(Irina Selaru / For The Times)
Like most visitors, I head to Palm Springs, with its average of 350 days of sunshine, to retreat from life’s stresses — to watch the colors of the San Jacinto Mountains shift from morning to evening, to sip dry martinis in the tradition of the city’s Hollywood forebearers and to generally do as little as possible. A culinary tour is never my primary agenda while vacationing in the desert — and yet it’s my nature (and my job) to always be looking for the next great meal.
Palm Springs’ economy hinges on the volatility of seasonal tourism, which explains why so few new restaurants open there, and why some promising upstarts can quickly disappear. But new is fun, especially for Angelenos who travel frequently to the desert. This guide includes five standouts that opened since my last round of Palm Springs recommendations was published in April 2024. A sixth fresh addition highlights a 4-year-old Palm Desert restaurant that blends two tentpole South American cuisines. It’s a reminder that following State Route 111 from Palm Springs, through nearby Cathedral City and beyond, can lead to less-heralded pleasures nestled in the area’s strip malls. Seek them out on your way to or from Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, and to add rewarding variety to your dining options during vacation all year round.
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Bar Issi
Palm Springs Italian $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Bar Issi is a spectacle. One of the two restaurants at the Thompson Palm Springs, the most ambitious resort hotel to open in the city’s center this decade, its stand-alone building sits curbside along Palm Canyon Drive, wrapped in glass picture windows. Behold, with the rest of the nightly throng, the wild, fresh design: avocado-green ceiling, with a sound-absorbing inset fashioned from gold mohair; pink chandeliers shaped from plastic petals; fringed red swivel chairs encircling a central bar; and hardwood floors laid with extra-wide planks. Wallpaper runs through the room with an optical-illusion print that looks like dancing crocodiles one minute and tigers the next, as if M.C. Escher took in the kid-friendly likenesses of those animals at the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens nearby. The Italian cooking is far calmer than the decor, and has become a quick favorite of my friends who are year-round residents. Among handsomely charred and puffy edged pizzas, look for the one crowned with mushrooms, Taleggio, Parmesan and a scattering of fresh thyme leaves. Appetizers — meatballs in vodka sauce, Greek salad arranged around a block of feta and salt cod croquettes that come to life with a squeeze of lemon — are strong, and so are the martinis.
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Beaton's at Bar Cecil
Palm Springs Cocktails $$$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
I have never managed to score a reservation to Bar Cecil, the restaurant that opened in April 2021 as an homage to Sir Cecil Beaton, the famously flamboyant British photographer, designer, author and all-around Renaissance man who died in 1980. It remains, almost comically after five years in business, the most difficult place to book a table in the Coachella Valley. Long ago I made my peace with lining up before the restaurant opens at 5 p.m. and starting early at the unreserved 12-seat bar, or slipping in between 6:30 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. when the first wave of bar seating turns over. We all show up, whenever we can, for potent drinks and chef and partner Gabriel Woo’s menu, a worldly mix of Continental swagger, global-minded modernism and California realness.
In January, the same team branched out with Beaton’s at Bar Cecil, a posh affair next door that flips the script on the restaurant: more cocktail-centric, mostly snacky food you stretch into a meal. Tufted red velvet cascading from the ceiling drives the louche vibes. The mid-20th-century-era sketches and prints adorning the walls are significant enough that the staff composed a booklet full of descriptions and biographies. (You’ll need a phone light to read through it.) There’s an enclosed terrace where VIPs seeking privacy tend to hang out as the night wears on. Precision-engineered cocktails cover the spectrum of tastes: not-too-sweet Singapore slings, a sharp-tongued Vesper with lemon oil, a retro-chic grasshopper blending Creme de Menthe and pandan for a nightcap. I have always been fascinated that certain Hollywood hangouts serve pigs in a blanket, and here they are, mustardy and easy to down one after another alongside shrimp cocktail, duck-meat bao, oysters, fries and, of course, caviar. Beaton’s also takes reservations but walk-ins, however variable the wait, are welcome. Try your luck. This is absolutely the place to be in Palm Springs right now.
In January, the same team branched out with Beaton’s at Bar Cecil, a posh affair next door that flips the script on the restaurant: more cocktail-centric, mostly snacky food you stretch into a meal. Tufted red velvet cascading from the ceiling drives the louche vibes. The mid-20th-century-era sketches and prints adorning the walls are significant enough that the staff composed a booklet full of descriptions and biographies. (You’ll need a phone light to read through it.) There’s an enclosed terrace where VIPs seeking privacy tend to hang out as the night wears on. Precision-engineered cocktails cover the spectrum of tastes: not-too-sweet Singapore slings, a sharp-tongued Vesper with lemon oil, a retro-chic grasshopper blending Creme de Menthe and pandan for a nightcap. I have always been fascinated that certain Hollywood hangouts serve pigs in a blanket, and here they are, mustardy and easy to down one after another alongside shrimp cocktail, duck-meat bao, oysters, fries and, of course, caviar. Beaton’s also takes reservations but walk-ins, however variable the wait, are welcome. Try your luck. This is absolutely the place to be in Palm Springs right now.
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El Jr. Tacos
Palm Springs Mexican $
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
For occupying a small corner inside Palm Liquor 2 at one end of Sunrise Place Shopping Center, the menu at El Jr. Tacos is fairly enormous. They griddle tacos (including quesabirria), mulitas and quesadillas, and build tortas and super nachos, with asada, carnitas, pollo and several other classic meats. The main draw for me? The massive, carefully constructed breakfast burritos. For morning meals out in Palm Springs, especially a few days into a trip, my patience thins with long lines for fine-enough waffles and scrambles. In 15 minutes at El Jr. Tacos, I have a foil-wrapped torpedo bursting with egg, cheese, bacon and salsa, or a variation positively crammed with crumbly chorizo. The storefront opens at 9 a.m. every day, and I can confirm breakfast burritos are available well into the afternoon.
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Livs
Palm Springs Breakfast/Lunch $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Gabriel Woo, the chef behind unstoppably popular Bar Cecil, and his wife, Jackie Woo, partnered to open a daytime cafe on the lowest level of the Palm Springs Art Museum. Canary-yellow wallpaper and framed prints brighten the cozy dining room. The most coveted tables, though, spread out across the gorgeous shaded patio, a tableau of Midcentury Modern architecture, sculpture gardens and desert landscaping underscored by mature cactuses. Truly, it is one of the most beautiful sense-of-place outdoor spaces in Palm Springs. Woo’s menu pulls off an impressive balancing act. He presents plenty of smartly devised versions of breakfast and lunch touchstones: crisp-edged pancakes with banana butter and wild blueberry compote, classic chopped Cobb salad, astutely spiced curried chicken salad sandwich with diced apricot, a tuna melt hinting of chipotle, the welcome burger (veggie option available). He also slips in a few novelties, including an excellent country fried steak with the requisite gravy — a dish that should show up more across Southern California. I love the “chef’s breakfast” of poached eggs and steamed rice garnished with pickled ginger, black-garlic soy sauce, furikake and chili crunch. Note the restaurant operates Thursdays to Mondays and usually closes at 4 p.m. but stays open until 8 p.m. on Thursdays, the day when the museum offers free admission.
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Lola Rose
Palm Springs Mediterranean $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Eastern Mediterranean and Persian flavors energize the menus at the anchor restaurant of hot-hot Thompson Palm Springs hotel. At dinner, that means starting with mezze. For a group, order a spread of lemony hummus, muhammara balanced with tart-sweet pomegranate molasses, a variation on Shirazi salad with minted green goddess dressing and skillfully grilled spot prawns marinated with harissa and fanned over yogurt scented with black lime. It’s easy to share several kebabs (saffron chicken, cumin-spiced ground kufta, lamb loin blazed with shatta) buoyed with a side of herbed rice and condiments like garlicky toum. The dish I’m still thinking about: chef Quentin Garcia’s unorthodox take on a tajine, melding shredded roast chicken, braised lentils, chopped dates and sundried tomatoes into a sophisticated collage. Lunch is a simpler version of dinner, and breakfast spans a friendly gamut of labneh-accented oatmeal, a breakfast sandwich on brioche and Turkish-style eggs with garlic yogurt and brown butter spiced with gentle Aleppo pepper. An inside or outside table? Choose between interior wood-paneled swankery or a patio view overlooking the pool.
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Mi Cultura
Palm Springs Peruvian Colombian $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Food obsessive Angelenos will appreciate a truism about dining in Coachella Valley: Beyond Palm Springs, where owners tend to pay exorbitant rents and thus appeal to the broadest possible tastes, a far more compelling mix of cuisines flourishes in the strip-mall restaurants dotting the nearby towns of Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert. Spending time weaving through their rows of business can yield pleasures like 4-year-old Mi Cultura. Jonathan Moreno is the chef. His father is Colombian and his mother is Peruvian, and the menu unites his culinary heritages. A poetic way into his worldview: Order two empanadas, one made Colombian-style with golden cornmeal dough and a creamy potato-beef filling, and the other from Peruvian traditions, in which beautifully crimped flour dough encases chicken or beef seasoned with pepper, chopped egg and olives. Feast on bandeja paisa, the one-platter Colombian feast of meats, rice, plantains, beans, fried egg and more. Back to Peruvian options: Think bird, with succulent rotisserie chicken and the requisite aji verde, and one of the world’s great comfort foods, aji de gallina, chicken shredded and blanketed in a sauce tinged with aji amarillo and nutty from Parmesan.
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The best of Palm Springs and beyond
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Alice B.
Palm Springs Californian Mediterranean $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
L.A. legends Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken invest their culinary muscle behind 2-year-old Alice B., a restaurant housed in an apartment community geared toward 55-and-older LGBTQ+ residents called Living Out. The dining room, anchored by British American artist Jo Hay’s portraits of namesake Alice B. Toklas and her famous paramour Gertrude Stein, fills with a customer base that spans generations. It’s a heartening scene. The menu is slowly evolving, an affable hodgepodge of pastas, salads and entrees like roasted salmon with brown butter and capers that lean into the California-Italian canon, with occasional nods to the American South: excellent cheddar biscuits, pimento cheese dip, bacon-studded deviled eggs. A fun thing happening through spring: Feniger and Milliken are holding monthly pop-ups reviving dishes (from fideo soup and swordfish ceviche to chile rellenos and brisket taquitos) from Border Grill, their defining first restaurant that led to their “Too Hot Tamales” cooking show on the Food Network.
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Alps Village
Palm Desert German European $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Milka Damjanovic and her daughter Blanka Sanin run a Palm Desert beer hall, all pale brick and knotty woods, that rings true to the restaurant’s name. The cuisine takes more explaining. The family is from the former Yugoslavia. Damjanovic fled the country in the 1990s during the Yugoslavian war, cooking through kitchens in Germany. Alps Village’s menu synthesizes her life experiences, incorporating German dishes and Balkan foods, with the latter’s complex history of influences that include Slavic traditions and the cultural echoes of the Ottoman Empire. All of which is to say: The large menu covers vast cultural territory and can warrant guidance. Start with cevapcici, skinless beef sausages served over lepina (sometimes called the “pita of the Balkans”) and kajmak (a variation of clotted cream similar to Turkish kaymak). Crisp, attractively buckled wienerschnitzel tastes even better paired with kaspaten, a caloric wonder of spätzle, caramelized onions, cheese sauce and optional bacon baked in a cast iron skillet. A Greek salad and a side of sauerkraut both offset the richness and cement the culinary bridges. For dessert there’s an incredible flourless cake made from pillowy meringue and covered in crushed walnuts.
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Chef Tanya's Kitchen
Palm Springs Vegan $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Tanya Petrovna has spent her four-decade career centering and mastering plant-based cooking. With two locations — the Palm Springs flagship hidden in an industrial complex, with a small retail and deli space and a side dining room, and a second, roomier Palm Desert outpost — Chef Tanya’s Kitchen prepares an all-vegan mix of sandwiches, soups, salads and desserts. For broadest appeal Petrovna leans in on textural meat protein substitutes like tofu, tempeh and wheat-based seitan. I’m happiest eating a panini or other hot sandwich that includes gently smoked tofu “bacon” in its tiers. The Palm Desert menu has a bowl of meat-free, dairy-free chili cheese fries that nonetheless comes off as indulgent. Both stores also sell a savvy mix of groceries to entice serious cooks of all types: I clocked an excellent brand of dried pasta from Naples, Chris Bianco’s first-rate canned tomatoes, a deep selection of Burlap & Barrel spices and Rancho Gordo’s heirloom beans and bottled sauces.
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Evening Citizen
Palm Springs Speakeasy Bar $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
When it comes to drinking establishments, I seek out calm, so I favor this speakeasy run by Dean Lavine, the owner of Blackbook in the often-rowdy Arenas District. Sure, the notion of a bar shrouded in Prohibition-era-style secrecy has been overplayed nationwide during the cocktail renaissance of the new millennium — but it’s Palm Springs. Camp and fun are ways of life. The location, revealed as soon as you make a reservation, is the kitschiest aspect. The space brims with midcentury glamour: dim lights, velvety wallpaper, glowing shelves filled with bottles, a marble bar so polished it mirrors its surroundings like a reflecting pool. Above the bar hangs a portrait of actor Udo Kier, a friend of Lavine’s who died in November at 81 years old, captured with an intimidating expression that conjures mobsters and Mario Puzo. Ask for the bar crew’s stellar version of the Scofflaw, a concoction credited to Harry’s Bar in Paris in the 1920s. Rye whiskey, vermouth, grenadine, lime juice and orange bitters sounds counterintuitive but lands smooth and savory. Note that Evening Citizen serves no food — only drinks and a quiet escape.
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Farm
Palm Springs American $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Farm looks like a film-set reverie of a Palm Springs restaurant: Its garden patio, set amid the Spanish Colonial Revival architecture of the town’s nearly century-old La Plaza shopping center, leads to a space divided into small rooms with country-inn vibes and vaunted tongue-and-groove ceilings. I say this in the kindest way: It’s the kind of nonoffensive, crowd-pleasing place where you feel gravitationally pulled in an American resort town, even if you are a resident. Breakfast and lunch menus reveal a slight French accent — sweet and buckwheat-flour-laced savory crepes, nicely pale omelets, croque-madame — though I’m most partial at brunch to the migas with chorizo and avocado. Dinner five days a week charms with a 1980s vibe: The staff writes the short, weekly-changing seasonal menu of four starters and four entrees on chalkboards.
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Fernanda's Restaurant
Cathedral City Salvadoran $
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
To answer the first question often asked of a Salvadoran restaurant: Yes, the pupusas served by Kristina Fernanda-Morales and her parents are very good. Handsomely griddled, not-too-thick corn cakes encase traditional fillings such as queso and loroco or revueltas (refritos, pork and cheese), with a couple of playful variations including the strawberry-red Hot Momma, jolted with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Delve further into the family’s repertoire with a satisfying combination platter featuring carne asada smothered in onions, chicharrones, fried yuca, plantain, rice and beans. Fernanda-Morales also will mention seasonal specials such as pescado forrado, a Lenten dish of reconstituted bacalao fried in fluffy egg batter and draped in light tomato sauce. The restaurant’s shopping-center exterior gives little away, but inside murals and paintings of rural El Salvador brighten the dining room. This would be a welcoming place to bring kids.
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French Rotisserie Cafe
Palm Desert French $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
The restaurant’s name for me summons a spin on Boston Market with a Gallic twist. Totally wrong. Parisian-born Fabienne Fuentes and her husband, Luis, preside over a sedate, grown-up room where garlicky escargot, Cognac-laced chicken mousse and boeuf Bourguignon land on white linens. Los Angeles has few traditionalist French restaurants left, so the careful, energized cooking here feels like an anomaly and a treat. One of the best versions of cassoulet I’ve had in Southern California layered duck confit with two types of sausages (pork and duck) in a saucy stew of soft white beans. It hit just right on a cool desert night; for far hotter months there are mussels in white wine-fennel broth or the namesake rotisserie chicken, its skin rendered to precise crispness and fragrant with Provençal herbs. A free-form mille-feuille filled with Meyer lemon curd is precise in its textural contrasts and spot-on as a finale.
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Gabino’s Creperie
Palm Springs Creperie $
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Nearly 15 million people visit the Greater Palm Springs area annually; no establishment serving distinctive food ever remains a hidden gem for long. Gabino’s Creperie sits in a short alley between two buildings near the corner where Palm Canyon Drive veers at a 45-degree angle. Marcel Ramirez, a native of Palm Springs, opened his creperie as a takeout window in 2020 after starting the business as a pop-up in 2018. He took his original inspiration for serving crepes from the slightly thicker panqueques his Argentine father made when he was growing up. Cooks shape the filled crepes into wide-mouthed cones wrapped in paper. Star ingredients recall popular menu items at diners and sports bars: buffalo chicken with bacon bits and ranch, turkey and cheddar, chicken pesto. The genius twist? Ramirez folds cheese into the batter, so the cooked edges take on the lacy savor of a quesotaco. Kids will love the crepe reconfigured into a pepperoni pizza roll. Headed for this year’s Coachella festival? Ramirez recently opened a second location in Indio.
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The Heyday
Palm Springs American $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times )
Day or night, Brad and Crystal Reih’s Heyday is Palm Springs’ smashburger destination of the moment. Its menu runs succinct, centered around three burger variations — including a mushroom-based vegetarian option — and a fried chicken sandwich. My go-to: a double cheeseburger with bacon, hold the shredded lettuce. Twin crisp-edged patties droop beyond the potato bun, its ooze of melting American slices and Thousand Island dressing cut with the wispy crunch of caramelized onions. Alongside, onion rings take the slight edge over crinkle fries. Classic cocktails (negroni, Tom Collins, Jim and Coke) comprise the equally concise cocktail list. “What gins do you have for a martini?” I asked our server from one of the small room’s tufted burgundy-leather booths. “Only Tanq.”
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Hoja Blanca
Palm Springs Modern Mexican $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
The most exciting cooking in Palm Springs happens on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, when chefs Omar Limon and Blanca Flores Torres, who are married, and Omar’s brother Arnold Limon settle in to run their weekly pop-up at Truss & Twine, the stylish bar attached to upscale restaurant Workshop. Arrive early. In a few ever-changing dishes, the team pulls off modern Mexican cooking better than many of its bricks-and-mortar equivalents in Los Angeles. The tostadas balance intellect, intuition and textures, arrayed with combinations like silky tuna, pureed avocado and agreeably gritty salsa macha or diced roasted beets scattered over jocoque, the Mexican variation on Lebanese labneh. Artful plating of chicken enmoladas, pork belly-filled tetelas and inky aquachiles pleases the eye with precise geometries, while never sacrificing soulful deliciousness. One day the trio will realize their goal of opening a restaurant. In the meantime, follow them on Instagram.
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La Copine
Yucca Valley New American $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Amid Yucca Valley’s burgeoning restaurant scene, and a 50-minute drive from the center of Palm Springs, Nikki Hill and Claire Wadsworth’s dream diner qualifies as a destination restaurant from anywhere in Southern California. The restaurant operates from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. The vibe is casual, and the place is no secret: La Copine accepts limited reservations, and the rest of us show up and expect a wait. Patience brings Hill’s cooking. The menu of salads, sandwiches, vegetable plates and several entrees doesn’t read as radical or idiosyncratic. But the combinations are so intentional, and the plucking of global ideas so thoughtful, that the results come off feeling personal. This spring expect a vegetable-forward take on a Waldorf salad dressed in tarragon vinaigrette; a breakfast sandwich built on an English muffin and zinged with date jam and Calabrian chile hot sauce; and halibut set in a Bouillabaisse-style broth fragrant with saffron. The service staff, led by ebullient Wadsworth, has as much character and individualism as the food. To take the La Copine experience home, Wadsworth and Hill have written a cookbook with former Times cooking columnist Ben Mims, arriving April 28.
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Maleza
Palm Springs Mexican $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Doubling essentially as the lobby of the Drift hotel, which opened in March 2023, Maleza stands out among recent openings in downtown Palm Springs. Chef Ysaac Ramirez oversees a daytime menu of morning breakfast standards (pancakes, chilaquiles, breakfast burrito) and tacos, salads and a cheeseburger topped with molten queso Oaxaca among lunch options. The cooking at dinner best showcases Ramirez’s talents; Mexican flavors predominate among the shareable, globally inspired plates. Bright openers like grapefruit-spritzed scallop crudo and lemony carrots with chimichurri made using leafy carrot tops cede to the richness of masa dumplings and king trumpet mushrooms in a velvety mole blanco. If you’re ever in the mood for a drink and dessert to end the night, land at the restaurant’s bar for very good churros with cajeta caramel and chocolate sauces and a shot of tequila, mezcal or sotol from an impressive list.
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Meng's Filipino Cuisine
Cathedral City Filipino $
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
The mounted menu board at Meng’s, run by Imelda Abaya and her family, announces their Filipino restaurant’s breakfast specialty: silog, a platter of sinangag (the Tagalog word that describes garlic fried rice) and itlog (egg, often served sunny side up or boiled). Choose from nearly two dozen options for a lead protein. I veer toward tocino (a chewy-crisp, caramelized variation on bacon) or fried pork chops, but other options include Spam, grilled chicken skewers, Spanish sardines and fried eggplant. At lunchtime, have a conversation with Abaya and cast your eyes over the steam table to see what most appeals. The flavors of pork or chicken adobo gently ripple with vinegar and soy sauce. If it’s available, order laing; its textured puree of taro leaves (and sometimes other greens) creamed in coconut milk with spices and shrimp paste nicely contrasts meats and melds with the white rice served with most meals. Regulars tend to fill the handful of tables in the small space, housed in the northwest corner of Cathedral City Marketplace shopping center, and plenty of others swing by for takeout.
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Mr. Lyons
Palm Springs Steakhouse $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
The crown jewel of Tara Lazar’s F10 Creative, a restaurant group with other local properties that include breakfast favorite Cheeky’s and its adjacent Italian staple Birba, is also the best steakhouse in Palm Springs. San Francisco-based architectural designer Brent Kanbayashi channeled the 1940s in his redo of the space; a warren of mod rooms culminates with the center dining room, lined in rich woods and chartreuse-green banquettes that recall a midcentury luxury ocean liner. Stay close to chophouse classics for maximum satisfaction: shrimp cocktail, wedge salad, a slab of prime rib or a dry-aged New York strip when it’s available, with sides of seasonal vegetables (love the simple goodness of Coachella Valley corn in summer and fall) and crackly-skinned twice-baked potato or mac and cheese. Service can be harried and uneven on packed nights. The bar’s always-excellent dry martinis encourage my serenity.
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Paul Bar/Food
Palm Springs Cocktails American $
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
In 2018, Paul O’Halloran opened a business in a nondescript strip mall several miles from downtown Palm Springs. The sign out front simply reads “Bar/Food.” The mystery only made would-be imbibers and diners curious about what might be happening inside. They found a small space with a few booths and a mirrored, mahogany-lined bar that O’Halloran designed as an homage to his early hospitality jobs in New Jersey and New York. If he originally envisioned Paul Bar as a neighborhood haunt, he eventually adjusted to nightly, eager crowds. Be prepared for O’Halloran and his deadpan humor to meet you at the door, letting you know how long the wait might be. As someone who has tagged along with friends who live in Palm Springs, I can tell you he’s kind to regulars — and that he makes a martini as dry and delicious as his wit. It’s excellent alongside a burger or steak frites.
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Peninsula Pastries
Palm Springs French Bakery $
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Waiting in the fast-moving morning line that stretches out the door of Christophe and Helene Meyer’s 10-year-old pastry shop in the Sun Center strip mall has become a Palm Springs tradition. Christophe oversees making the breads, layer cakes and baked goods; Helene trills “Bonjour” to customers as they approach the counter to order. Like any repeat customer, I have landed on favorites: the sticky-crisp kouign amann, a fluffy bun filled with custard lightly scented with orange blossom, the appealingly Americanized butterscotch-pecan twist. Don’t skip over the Lorrain, a breakfast cake flavored with almonds and a splash of plum brandy, filled with preserved Mirabelle plums and decorated with the double cross of France’s eastern Lorraine region, rendered in powdered sugar. I also tend to rip off hunks of warm baguette before I make it out of the parking lot. Note the couple routinely closes Peninsula Pastries during the desert’s hottest summer months.
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The Real Italian Deli
Palm Springs Italian Deli $
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
I don’t believe in wrong answers when it comes to people’s preferences for delis. Manhattan in the Desert and Sherman’s Deli & Bakery both have their deserved adherents. The Real Italian Deli opened in Palm Desert in 2013; a year later, owner John DeVita debuted a small Palm Springs location wedged into a strip mall. I’m a fan of its hot sandwiches, particularly the sausage and peppers sub saturated with fairly obscene amounts of melted mozzarella. A chewy, precisely seasoned farro salad makes a cleansing side dish. The shop qualifies as a restaurant — an indoor communal table set with oilcloth and a couple of metal picnic tables outside constitute the seating — but it’s largely geared for takeout. With that in mind: If you have access to a kitchen, take home the lasagna and warm it in the oven. Something of its textural beauty is lost when the staff reheats it in a microwave on-site.
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Rooster and the Pig
Palm Springs Vietnamese American $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Tai Spendley spent years working as a food and beverage director for hotels throughout the country before opening his own restaurant. For his menu he channeled the adaptive culinary style of his mother, who emigrated from Vietnam and synthesized her native cuisine with what she could find in American grocery stores. It was a relief when the restaurant reopened in June after an electrical fire temporarily closed the business last winter. Garlicky, chile-sparked chicken wings sticky in their glaze of caramelized fish sauce deliver on their obvious appeal; pair them with a starter of sliced okra in a wonderfully crunchy mulch of peanuts, shallots, garlic and ginger. Spendley’s version of bo luc lac, or “shaking beef,” winningly bounces through its salty, sweet and peppery notes. Rooster and the Pig, named for two compatible animals in the Vietnamese zodiac calendar, doesn’t take reservations; sip a Singha lager or one of the lime-bright cocktails next door at the restaurant’s lounge while you wait.
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Wilma & Frieda
Palm Desert Breakfast/Brunch $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Rejecting the concept of brunch isn’t technically allowed within the city limits of Palm Springs. Wilma & Frieda, named after the grandmothers of sibling owners Kelly McFall and Kreg Alexander, serves comfort foods squarely on the breakfast-lunch continuum: waffles, French toast, build-your-own-scrambles, entree-size salads, hefty burgers and sandwiches. This is another resort town-pleaser in the noblest sense. On its lengthy menu most anyone can find something calorically indulgent and agreeable. One person in my friend circle unfailingly orders the biscuits with gravy flecked with both sausage and bacon. Another asks for griddled meatloaf (Ritz crackers and Lipton soup mix are its secret ingredients) and fried eggs. The original is in a Palm Desert mall with plenty of parking, and the second Palm Springs location is bigger and, when planning for inevitable waits during high season, usually less crowded than Cheeky’s a half-mile away.
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