, then make your way to West Adams to taste your way through one or both Alta concepts (we’re leaning toward both):
Alta Adams:
Photograph: Courtesy Alta Adams/Andrea D’Agosto
Photograph: Courtesy Alta Adams/Andrea D’Agosto
Adams Coffee Shop:
Photograph: Courtesy Alta Adams/Andrea D’Agosto
Photograph: Courtesy Alta Adams/Andrea D’Agosto
Alta Adams is now open at 5359 W Adams Blvd from 5 to 10pm Monday to Thursday and from 5 to 10:30pm on Friday and Saturday. Adams Coffee Shop is also located at 5359 W Adams Blvd, keeping hours of 7am to 4pm, daily.