LA Weekly Looks Forward to the Untapped Potential at Go Get Em Tiger

This week Besha Rodell follows talented chef Ria Dolly Barbosa to her new home at Go Get Em Tiger. Barbosa, who was once praised by the LA Weekly critic for her work as the chef behind Wild, the lunchtime pop-up at the closing Canelé in Atwater Village, has moved on to become chef at Go Get Em Tiger, the G&B-backed coffee shop with locations in Larchmont Village and Los Feliz.

You can usually find Barbosa running the sparse kitchen at the Los Feliz location where she puts out a menu of breakfast and lunch fare that’s anything but ordinary. B. Rod is effusive about a mung bean scallion pancake, “one of the more thrilling bites of food of the last few months:”

It's a pancake, yes, made with mung bean and rice flours, and turned magenta from the addition of pickled beets and their brine. Scallions and garlic are given enough prominence so that the dish has a prickle of spice, which is cooled by a generous dollop of creme fraiche. The pancake is served with two fried eggs, their runny yolks an intense shade of orange, and topped with a tangle of red mustard frills and a dusting of scallion powder. It is sweet and tart and spicy and cooling and rich and fresh, and basically bonkers, in the best possible way. [LAW]

While this format doesn’t give the chef the ability to showcase her full potential, it is an exciting sneak peak at the Barbosa’s future:

I'd be lying if I said that this format and kitchen are doing justice to all of the potential I tasted at Wild at Canelé, where Barbosa and Wilson were turning out food that might have competed with many of the best restaurants in town. This is a cafe, and one that — for now — is still far less ambitious in scope than Sqirl or Wild. There are dishes here that could become much more dynamic if Barbosa had the space and resources, or even a format where more complex cooking might make sense. But like everything else she's done, this food excited me for what's to come. [LAW]

GGET earns two stars.

• Inside LA's Sunny Shrine to the Timeless Art of Coffee [ELA]