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- In Melrose Hill, Chainsaw Cafe is a charming, unpredictable micro cafe with a tight menu of arepas, coffee and stellar desserts.
- The menu draws on chef-owner Karla Subero Pittol’s Venezuelan roots, with specials ranging from chicken milanesa to a loaded perro caliente.
- Pittol’s ice creams and passion fruit-lime icebox pie are standouts, and an expanded dining room and cocktail bar are planned for next year.
If you were to ask for the vibiest restaurant in Los Angeles — a place that oozes effortless cool and nonchalance — I’d steer you in the direction of Chainsaw Cafe.
The trim, Venezuelan-leaning restaurant sits at the nexus of the fast-developing Melrose Hill, across the street from Little Fish and Kuya Lord and around the corner from Bar Étoile. It’s a micro-cafe with minimal, mostly sidewalk seating and a tight, handwritten menu.
The handwritten menu at Chainsaw Cafe. The empanada de queso with flor de calabaza and guasacaca. A golfeado, cheesy sticky bun.
The walls in the dining room are intentionally painted to appear like the saffron ochre has been peeling for far longer than its year in existence. Its counters are crowded with plants and flowers in various states of decay, stacks of plates, fruit and Venezuelan snacks like tins of Pirulin cookies, all styled like a Dutch still life. It feels lived-in, warm and a little irreverent, with a mix of storage crates, wooden stools and bistro and folding chairs for furniture.
It’s the sort of unfettered energy you might expect from a restless freethinker who tried her best to avoid a life in restaurants but couldn’t stay away. Chef and owner Karla Subero Pittol began hosting Sunday brunch pop-ups for hungover college students while attending the University of California at Santa Barbara. She moved to Paris to cook, then returned to Los Angeles and took a job as a line cook at Animal, the restaurant that helped define L.A. dining culture in the 2000s. She was the opening pastry chef at Here’s Looking at You. But after years in male-dominated kitchens, Pittol says the restaurant system “broke” her. She went on hiatus a few times and became a florist, a dog walker and even an Uber driver. But she knew in her heart that she wanted to cook.
A portrait of Karla Subero Pittol, chef-owner of Chainsaw Cafe. Details inside Chainsaw Cafe in Melrose Hill.
Chef Eric Greenspan has an admirably outsize ego. Who else would willingly tackle the most deeply contentious foods of the entirety of the Jewish diaspora?
Pittol and former business partner Max Shuffler started hosting dinners out of her Echo Park garage, earning a following for her fruit pies and elaborate live-fire feasts. Think whole pineapples and chickens suspended from chains over a burning pit, asado-style. In the thick of the pandemic, there was a frenzy for Pittol’s pies and pints of ice cream: mixed-berry brown-butter cobbler pie kissed with verjus. Prickly pear punch sorbet spiked with sumac and vanilla.
Determined to run a bricks-and-mortar restaurant on her own terms, she opened the green steel French doors of Chainsaw Cafe last November. Sara Marlowe Hall, a longtime friend and half of the duo behind Merchant Modern home decor boutique, helped cultivate the cafe’s sun-faded aesthetic.
Chainsaw Cafe
5022 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, chainsawla.com
Prices: Arepas and empanadas $9-$13, salads $14, daily specials vary (milanesa $21), sides $3-$8, desserts $6-$12, coffee and specialty drinks $3-$7.50, whole
pies from $65.
Details: Open daily from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Recommended dishes: Arepas, empanada, anything on the specials menu, perro caliente, passion fruit-lime icebox pie, whatever ice cream is on offer.
To drink: Coffee from Post Era, matcha and specialty drinks like the cafe quesillo Venezuelan flan latte and papelón con limón Venezuelan raw sugar limeade.
While her focus was mostly desserts, Pittol leaned into her family’s roots in Caracas, Venezuela, for the cafe. The menu is built around a trio of arepas, a quintessential Venezuelan comfort food of griddled cornmeal cakes split and stuffed with fillings as varied as the cooks making them. Pittol’s arepas feature a crisp, mottled surface and a dusky plum hue. The ultra-crunchy exterior gives way to a luxurious, fluffy center and a deep corn flavor. Pittol uses a mixture of Masienda heirloom corn and Harina P.A.N. corn flour to achieve the specific confluence of textures. And she deep-fries them, similar to the style you’ll find in the Zulia region of northwestern Venezuela.
The carne machada arepa is filled with a tangle of beef slow-cooked with peppers and onions, tamari, Maggi sauce and tons of smoked paprika until it falls away in tender, limp strands. A smear of guasacaca zips through the beef with the heat of jalapeño and serrano peppers. Instead of the traditional avocado, Pittol makes the pistachio-green Venezuelan condiment with labneh, aji amarillo paste and plenty of fresh herbs.
The domino arepa marries rich black beans fragrant with cinnamon and guajillo, and a tangy blend of mozzarella, Gouda and feta cheeses.
The most unconventional of the trio is the jamón y queso, built with ribbons of jamón serrano. One side of the arepa is painted with a lush lemon pepper labne and crema salvadoreña. On the other, a mojo picón with the backbone of Malaysian sambal, piquant with fish sauce, Calabrian chiles, ginger and plenty of citrus zest.
Other menu constants include a plate of papas fritas. The fries are of the thick, stocky variety and require immediate consumption. They approach soggy rapidly, but the accompanying cup of tamarindo barbecue sauce rescues the limp spuds. It has the zesty, briny punch of good Singapore laksa paste fortified with coconut and fermented shrimp. Both feature fish sauce.
If you’re lucky, there will be “milanesa” written on the small mirror that showcases the day’s specials. That same barbecue sauce is served with a gargantuan chicken cutlet sheathed in a crunchy golden crust of gluten-free panko crumbs and a profusion of sesame seeds.
Or the perro caliente, modeled after the “sweaty discoteca” dogs Pittol ate in Caracas. The sausage is dressed with zigzags of ketchup, mayonnaise and mustard, then buried under a heap of fried potato sticks, shredded cabbage and Parmesan cheese. The entirety of the toppings tumble off the dog with the first bite, but the mess is worth it.
The Chainsaw clientele tends to skew younger by default, favoring those who have yet to reach the age of viewing things like a consistent menu, easy parking and guaranteed seating as mandatory. Parking may require a block’s walk to lunch. The seating options are more aesthetically pleasing than they are comfortable. And if there’s nowhere to sit, you may end up eating your arepas off of the hood of your car. An anything-goes / go-with-the-flow mindset works best here. But know that everything on the menu travels well, and will be just as excellent by the time you arrive home. Even the ice cream.
Apple + date pie at Chainsaw Cafe. Patrons enjoying a Shirley Temple sorbet at Chainsaw Cafe. Passionfruit lime icebox pie at Chainsaw Cafe.
Many chicken rice restaurants have sprouted up in L.A., but if you ask for my favorite of the moment, I’ll direct you to Nandao Rice & Noodle.
Pittol is an ice cream wizard, capable of distilling the essence of nearly any flavor into frozen dessert form. Recently, she combined Weiser yellow and orange watermelon with pineapple and lemon verbena to convey the signature bubblegum flavor of Inca Kola. And captured the juiciness of ripe strawberries, snapping the fruit into sweet focus in a pint of strawberry and passion fruit ice cream.
Pittol’s most lauded dessert is her passion fruit-lime icebox pie, created as an homage to her maternal grandmother’s passion fruit mousse cake. She starts with a graham cracker crust laced with milk powder for extra crunch and a toasty, nutty depth. The pie’s center is wonderfully assertive with passion fruit and enough lime zest to make your lips pucker. And heaped over the top, a sugar-and zest-speckled cream bouffant. Thought it’s served straight out of the freezer, it is perfection at any temperature.
Chainsaw is nearly a year old, and still feels very much in flux. That special you spied in the mirror on your last visit — maybe the pollo a la brasa or the whole fried snapper — may or may not surface again.
Pittol is working on expanding into the adjacent space with a full dining room and cocktail bar expected to open early next year. Until then, Chainsaw’s wonders can be fleeting. Enjoy the magic while you can.
