Fat + Flour - Grand Central Market / DTLA

Fat and Flour

All-around Queen Nicole Rucker’s GCM operation Fat and Flour deserves its own thread. Now that she’s opened up every week she has been playing the hits (key lime pie, chocolate chess pie, really any pie), putting up new seasonal offerings (a rotating fruit studded almond frangipane, crumbles, hand pies), and bringing all around good vibes to the market.

Pies Pies Pies

Perhaps best known for her key lime pie which is a menu mainstay, Chef Rucker makes standard 9in pies, as well as 5in mini pies in multiple varieties. They are mostly all fruit based using whatever’s in season or whatever she’s feeling that week. Some come with a crumble topping, others with whipped cream, and a few have the elusive double crust. They’re done with traditional flaky butter crusts or graham cracker crusts depending on the pie. The one mainstay pie on the menu that’s not fruit is the Chocolate Chess, which is luxuriously dense and shouldn’t be skipped.

Mini Key Lime

Chocolate Chess

Mini Apple Pie with Crumble Topping

Almond Frangipane

Low key, this one of the best things Chef Rucker is making right now. The fruit changes week to week and she’ll often have multiple options based on what’s in season. The best so far has been the fig, but we’ve seen berry and plum as well. The custard that holds whatever fruit she chooses is a chefskissemoji if there ever was one.

Figgy Frangipane

Berry Frangipane

Plum Frangipane

Cream Pies

One of Chef Rucker’s many gifts is knowing how much whipped cream to put on her pies (a lot). These too benefit from her skill at picking fruit. Like she did when she was running Fiona, she puts great care into selecting the fruit she brings in and then caring for it before turning it into a pie, with her and her staff checking for peak ripeness multiple times a day. For more info on her process, see her cookbook Dappled. While it was only available for a week or two, the Strawberry Cream Pie reached perfection, and she has also launched Banana Butterscotch Cream.

Strawberry Cream

Banana Butterscotch Cream

Lemon Cream

Specialties

Chef Rucker recently came around to making hand pies and she started it off with a peach loaded banger. There are bound to be more flavors added as the seasons change—an apple variation is already incoming.

Hand Pies

Peach

Apple

Blackberry/Blueberry

Chicken Mole (Savory)

Her whole peach dumpling—while labor intensive—is perhaps the best way to enjoy a peach. It’s wrapped entirely in pie dough and is just as delicious as it is adorable. This is where you really see her expertise in picking the best fruit.

Miscellaneous

Fat and Flour’s cookies shouldn’t go overlooked. It’s easy to skip them when pie is clearly her speciality and what Chef Rucker has been known for, but you’d be making a mistake. Her chocolate chip is elite—sold both baked and in raw dough form for all you degenerates like me—but the softer lemon/lavender shouldn’t go overlooked either.

Chocolate Chip

Brownie

When she was at Fiona, Chef Rucker was making the best carrot cake in the city. Since opening Fat and Flour she has only made it once in a very limited release. If it’s every available, don’t miss it.

As she gets ramped up, Chef Rucker has started adding savory goods to Fat + Flour’s roster. One of her specialties are Ricotta Biscuits, which she serves at Fat + Flour with seasonal jam and butter. These are elite biscuits–a crisp exterior and soft, crumby interior that melts in your mouth.

Vital stats:
Grand Central Market
317 S Broadway
(213) 369-0237
@fatandflourla

Menu to order at https://fatandflour.square.site/ goes up every Tuesday at 10:30am. Check Instagram for specials.

RIYL: the HBO of pies

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Wow!

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Christ - I am no sweets fiend but those look fiendishly GREAT.
Wonderful post.

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Dang missed the window this week for hand pies. Those look great. Was going to be in DTLA on Saturday.

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Watch their Instagram on Saturday–sometimes they have extra inventory and will put it up there. Everything might not be available, but last weekend there was enough for walk ups.

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25th heart. Can they accommodate any walk-up business? Or must every customer order online prior?

I saw the Saturday possibility of buying overstock, but I have an office near GCM, and would looove it if I can spontaneously walk by and hit F+F M-F…

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No idea right now if they’d be able to do walk-ups on a Friday with any consistency. When I grabbed the carrot cake last week, that was just announced that morning on her personal Instagram.

A few weeks ago they got new ovens installed and were able to increase production inside GCM, so it’s likely that sometime soon they’ll have that ability to accommodate walk-ups on Friday too. But for now the only guaranteed way for some Fri-yay good-ness is pre-order. That said, it wouldn’t hurt to swing by and check?

I’ve been following along with her Kickstarter for the permanent space and once that hits I’m sure it’ll be all systems go.

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Fat + Flour dropping savory hand pies tomorrow. Text the shop to reserve, though walking up might be possible.

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@rlw, @attran99, @butteredwaffles

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Way ahead of you!! Also carrot cake will be a regular occurrence according to Rucker

Carrot Cake

Apple Hand Pie

Banana Butterscotch Creme

Coconut Curry Greens with Cheese Curds


Flaky, savory, easy

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This makes my weekend.

Savory hand pie looks great–I got there too early to actually get one today :sweat_smile:

They mentioned that they’re also making enough for a very limited number of walk ups on Fridays and Saturdays now, in addition to announcing other specials that Chef Rucker is putting up on her stories.

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Chatted with Chef Rucker a bit on Saturday and she mentioned they’re going to continue doing their specials on Friday and Saturday for day of ordering. You’ll have to watch Chef Rucker’s instagram stories for notifications of what’s in the case and if you need to text to reserve. She’s usually posting that day’s availability between 10-11am.

One of this week’s specials was an experimental chocolate concha–a real winner.

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Orders are now live: new stuff on the menu includes a 9in pumpkin (first of the season), 5in lemon cream, and lamb savory hand pies. Hopefully she’ll have some slices for walk-ups again this weekend too!

https://fatandflour.square.site/

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you had me at lamb pie, thanks.

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I popped the lamb hand pie in my countertop oven to get it toasty and it was unreal (mostly because of the deliciously salty and slightly nutty dough). Definitely a must get if you can.

The filling with chunks of potato and lamb is fine and I liked it better than the chicken mole, but the dough is what has me considering going to pick another one up tomorrow :sweat_smile:

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Pumpkin Pie

Chef Rucker has shown her enthusiasm for pumpkins the past few weeks, and she bakes all of that into this incredible pie. It’s perfectly cooked with an incredibly consistent texture that’s thick but not overly dense with a subtle caramel flavor. Of course the crust is elite. Chef Rucker always coaxes the best from the fruit she bakes with, and she applies the same dedication to this humble pumpkin pie—get it while you can.

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Triple Chocolate Cookie

If I put this cookie in the chocolate chip cookie death match (it doesn’t qualify) this would be the kamikaze cookie. It’s simply death by chocolate—possibly even more chocolate-y than the Fat + Flour brownie—with in incredibly gooey texture and another one of those bites that has my eyes rolling back into my head. This has only been available as a special on certain days, so watch Instagram for availability until it hits the menu.

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Pumpkin Olive Oil Cake

Chef Rucker is making the most of pumpkin season. As a special this week she made this moist, fully pumpkin flavored sheet cake. The little specks of chocolate give it an extra dimension and the restrained use of sweet frosting doesn’t dominate the cake, but is a nice accent that lets the pumpkin flavor shine.

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Cinnamon Roll

This has been teased on Instagram the past couple weeks and it slaps. The most striking thing about it is that there aren’t many rolls and folds in it, so there’s a lot more pure dough in every bite, and not an extreme amount of cinnamon and sugar. That said, the dough is incredible, the cream cheese frosting is amazing, and you should absolutely get this if you can.

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Chocolate Passionfruit Pie

:rotating_light: :rotating_light: :rotating_light: Sound the alarm, this is a banger. :rotating_light: :rotating_light: :rotating_light: Chef Rucker absolutely crushes this pairing of chocolate ganache, passionfruit curd, and toasted meringue. It’s just an absolutely killer pairing that I’m glad she’s brought to pie form. The marshmallowy meringue is the bulk of bite, but the passionfruit and chocolate are the afterburners that’s just rocket it into orbit. She did whole pies last week, but had limited slices available for same day reservation and walk ups—don’t miss it.

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Fat and Flour x Pikunico Chicken Curry Hand Pie

The rotating fillings of the savory hand pies have been stellar each week and this was the first chef collaboration we’ve seen. Chef Kuniko’s chicken curry is wonderful and the whole hand pie is best eaten fresh out of the toaster oven so it’s piping hot. It’s generous on the chicken but had bites of carrot, broccoli, and edamame to fill it out. But I really can’t say enough about how superb the flakey pie crust is. I’m looking forward to seeing the next hand pie collab and making a return trip to Pikunico soon.

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I’ve also updated the original post with some more images like the lemon cream pie (amazing) and chocolate chess (a barn burner).

Fat + Flour will be closed this week (10/16 & 17) for staff to take vacation, but they’re returning soon in full force to launch their fall menu

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now open wed-sat, preorders not required, same day pick up available @J_L.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CGkuRcMDeul/

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Word. Thanks, man.

I stopped by a few weeks ago and found it odd they were sold out on a Saturday at 2PM, and this whole time they were preorder only?

It was mostly pro-order, but the past few weeks they had been making enough for walk ups and same day orders. They were posting what they had extras of on Instagram Friday and Saturday mornings letting people text the shop to reserve.

So now that they are gaining steam they are largely moving away from needing to take preorders and you can just place an order for same day pick up or try and walk up.

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