The downtown restaurant bringing some much-needed daytime energy to L.A.’s lunch scene

The lemon tart from Cafe Oh! No in the Arts District.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

A restaurant can look and feel like an entirely new space bathed in the warm glow of sunlight. The energy shifts when you flood a once-dim dining room with pastries and caffeinated people.

Margarita and Walter Manzke have managed to create the perfect daytime atmosphere at République, the couple’s Hancock Park restaurant, due in no small part to the pastry counter brimming with Maragarita’s breads, cakes and tarts. The same is true for Alisa Vannah and Francois Daubinet at Mr. T in Hollywood, where evening cocktails and steak tartare are swapped for croissants, green juice and laptops on tables during daylight hours.

These are places accessible enough for weekly visits that seamlessly transition to upscale settings worthy of a celebratory meal. My current night-to-day fixation is the new cafe attached to Yess restaurant in the Arts District.

The dining room at Yess is one of the most serene in the city, all pale wood and smooth concrete with the scents, sounds and employee fits you’d expect at a five-star spa. Dinner involves Junya Yamasaki’s ambitious, seafood-centered cooking presented in precise but unfussy bowls of chirashi and a whole spiny lobster katsu sandwich that elicits gasps throughout the dining room.

In the adjacent space just north of the restaurant, sous chef Giles Clark has an entirely different operation in mind. Over the past few months, he’s been working on Cafe Oh! No, an all-day restaurant and wine bar set to open in mid-December. While he prepares for the opening, he’s serving daytime pastries and sandwiches alongside a coffee pop-up from Moim Coffee that will run through the end of this month.

The pluot tart from Cafe Oh! No in the Arts District. The restaurant will feature different fruit tarts depending on the season.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

“This was always part of the plan, and it seemed like a good balance to Junya’s restaurant,” Clark says. “On one side it’s quite strong and idealistic and high-end in a way, and then the day place is much more casual and sort of there for everyone to enjoy from the neighborhood and beyond.”

On a recent weekday morning, nearly every seat on the patio is taken, as many patrons sip coffee with dogs at their feet. Through the wooden doors, people line up to order coffee at the Moim counter in the center, and to the left, Clark and his small staff prepare the day’s food offerings.

There’s a pluot tart on display, with the fruit sliced and arranged into a blooming flower over the surface. It’s more fresh than sweet, with the deep red flesh of the fruit taking center stage over a thin layer of custard. The crust is buttery and thin, perfect in its delicateness.

A lemon tart gets a generous sprinkling of sugar and the flame of a blowtorch to brûlée the top before serving. You crack into it like crème brûlée and the tart lemon zips through the smooth custard.

The short menu of sandwiches includes pork katsu, bacon, egg salad and pumpkin curry.

The pork katsu sandwich from Cafe Oh! No in the Arts District.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

Clark uses tenderloin for the katsu, painting the fried pork cutlet in a sweet sauce he makes with his own ketchup, Japanese barbecue sauce and hot mustard.

For now, Clark is buying his white and wheat sandwich milk bread from MamMoth Bakery in Gardena, though he plans to be baking his own bread by the time he fully opens in December.

I’m still surprised by how much I love the bacon sandwich, inspired by something Clark had at a diner in Kentucky that featured Benedictine spread.

“I always like bacon and cucumber for some reason, even just as a combination, and in hot dishes with black pepper,” Clark says. “The Benedictine spread is a kind of cream cheese spread or dip from Kentucky with grated cucumber, white onion and lots of pepper. We add some bacon and wanted it to be a little more satisfying with lettuce and tomato as well.”

The cream cheese spread feels decadent between the slices of bread, like an entire bowl of party dip someone decided to hide in a sandwich. Over the top are strips of crispy bacon, iceberg lettuce and a smear of a sweet tomato sauce that’s almost ketchup. The crunch factor is high and satisfying, with enough iceberg crammed in for a side salad. It’s a curious cross between a cucumber and cream cheese tea sandwich and a BLT.

The bacon sandwich at Cafe Oh! No in the Arts District features a Benedictine spread, bacon and lettuce.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

The spirit of that sandwich is very much in line with Clark’s goals for the cafe and wine bar, and the name. Nothing is meant to be too serious.

“I’m going to cook a big pot of something nice with a few small tapas-y dishes,” he says of what he plans to serve for dinner. “This project is quite DIY and I want it to kind of flow naturally into the future without being too strict about what direction it goes.”

IFNi Roasting & Co. will take over the coffee program in December with drip coffee, spiced coffee and cascara tea.

“We’ll have cold drinks and some cocktails,” Clark says. “I always drink matcha and beer together at home, so we’ll probably do that.”

The dining area feels as charmingly DIY as the menu, with a few tables lining the exposed-brick walls and chairs that look like they were sourced from an estate sale in the French countryside. A stairwell leads to a second-level mezzanine with more seating. It’s quiet and relatively peaceful upstairs, even more so when you take in the bird’s-eye view of Clark methodically assembling your sandwiches directly below.

Though ordering at the counter and the playful menu are decidedly more casual than Yess, the thoughtful precision the restaurant is known for is still apparent in every detail at the cafe. After my wedge of pluot tart was plated, I watched as a tweezer was used to replace a stray piece of fruit on the very tip of my slice.