Food & Wine USA - (07)July 2020

JULY 2020 65

When the pandemic first hit, Carson

decided to shut down the restaurant,

but by the end of the week, he real-

ized he needed something to do. So he

started baking again, selling pastries to

his neighbors in the Arts District. “It was

a point of normalcy for a minute, and I

took it as a sign,” he says. Carson started

cooking family-style meals Wednesday

through Sunday and baked goods on the

weekends. He was making 12 different

types of pastries, including three types

of croissants. At first, the pastries seemed

profitable, with the restaurant making

double the revenue on baked goods

than they were before, but overall, the

restaurant was making in a week about

what it would make in one night when

it was fully open. Carson’s goal was to

make enough to survive and “stay rel-

evant,” he says. And while there was

enough money coming in to keep a

handful of people on payroll, he ulti-

mately decided that keeping Bon Temps

open was not financially viable. The res-

taurant permanently closed in April. It’s

a devastating reminder that many of our

favorite restaurants may not survive the

pandemic. But we waited a long time for

Carson to open his first restaurant. We

will wait, and hope, for as long as it takes

for him to open his next one.

their pivot

At Bon Temps, you could taste the

almost 30 years of Carson’s career

as a pastry chef in each layer of the

showstopping Saint-Honoré.

why we loved them

Chef Lincoln Carson waited until he

turned 50 to open his first solo res-

taurant, and diners benefited from his

patience, which came through in every

detail. Take the finesse of his crab

cake, where a silky patty of Dungeness

meat and scallop mousse was topped

with an impossibly thin disk of pain

de mie, fanned avocado slices, and a

tangle of crisp greens. No matter what

you ordered, as the restaurant’s name

indicated, you were in for a good time.

Unfortunately, due to the disruption

caused by the pandemic, Bon Temps

has permanently closed.

los angeles

PERFECT PASTRIES AND

IMAGINATIVE CALI

BRASSERIE COOKING IN

THE WAREHOUSE-FILLED

ARTS DISTRICT

BON

TEMPS