I'm not really sure where the name of this restaurant came from (besides the obvious) but it's an interesting name for a restaurant for sure. I took Aarti here for her birthday brunch on one of the hottest days of the year and luckily for us they seated us right underneath the A/C. I thought I had picked a new place for both of us, but turns out that Aarti had actually been here for dinner before and had a so-so experience because there weren't a lot of veggie friendly options. That made me worried but the brunch menu looked pretty great with lots of options for veggie and non-veggie eaters.
I normally stick with an egg dish for brunch but was torn because they had a lot of great sounding sandwiches like goat cheese baguette with eggplant and roasted tomato and a mashed avocado sandwich with cherry tomato jam. But I stuck with my egg guns and got the poached eggs with grilled tomato and haloumi and sour dough toast ($10) and the birthday girl got the green shakshuka ($10) and we split the greek salad ($11). Not only are we both obsessed with greek salads but this one was made with kale which is another current favorite. While I know the veggies in a salad are supposed to be raw, I would have preferred the kale to be a wee bit cooked. Raw kale can be a bit too tough and grassy tasting for me. Otherwise, the one thing that the salad was missing were some nice ripe red juicy tomatoes. When our main dishes came out, I was a bit disappointed at the size of the food. It was definitely on the small side and lord knows a salad does nothing to fill me up. But on the plus side the eggs were poached perfectly and were very runny. The tomatoes were roasted nicely and the haloumi cheese was firm and tangy - so great combination all together. But again, everything was just too damn small including the pieces of bread. I really tried to pace myself so I wouldn't eat the entire dish in 5 minutes. I also tried Aarti's dish and it was also really good. The shakshuka was made from green tomatillo and you could really taste that powerful flavor in the dish. But the real kicker and highlight of the whole meal was once Aarti asked for hot sauce and they brought out this small container of green hot sauce. At first I stayed away from it because I thought it would be really hot but after Aarti said that it wasn't too bad, I dipped right in. And I'm so glad I did because it was AMAZING. It's not quite like the crack addictive green sauce at Sophie's Cuban but it's a close 2nd. I wish we had asked for it earlier so that we could have smothered all our food in it. I thought it was like a cilantro puree but the waitress said it was made from habenero chiles! Look at me. I've come such a long way from being a total pussy when it comes to hot sauce. We basically licked that container clean of any sauce because it was that yummy.
The one downside was the service. While we were seated very quickly, we had to hail down a waitress to order our meal after waiting about 15-20 minutes with no acknowledgement that we had been sitting with our menus for a while. Plus the waitress did not read us the specials which as a bummer because we saw some people seating great looking dishes that weren't on the menu. Other than that, the waitresses were friendly and gave us good recommendations (she was the one who suggested the green shakshuka dish). I would totally come back to try the sandwiches that I had my eye on. Total bill: $48 with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
No comments:
Post a Comment