Restaurant: Huckleberry Cafe
Location: 1014 Wilshire Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90401. (310) 451-2311
Date: February 22 & April 17, 2016
Cuisine: American Breakfast / Pastry
Rating: Jury is still out
Josh Loeb and Zoe Nathan have a mini food empire going in Santa Monica. This includes Rustic Canyon, Milo & Olive, Sweet Rose, and Cassia.
Huckleberry is their take on a breakfast bakery, which is an ever popular sort of place in LA — where nobody makes their own breakfast.
Huckleberry offers various eggs, sides.
And tons of attractive looking pastries.
And more desserts.
Check out the line on a Sunday at 11am!
The format is a bit weird, with multiple lines. While I do like “fast casual” in some circumstances, I’m never a fan of the multiple line thing. There are separate lines for take out. A different one to order than to pay, etc. This was my first time and I didn’t totally understand where to wait, leaving me with the feeling like I wasted 10 minutes with the whole line thing.
Then it was confusing if they would bring it to you, or you picked it up, and the kitchen wasn’t churning out much. It took 20-25 minutes for us to get our stuff — after 15 minutes in line. That part wasn’t so good.
They made a good cappuccino — although it sat on the counter for 5 minutes before they brought it to us.
Poached eggs over farmers’ market vegetables with pesto. The veggies leaned perhaps a bit heavy on the cabbage side.
Green eggs & ham with prosciutto di parma, pesto & arugula on housemade english muffin. Basically an egg’s Benedict without the hollandaise and with added arugula/pesto. Not bad, lighter tasting than the regular.
Hard boiled egg sandwich. They sure love the arugula!
Breakfast burrito. Eggs and sausage. Not bad, but not mind blowing or anything either.
Blueberry muffin.
Coffee cake. Solid, if a tiny bit dry.
The concept here is great. Yummy breakfast. Yummy pastries. Great location right next to Melisse. Hip looking modern space.
Huckleberry is going to take more than one quick visit to really suss out. I need to try some real pastries. The food was well prepared, but maybe we didn’t order as well as we could. The line format was confusing and the service slow. Is it always slow? I’ll have to come back and find out. It was pricey, $60 for 3 egg dishes and 3 cappuccinos.
