A mellow evening followed by a mellow Orange County brunch. Eat Chow is off Newport Blvd where the 55 ends. It’s very easy to miss the place as the listed address is 1802 Newport Blvd. 1802 Newport Blvd is a store called, Closet. So where the heck is the restaurant? The answer is: 1. Walk through the store or 2. turn the corner and there it is.

Eat Chow is a very simple restaurant with cool furniture, outdoor seating and simple but delicious food. My friend had the egg sandwich, eggs, bacon, cheese on sourdough bread. It looked good to me. I had the Amy’s egg white omelet with goat cheese, avocado, and some other veggies. The goat cheese really sold the thing. There’s not a ton of flavor in egg whites, but the goat cheese made the omelet totally worth it.

Kinda hard to find unless you know where to look. Once you’re there, it’s good food, bad coffee, nice service and cheap prices.

Outside of the malls, but not too far, is a spot called Roosters Cafe. I wasn’t sure what to expect before I went, but Yelp’s reviews were very positive.

Roosters is a small store with some indoor seating, a few tables outside and a pretty cool menu. You order at the counter and they bring it out to you which makes sense at this place. Breakfast, which is served all day, is very egg-centric. The lunch items are sandwiches and salads and more.

I had the Huevos Rancheros. Poached egg, cheese, avocado and salsa served over black beans and a crunchy tortilla and a side of potatoes. I was pleasantly surprised on how great it tasted. This place is so unassuming, tucked in a small strip mall next to a salon and a saloon, I even dined next to a woman who was in the middle of getting her hair done. She was sitting there in a robe and curlers in her hair. I think my meal came out to under $10.

Come early because Roosters is open from 7am-3pm daily. Sleep in, figuring that you’re getting a late breakfast and you’ll miss out.

You can find Roosters Cafe at: 750 Saint Clair St. Costa Mesa 92626

Watched a little Meet the Press then went to a 10:15 spin class.

After spinning my buddy and I went to a place he recommended La Grande Orange. Located on Main Street in Santa Monica, this place was awesome.

It’s a very cool space with funky art, a full bar, patio seating and a bakery. For breakfast and brunch you order at the counter and the bring it to you. Ok, not ideal, but the food makes up for that.

The menu was large, but honestly, I really didn’t look at it. My eyes went straight for the Acapulco Omelette and I never looked back.

Boom: avocado, jalapeño, white cheddar and oaxaca cheese, cilantro, side of salsa. The omelette was $7.95 and I ordered an ice coffee.

Fantastic. I mean really, really great. I enjoyed every bite of it. The presentation was beautiful: omelette, cheese, nice avocados and then these delicious tomatoes over it. The eggs were cooked perfectly and there was something special about the tomatoes. maybe they were soaked in lime. What do I know.

They messed up my friend’s order but fixed it in literally under a minute.

Eat here. Now. Seriously.

2000 Main St. Santa Monica

Wavos, unlike the prior restaurant, now takes plastic.

325 Old Newport Blvd# 1

Newport Beach, CA 92663-4159

(949) 515-3907

A light easy meal in the heart of Laguna Beach. At Zinc, everything on the breakfast menu is vegetarian. Most are light, all are really delicious. Coffee bar serves lattes, caps and just regular coffee.  We went before our Mother’s Day hike up the hill and overlooking Laguna Canyon Road. 

I had the double poached eggs on toast. Two eggs and toast. Pretty simple, but very delicious. The eggs are greaseless, the plates are colorful and sitting outside in Laguna is great almost any lazy Sunday of the year.

Poached Eggs

Eggs and Veggies

Zinc is at 350 Ocean Ave, Laguna Beach, CA‎ (949) 494-6302‎

The morning came, I watched some meet the press, then off for a run with a friend in Newport Beach. The run was really nice. It was about 65 degrees with a nice bit of  June gloom. Being in Newport Beach near the peninsula, there aren’t too many good places to find brunch. I talked about Mutts and Wilma’s Patio, but I’ve been there and done that. We were close to Sarkeez and there was an outdoor patio, so we went.

Sharkeez is a very cheesy bar in Newport Beach. In my humble opinion, Sharkeez is a lame way to spend an evening. And while there were some downfalls, Sharkeez was a great place to brunch.

Nestled on the beginning of the sidewalk, partially facing a parking lot and partially facing the boardwalk and ocean, sitting on the patio, diners have a nice open air view of the beach. A dedicated brunch menu has some really nice options. Mostly eggs, mostly meaty, I had the Huevos Camerones: Shrimp and Eggs. The scrambled eggs came with really nice white shrimp and had a bunch of cheese. The sides were blackbeans (instead of potatoes) and what they called sweetbread. But it wasn’t sweetbread. It was more like bread pudding and honey. It was nice.

My friend had steak and eggs fajita, but he could have ordered his meal with chicken or shrimp. People at the restaurant were eating what looked like bratwurst and one guys was chowing down on poached eggs and pancakes.

Sharkeez has a make your own bloody mary bar and that’s a plus, but there really isn’t any table service. You got to the bar to order. Now here’s the funny part, there are plenty of people working at Sharkeez. They come to your table to check on you, “How are you doing?” and “is everything ok?” but when you express the need for more soda or more water, they tell you to go to the bar.

When a group of six knocked our table and spilled our drinks all over us and the ground, the non-waiter who came by seemed really annoyed to clean up the mess. I don’t blame him for not being thrilled with cleaning up the mess but it wasn’t like we were the really drunk group of three sitting next to us who if they spilled it was probably their fault.

Other than the self service style, the meal was very nice. Totally chill and comfortable. Heat lamps for when it’s chilly (and it gets chilly at the beach), nice food, fun staff and more, Sharkeez was a nice way to spend the morning.

10:30 was the meet up time. Got there closer to 11:00.

Mutt Lynchs is a Newport Beach restaurant that sits off a parking lot that sits off the beach that sits off the ocean. In other words an amazing location. Mutt’s is kind of hard to explain. The ceilings are adorned with beer sponsored banners and Laker flags. The walls have some random Angels stuff and there is a series of large flat screens above the bar. But it doesn’t feel like a sports bar. But someone who had been there before let me know that during football season if you aren’t in a seat by 10:00 you aren’t sitting. So maybe I just have the wrong feeling.

The long communal tables were perfect for our group which went from six to eight. I had a view of the TV, but if I turned just a bit, there was a view of the beach obstructed only by the window panes.

The breakfast/brunch menu is huge. Tons of scrambles, omelets, pancakes and benedicts of every way imaginable.

My choice this meal was the crab cake benedict hollandaise on the side with the potatoes. The nice thing about the benedict is that it’s just two eggs, so it can’t get too out of hand, but somehow this meal was just too big!

Crab cakes really aren’t good anywhere outside of the mid-Atlantic area. If you aren’t using lump crab there really isn’t a reason to eat it.  This cake was a little over done and for some reason had shrimp in it. Nice surprise, but only made for an ok crab cake. Maybe better than average outside of Maryland. The poached eggs were really nice. Runny and delicious.

So many potatoes were piled on that plate and with some coffee, this was a huge meal that I could not finish. Pretty nice.

Other plates on the table were Huevos Rancheros, an omelet scramble something that was COVERED in gravy. I took a picture because I couldn’t believe it.

Huge breakfast anyway you can imagine it, potatoes plain and chipotle which were nice a spicy.

Great scene, nice food, great looking people, ocean view Mutt Lynchs is a perfect way to end the weekend or start Sunday Funday.

My meal of crab cakes benedict, coffee, tax and tip was $18.

The sun got in the way and messed up this picture then the battery ran out. Don't like the picture, get your own brunch blog.

Not sure what's under the gravy

Sat in bed until about 9:00. Watched the UNC/Duke doc on HBO

Showered, dressed, out the door.

An overcast morning at 60 degrees means that one of the two outdoor seats was available. We’ll take it.
From this seat in Wilma’s Patio alcove, we ruled over our Newport Beach kingdom. Everyone coming or going had to pass through our gaze. And we looked hard.

The menu was expansive with your traditional fare. Breakfast, lunch, specialties. Plenty of Scrambles, omelets, sandwiches and more. In a fit of creativity, I took the create your own omelet.
Bye-bye yolk, jack cheese, green chilies, spinach (I think) and avocado. While that’s four things and only three come with the $12 omelet, I lived large and spend the extra buck for the 4th ingredient. Uhhhh! The Omelet came with a side of melons, tomatoes, hash browns or cottage cheese.

Melons-Please. Fruit salad is berries or nothing
Tomatoes- Out of season
Hash browns- Too fattening
Cottage Cheese-What?

I’ll take the whole grain toast and the hash browns.

Couple that with a terrible cup of coffee. I mean really bad coffee and you’ve got yourself a perfectly adequate meal.

The omelet was great. No eggwhite omelet is perfect, the best part is off the plate, so throw a little Tapatio, and green tabasco and you’re adding some heat and taste. The omelet was huge, and the hash browns were very tasty. Excellent. Loved every bite and I couldn’t finish the whole thing. But from starting my morning a little too early, I needed the coffee, but it was really bad. Just didn’t taste good. You know? And that’s the sign of a perfect brunch.

Split 3 ways the bill was $18.00 each. Maybe Wilma’s patio will let you bring your own coffee…perfect.

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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

A simple store front, with a dozen seats inside and a few more outside, this cute coffee shop like restaurant is anything but. With a large menu featuring breakfast, lunch and dinner, Blue Plate has many more items posted in various walls around the store. Turn your head one way and you’ll find soups, turn your head the other and you’ll find specials.

After a rough friday, a friend ordered a smoothy to help restart the day. I followed suit. An apple, ginger, carrot combo was nice, but too sweet. I to taste the ginger.

I ate (pictures coming) an egg white omelet ($1.50 extra for egg whites only! No Yolk…what!) with mozzarella, veggie sausage, spinach and tomato. It was nice…however, dear reader, I found a secret.

I HATE fruit salads that are filled with melons. Melons are cheap…I want berrys. Blue, black, rasp, give me berries. Ok, it’s winter and aforementioned berries are expensive. But when I balked at the idea of melons, I was told that I could sub out the pedestrian melons for Strawberrys and bananas. Looking around, I was the only one in the store to get in on that action. 

And now you know!

Now is the time to check out Blue Plate. Down the street is Huckleberry and the new Santa Monica Fish Market. Both were featured in DailyCandy.com so the line at Blue Plate might be shorter, especially if you’re three hungry people.

Total bill for three: Two brunches, a big “detox” salad and two smoothies including tip was $60