You Should Be Eating This Right Now: Baked Buckwheat Pancake (Friends & Family).

What: Baked Buckwheat Pancake.
Where: Friends & Family (5150 Hollywood Blvd, East Hollywood).

Why: After months of Insta stalking I finally made it out to the new'ish Friends & Family in East Hollywood. Even though it was lunch hour and I had just ordered a Roasted Chicken Salad (also very good/recommended), my dining mate insisted we order a "Baked Buckwheat Pancake" for "the table slash dessert." Not really sure what that was or why we would want it with our meals, I gave him the "Sure, why the fuck not?" nod.

Smart move. Very smart move. I don't think I've ever really had anything like it. It's this delicious battered, Marvel Comics-esque fusion of a regular pancake and a Dutch Baby. Like all good things at restaurants (see: soufflé, deep dish pizza), F&F warns you from the get: allow at least an extra ten minutes for your Baked Buckwheat Pancake. That's because it's no simple cooking process. We're not talking mess hall, pull out the Sam's Club mix, add water and plop on frying pan. Rather, the Baked Buckwheat starts on the stove top, then moves to the oven and then in the middle of the oven baking process, it is flipped. The result is a raised pancake that offers the tasty, fluffy, filling delights of your every day pancake with the girth and hardened edges of a Dutch Baby, plus the distinctive, yet subtle buckwheat flavor.

Although they should never go together, I highly suggest you order one with your Roasted Chicken Salad.