LA’s Closest Cracker Barrel Earns an Official Opening Date, and More A.M. Intel

Here comes Cracker Barrel

While Victorville can’t exactly be considered a suburb of Los Angeles, it’s still close enough to the city for many homesick fans of Cracker Barrel to make the drive out to the high desert. The question is, when will California’s first Cracker Barrel actually come to life?

According to reps for the national chain, sometime in February of 2018. Construction has commenced and, per a release, the company is actively scouting the Victorville area for antiques to fill its shelves in anticipation of an early 2018 arrival. Until then, Las Vegas road trippers will just have to satisfy themselves with In-N-Out along the way, or the Mad Greek.

LA Kitchen thrives

It’s already been two years since Robert Egger first launched LA Kitchen out of a Lincoln Heights commissary facility. Now the project has grown to much larger heights (just look at the photos of a busy kitchen in action below), but the mission remains the same: to teach learnable kitchen skills to those in need while utilizing unwanted produce to craft meals for those less fortunate.

One cent bites

Colorful ice cream company CREAM is doing a one-cent deal today for what is apparently National Ice Cream Day. That means each location of the mini-chain will dole out bite-sized cookie ice cream sandwiches for just a penny a piece (limit one per customer, cash only of course).

Bon Appetit’s big list

The big list of potential Best New Restaurant winners is out from Bon Appetit, and it includes a handful of LA’s best. There’s Kismet, of course, plus PYT, Shibumi, and Jordan Kahn’s Destroyer in Culver City.

Breakfast of champions

Division 3 is now up and running in Hollywood, making their morning biscuit sandwiches just like at the Glassell Park original. And boy, do they look good.

Beverly Hills stays up late

Quiet little Beverly Hills has apparently never let it shops stay open until 8 p.m. before, but that’s all about the change starting tomorrow. A new initiative called BOLD (Beverly Hills Open Later Days) lets retailers stay up ‘til past curfew on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and if shoppers show a post-6 p.m. receipt from a participating store they’ll get deals on food too. Restaurants include Nate n’ Al’s, Gratitude, and Bouchon.

What’s up with Donut Farm?

Today marks day two of Donut Farm in Silver Lake being closed with no notice, so what’s going on? The company’s Instagram account just offers the usual “closed for maintenance” line, as does a piece of paper hanging on the locked front door, so what gives? Eater reached out to get more information, but so far hasn’t heard back.