People who love food, love Abbot Kinney. A street that’s about a mile long and kind of out of the way, Abbot Kinney has some of the best restaurants on the west side and Abbot Kinney in Venice is known as a foodies paradise. A small restaurant, Joe’s is bursting with people looking for an open table because of broken reservation and people checking in on their reservation. Walk past these people and you’ll see the bar is packed with people probably without reservations sitting at the bar eating their meal.
My friend and I stopped by a natural foods market on Main in Santa Monica for the wheatgrass, apple, ginger smoothie (that has a great deal of ginger). That was brunch until my friend said that he always wanted to try brunch at Joe’s. We poked our heads in and my friend was greeted with a huge hello. He knew the manager. And while I was woefully underdressed, wearing track pants and warm up pullover, Boom! front of the line…sort of. We waited about an hour and a half to be seated. But that gave us time to walk Abbot Kinney to work up our appetite.
We were met by two more people and our table for four ordered.
Two at the table had the breakfast burritos. They enjoyed them but ultimately gave the response to the question, “how is it?” with, “it’s a breakfast burrito.”
The other person had a salmon with creme fraiche, caviar, eggs and a potato (latka type base). He ordered his eggs poached, they come scrambled. I saw the scramble and I think the poached eggs looked more amazing.
With the meal comes an appetizer a very small fruit plate with honey cream (small but delicious) or a veggie plate OR a soup. Sunday’s soup was cauliflower and it looked amazing.
I won for best order with the crab hash. Potatoes, perfectly poached eggs (beautiful texture, creamy taste and visually appealing) over lump crab. No imitation or canned crab here. It was perfect. My friends ordered bloody marys. Joe’s make their Bloodys with Tito’s Vodka and they taste better that way.
For such a popular place, in the most popular street in the most popular city in town, Joe’s isn’t too expensive. That being said, it would have been cheaper had my friends not drank so much. I’m not complaining, but I think my meal doubled in price when my friends kept drinking. Maybe I should have drank too. That would have taken the sting out of subsidizing their drinks.
Four entrees and appetizers, three bloody marys, two tequila and lime juices and a coffee ran about $160. My crab hash was $16… not complaining about paying for my friend’s drinks, I’m just saying.
Make your reservations here.
Crabs, poached eggs, potatoes = blurry
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