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Modern Breakfast – Huckleberry Cafe

Feb24

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.

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Eggs, Huckleberry, Huckleberry Cafe, Josh Loeb, pastry, Zoe Nathan

Eating Tuscany – Villa Breakfast

Jul13

Location: Staggia, Italy

Date: June 11-25, 2011

Cuisine: Tuscan

ANY CHARACTER HERE

This is our third year renting a villa in Europe for a big chunk of June. I’ve experimented with different ways to handle the breakfast situation for a large number of people (9-15 is what we’ve had). It’s not practical to go out everyday, it would just take too long to wrangle everyone, and a free for all at the house (which we tried last year) has all sorts of issues. Namely the challenge of restocking the groceries and cleaning up. So, our houses at this year’s villa arranged to set and clear a continental breakfast table, to which we added some local products. Overall it worked out very well.

The first thing I need is my coffee. Cappuccino this time of morning. Our hosts made them, which was convenient as last year my dad was making them straight for 90 minutes every morning. Given that many people have two, and the slow speed of the little home machines, it’s hard to churn a lot of them out.

The full spread.

Various dry goods, yogurts, jams, cereal, orange juice.

Fruit, cookies, toast, blood orange juice (yum).

We also put out some of the local cheeses, mostly Pecorino.

And more.

And the stubs of all sorts of them.

A few cow cheeses from the local market.

No Italian breakfast is complete without Prosciutto.

Or Salami.

Our hosts also baked a variety of pastries and breads over the two weeks. Homemade croissants in this case.

A really yummy chocolate torte. Buttery crust, with congealed nuttella type filling.

We had some extra ricotta and our baker turned it into this wonderful cheesecake.

Chocolate inside, with a tasty crust and coco top. It was like breakfast tiramisu!

Pound cake.

Cherry tart.

Delicious chocolate cake, tasted like a giant brownie. Nothing like chocolate to pick you up in the morning.

Tuscan apple pie. Really good stuff, perhaps drier and more bready than the American version, halfway between that and an apple strudel. Delicious.

Blackberry tart. These kind of fruit tarts are typically Tuscan.

Mixed local fruit.

And cherries, which are local and in season.

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Breakfast, Brunch, cappuccino, Chianti, Dessert, eating-italy, Italian cuisine, Italy, Orange juice, pastry, Pecorino, Prosciutto, Salami, Tart, Torte, Toscana, Tuscany

Eating Milano Marittima – Palace Hotel Breakfast

Jun19

Restaurant: Palace Hotel

Location: Cervia / Milano Marittima, Italy

Date: June 9-11, 2011

Cuisine: Italian

Rating: Great hotel breakfast

ANY CHARACTER HERE

The Palace Hotel in Cervia fits into an interesting class of European hotel. It’s a beach resort, and elegant, but hosted in a building from the 1960s or 70s that has been newly restored. This is not the kind of old school Belle Epoque place like say Le Metropole in Beaulieu-sur-Mer. But it is very nice and well run.

Breakfast is outside on the beach/pool patio.

Another view. The Adriatic beach is right behind that hedge.

This breakfast puts the typical one at the Hotel Real Fini to shame, but it follows the same basic format of large cold breakfast buffet and a few hot items. Here are the jams and spreads!

And more of them, plus teas and a few other odds and ends.

Then cereals.

Juices and additives for yogurt or cereal.

Have a few Fruits.

Champagne, more spreads, lox, cheeses.

Close up of the cheeses, mostly local.

Some meats, like salami and prosciutto. Note that they have the same spam-like spreads!

Then the regular breads and self-use toaster.

Now we really get our sugar going with the huge sweet pastry table. A lot of these are local too.

And the other side! This selection changed a little every day. There were all sorts of nut, chocolate, creme, and fruit tarts.

Finally there is the hot station. With omelets or eggs made to order, pancakes, and some various hot sausages. Plus you can order fresh squeezed juices and coffee done any way (cappuccino etc). All of this is included with the room! And this is actually just typical of a good larger Italian hotel too.