LA’s West Adams area continues to produce restaurants that are filling interesting niches in LA’s food scene. The latest is Open Face Food Shop, a sandwich shop focused on serving modern Danish open-face sandwiches. They are located on the corner of Adams and S. Marvin Ave.
Driving east on Adams Blvd, you see a number of automobile repair shops: autobody repair, tire and radiator shops to name a few. Like an oasis in the middle of a dessert, you find a brightly painted yellow and black building.
The Open Face Food Shop is set up as a fast-casual with outdoor-only seating. A wood counter-like top extends across the front of the restaurant with stool seating. Their front window has a collection of Danish words itemizing food and ingredients like rugbrød and leverpostej (Danish brown bread and live pate, respectively). Fortunately, their printed menu is in English.
Open Face Food Shop is owned and operated by the husband and wife team of Mark and Lene Houck. Lene has the experience of being a chef in New York City and Mark also worked the New York City restaurant scene, where they learned the fine points of service and customer care.
They feature open-faced sandwiches on house-made Danish sunflower seed bread (rugbrød) spread with butter. Their Gravlax / Chicken box lunch ($12.75) is a half sandwich made with house-cured gravlax and a half chicken salad with fresh chopped apples. Their sunflower seed bread is tasty and similar to pumpernickel.
The egg salad and pork ($12.50) is another box lunch. The curried egg salad with chopped leeks paired nicely with the dense rugbrød bread. The other half was slices of pork loin, chopped apple, braised cabbage, and housemade pickles. Of the pair, I favored the curried egg salad.
Hakkebøf ($13.50) is a Danish hamburger patty usually topped with sauteed onions. Houck’s version continues the Danish open-face tradition starting out with a thick slice of Nathan’s sourdough topped with grass-fed beef, shaved brussels sprouts, and cucumbers. I ordered mine with an optional slice of melted Havarti cheese.
Their desserts are under the section in the menu titled “3 PM Pick Me Ups”. Marked “our favorite”, I selected the sun-dried cherry and chocolate chip cookies. They were crispy and quite tasty.
The beverages feature “vand”. I mistakenly thought that it was a Danish soft drink, but vand means water in Danish. Vand is their take on Mexican agua fresca and their special that day was grapefruit and mint. Since it was rather warm, this was the ideal beverage to enjoy.
Pro Tip: there are two 30-minute parking spaces in front of the restaurant. If you are feeling bold, you can do as one person did, park in the red zone and take a seat that is directly in front of that space.
Houck creates creative open-face sandwiches using fresh, seasonal ingredients in a modern way. Their outdoor space looks like it was custom built and is extremely clean and functional. There are even hooks along the fence for caps and handbags.
They are open Tuesday-Friday 11:00 am – 4:00 pm and Saturday 10 am- 3 pm
Open Face Food Shop, 5577 W Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90016; 855.676.3223
openfacefoodshop.com