Love Life, Hate Kittens

If it’s anything I love about Sundays, it’s breakfast foods and drinking. OK, mainly the drinking but come one, icy cold mimosas and bloody marys? Bacon, runny eggs and overload of carbs is just the icing on the cake. 

And now, we even elevated Sunday brunches to a whole new level. B discovered these great 5oz bacon wrapped filets for under 10 bucks. How can we ever go back to black forest ham? BLACK FOREST HAM? It’s practically peasants food. 

The hardest part about making a multi part breakfast is definitely the timing. I’d make everything in this order: 

Bacon -20 minutes
Steak (medium rare) - 10 minutes
Poached eggs - 10 minutes 
Grits - 7 minutes
Hollandaise - 5 minutes
English muffins - 3 minutes 

Bacon wrapped steak benedicts (serves 2)

Ingredients

Hollandaise Sauce
You can use packaged sauce (Knorr brand is good) however, sauce from scratch is super easy as well.
2 large egg yolks
1 tbsp of lemon juice
Dash of salt, paprika, pepper
4 tbsp of butter

4 slices of thick cut bacon 
2 english muffins
2 5 oz bacon wrapped filets

Grits
1/2 cup of grits
Dash of salt
3 cups of water 

Process

1. Place bacon on foil covered tray evenly spaced. Do not preheat oven. Stick pan in oven and set to 375 degrees and bake for 20 minutes. 

2. Buy an egg poacher. Yes, the one you see on infomercials. It’s the best 40 dollars you can ever spend. All you have to do is oil the little tray, plop your eggs in and click on. No more swirling eggs with a dash of vinegar hoping the whites don’t separate too much.

2. Heat skillet to med high. Sear filet 3 minutes per side. Sear also 1 min per side to crisp the bacon. Remove from heat to rest. Slice horizontally in half. 

3. Boil 3 cups of water and salt. Slowly pour in your grits and bring to boil again. Lower heat to low and cover. Stir occasionally to prevent clumping. Simmer for 7 minutes and remove from heat.

4. Melt butter on low. Do not burn. Mix egg yolk, lemon and salt in blender on low pulse. Slowly pour in hot butter while continuously blending. Blend for 1 minute until thickening. 

5. Toast your muffins. Slice. 

6. By this time, all of your breakfast components should be done and ready to be pieced together <3. Start with your English muffin half, top each half with a slice of steak. Place a poached egg on top. Top generously with hollandaise. 

7. Server with bacon and grits. And tons of mimosas <3 Drink, eat, nap. 

The perfect Sunday. 

B made a lovely vegetarian breakfast for me this morning. I poached the egg though cuz I’m a freaking egg poaching wizard. But he made the eggplant patty on portobella. Maybe he thinks I’m fat. And yes, that IS a cranberry vodka.

What? I didn’t have champagne.

Saturday brunch makes me feel mature.

After having a nice girly mani/pedi morning, the girls decided to meet their mens for a late brunch at La Grande Orange in Santa Monica. How suburban. Service was pretty fantastic considering we all arrived at different times and didn’t put in our order until the last person arrived. Given the crowd that was growing by minutes, our waitress was patient. The table ordered 2 pitchers of sangria (white and red) and the red was far superior. The white tasted like concentrated grape juice (before you mix with water). Meh.

I ordered the hash brown benedict with bacon. Basically its two poached eggs on top of two pieces of honey bacon on top of some potato hash. Lack of flavor. Lacked salt. Could have been from Denny’s. Some people ordered the burger + fries but had to put salt on the burger also. Fries were good. Also had a nibble of the brussels sprouts salad which was pretty tasty. Their ribeye steak was horrible. Not a hint of pink in sight even though we ordered it medium rare. Gross.

In short, the food was awfully mediocre and bland but I do love the open space, the crowd (young and pretty), the location and the red sangria. A-OK. Although I would not be coming back unless invited, I would see how this would be a great place to grab a casual brunch with work folks or casual friends. And besides…… the food was fairly reasonably priced (hash brown benedict was $8) albeit flavorless..

Just avoid the 18 dollar ribeye (steak + eggs).

La Grande Orange

(310) 396-9145

[great pic via Herman N.]

If you are ever curious on where the Z-List Celebs (Brandy IS Z-List right?), freaks, hungover coke whores, wanna be reality stars, and the chipper gays go on Sundays, welcome to Toast.

Having been here at 10am, 11am, and 4pm, I have to face the fucking truth. Toast will always have a wait. Fact.

Despite the wait, you are treated to great service, good food, and a grade A people watching session. Toast boasts a wide array of soups. I enjoyed both the Chicken Tortilla soup and Sweet Corn Chowder.

They have a huge menu from breakfast foods to pasta to entrees. I prefere to stick with breakfast items and sandwiches when I go to cafes. Just recently had their ‘open face’ sandwich which was lox, hollandaise, eggs on a croissant. Very big portions. Great the next day especially if you baked their country potatoes with a dash of paprika and garlic. Mmmm.

Their soup + sandwich + side combo is a plenty good deal too. I had their chicken salad sandwich before which was good though not what I expected. I misread the menu and thought it was ANY sandwich + side + salad + soup. I was thinking wow. best deal ever. Their sweet potato fries are a must have also for any SPF fan.

But what really seals it for me is their ice tea. I would say its the best iced tea in the area hands down.

You have a lot of brunch spots in Mid City but Toast is definitely one of the better ones. Yes, I know what you want to ask. It is way better than the fuckery that is Joan’s on Third.

[pics via Eileen T. of yelp! Crabby Benedict is so good!]

I love the bubbly. No I’m not Diddy or have an abundance of champagne to bust on strippers in a lavish pool party but still. I like to indulge in a little bit of that golden tonic whenever I can. (Btw. I tried to think of a good sensual term for champange but golden tonic totally sounds like I heart pee.)

But I digress.

How do you beat 5 dollar all you can drink champagne?! Really? How do you beat that. Order a orange juice if you wanna be classy.

Overland Cafe is one of the best ‘brunch’ cafes I’ve been to. It’s not especially fancy or in the ‘scene’ like Toast or BLD. It’s loud. It’s a bit hectic and crowded. But it has great food, great service - our waitress was SO nice, and great outdoor ‘enclosed’ seating.

Last time I came here, I ordered eggs overeasy + sausage + country potatoes + toast. The sausage was perfectly cooked, crisp and you cannot go wrong with country potatoes + hot sauce. Hell, you can’t go wrong with breakfast foods in general. Based on past visits, I would recommend the crabby benedict and the steaks and eggs.

and since I LOVE LOVE LOVE lox. I ordered a side of lox to go with my wonderful brunch. You won’t believe the amount of lox they give you. It was piled high and between two people no one was fighting for the last piece.

If the lox doesn’t suck you in, at least come for the bubbly. If you are wondering, two girls can go leisurely go through almost two bottles of champagne in a one hour period.

Wanna challenge me?

Overland Cafe

3601 Overland Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(310) 559-9999

[Food totally did not look this plasticky btw ^ pic via their website]

Mehhh.

It’s mehhh. Not great. Not bad. It’s simply A-OK. Which is also how my review will be. … just A-OK. I don’t have a humorous anecdote or ‘fml’ moments. It just ..is. Really, there have been ZERO funny instances that happened during any Lulu’s trips unless you count Jew sightings as funny but that’s totally racist.

Here’s the food breakdown of Lulu’s:

Bread - Yummy bread and olive oil/garlic mix. I had to ask for bread though. Don’t know if its customary.

Roasted Chicken with shallots dinner entree - Roasted chicken had nice flavor. A bit too sweet for me. But it was a big portion and it was good for lunch the next day.

Chicken Tortilla Soup - OMG. I have new found appreciation for CTS because I tried making it at home and its plenty hard. Mmmm. This soup was amazing.

California Wrap (added bacon) - This was really good and it held well for the day after. The tortilla was a bit dry but that’s ok cuz I rather hard than soggy. I love avocado + bacon so that was a nice touch. Chicken is pretty flavorless tho.

Fries - good.

Fruit - Meh.

Given the other places in the area, Lulu’s probably wouldn’t be my first choice but it has easy parking and there’s never a wait so that’s a plus in my book.

Oh. props cuz it’s Asian owned. Ba dow.

Lulu’s

7149 Beverly Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 938-6095

Mmm. Brunch.

Brunch is undoubtedly my favorite meal of the day next to late suppers. I can never manage to wake up early enough for breakfast and lunch is well…like the Maggie Gylennhall of meals. Yawn.

After passing up Toast, I decided I was in the mood for something new. Milk sounded a bit gimmicky and I was NOT in the mood to have a disappointing meal. I want something quaint, dependable, and classy. Upon first glance, Taste in Weho seems to fit the bill. Parking is a bit hard but they do valet which I have stopped doing. No. Not because someone stole my change but because my door sensor doesn’t work and its really all kinds of beat up right now. FML.

Anyway. Arrived 1PM on Sunday and there was probably a 3 minute wait for a table on the covered patio. I noticed there was cute little nooks inside that sat a group of 6-8 overlooking the patio. Looks like a great place for a dinner party.

I love breakfast foods so I went with the Crab Cake Benedict with Country Potatos and shared a carafe of Mimosa.

The food took a bit to get to us. My first reaction when I saw my food was wow, its so big (yes. that’s what yo momma said). Although the crab cake wasn’t very well seasoned, I think it paired well with the strong hollandaise sauce and runny egg. The potatos definitely looked better than they tasted. Some seasoning salt would have did us all some good.

While the food wasn’t spectacular, I wouldn’t mind coming again. I think I would opt for the breakfast sandwiches next time tho. The table next to us got sandwiches and it looked and smelled amazing.

Taste