Now you can have your weekend brunch at Animal -- more loco moco for you

If you’re a morning person, Animal can be kind of daunting — or simply a no-fly zone. Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo’s Fairfax Avenue restaurant, open since 2008, has always been an after-dark magnet, attracting a loud bar-driven crowd, a place known as a hangout for chefs in their off hours and for some of the best drunk food in town. Not anymore.

Starting today, Animal will be open on weekend mornings — for brunch, no less. Consider it a victory for the weekend family crowd, hipsterized or not. Or maybe just further proof, if you needed it, that Shook and Dotolo are family guys these days too.

Animal will serve the ultimate weekend meal, both Saturday and Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. (Yes, you and your stroller can just wander in, but given the size and popularity of the place, it’s best to make reservations.)

SIGN UP for Jonathan Gold’s Counter Intelligence dining newsletter >>

And the menu will be about what you’d think it would be. The classic Animal dishes you’ve always wanted in the morning anyway: the foie gras biscuits and gravy, the loco moco. And they’ll have new brunch-y things too: cornmeal waffles, chilaquiles and, yes, avocado toast.

Is this connected to the upcoming opening of Trois Familia? It is not, so we’re told, at least specifically. But the forthcoming Silver Lake brunch place, another collaboration between Shook, Dotolo and Ludo Lefebvre, is plenty of evidence that the chefs have moved their daily timeline up some. As is, of course, the newish Jon & Vinny’s down the street from Animal itself — a family restaurant that has always been open for breakfast.

Because when you have young kids, as these chefs do too now, you find that waffles and toast — and plenty of coffee instead of a cocktail, or at least before one — are pretty much a fact of life. And when you can put them on a menu with foie gras and a boner burger, well, happy weekend indeed.

435 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 782-9225, animalrestaurant.com.

Because taking pictures of food is almost as much fun as eating it, on Instagram @latimesfood.

ALSO:

Step back in time at Q, dedicated to the craft of Edo-style sushi

Head to Broken Spanish in DTLA for an ambitious, modernist take on Mexican food

Estrella Sunset Boulevard opens tonight, a hippie oasis restaurant with its own theater