The Best Thing I Ate: République

On Sunday, I finally got a chance to try République after weeks of seeing everyone's gorgeous photos on Instagram. And I can honestly say, the food tastes just as amazing as it looks.

Behold the Croque Madame, which is a Croque Monsieur with an egg on top. To some, a Croque Monsieur is just a glorified grilled ham & cheese sandwich. But I would argue that when it's done right, it's so much more. Being a lover of sandwiches, I'll order a Croque Monsieur or Croque Madame every chance I get. Luckily, in LA I've been able to get one at a handful of places.

Croque Madame

At République, the Croque Madame is served open-faced. The bread, perfect with crunchy crust and soft, chewy insides. The ham was something from another world. It was thinly sliced with an almost shredded appearance. It was tender and had the right balance of flavor. I never thought I could ever describe ham as being "melt-in-your-mouth". Prior to this experience, I associated ham with being tough and briny. Now I just want to hunt down that ham and make all sorts of sandwiches with it!

I love black sesame things and I think there's never enough goodies being made with black sesame. Like black sesame ice cream—YUM! But not a lot of places make/serve it. So when I saw a black sesame croissant, I HAD to have it! I couldn't even wait until after I took the photo to take a bite out of it.

Black Sesame Croissant

République had plenty more delicious pastries where that came from, but silly me; I was too in awe to bother to take a photo of their pastry case. And that's what second trips are for! I was hanging out with Keiko of Small Adventure, and she let me have a bite of her canelé and it was perfection. I have a feeling I'll be making another trip there soon, and this time I'll take a tip from Keiko and take home a whole box of pastries for myself!