And keep an eye out for the Cart For A Cause food truck, which launches Tuesday in Beverly Hills at United Talent Agency from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. with chef Nobu Matsuhisa dishing up $10 meals. The truck will run once a week with a different celebrity chef, starting with Matsuhisa and continuing with the likes of Walter Manzke, Susan Feniger, Sal Marino, Eric Greenspan, Josef Centeno, Jean Francois Meteigner, and Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook. All proceeds go to support St. Vincent’s Meals on Wheels, so not only do you get a gourmet meal at a bargain price, you’re helping out others in need. Follow the cart on Twitter at @CartForACause for times and locations.

Correction: Chef Alex Becker from Nobu will actually be the one serving up the food truck meals, not Matsuhisa himself. Apologies for the confusion.

Daybreaker egg-white omlette

Well, an abbreviated version of its weekend brunch menu, at least. Starting Monday, June 15, at 7:00 a.m. LGO debuts its “Commuter Breakfast” featuring the Daybreaker egg-white omlette, Commuter sandwich, house-made English muffins, and organic oatmeal, among other brekkie items. Unfortunately, as this is a commuter, i.e., quick, breakfast, LGO’s eggs Benedict and lemon ricotta pancakes aren’t on the menu during the week. But those English muffins are pretty darn good, and you can even buy a pack to take to work with you. What may be the best part is nothing on the menu (save for the six-pack of English muffins) costs more than $6.

Market counter at La Grande Orange Santa Monica

After a Macallan scotch tasting at the Viceroy last night (set up by e*starla and attended by Caroline on Crack, LAist’s Julie Wolfson and LA-OC-Foodie – but more on that later), we headed over to La Grande Orange’s newest outpost in Santa Monica for dinner.

The good: The entrance is decorated with pots of homegrown herbs – nice touch. The market counter and wine display upon entering have a simple, clean presentation. This new location serves sushi, and the rainbow roll was excellent (go with the aioli dip, not the soy – too salty). The sweet potato roll, something I hadn’t seen before, was decent, though it was really just tempura-battered and fried sweet potato with avocado. The service was prompt and friendly. And when our server charged us for the wrong dessert item, she ended up comping it.

The bad: I wasn’t impressed with the food. Granted, it was opening night. I know it takes a while for restaurants to get it right. But after being impressed with LGO Pasadena’s food, I had high hopes. I ordered the turkey and vegetable meatloaf, which was a little bland, and came with broccolini. I thought surely it would be accompanied by mashed potatoes, or something of the sort. My fellow diners and I noticed some items were missing from the menu, too: deviled eggs, olive oil cake, and the pizza that has been touted as the Next Big Thing for LGO. The restaurant’s rep says Santa Monica is still tweaking its menu, so I guess we’ll see what ultimately ends up on it.

Of course, this isn’t a full review since the place just opened. All in all, I’d go back. I still have faith that it’ll be as good as the Pasadena location.

Eggs Benedict

Last week, Pasadena’s La Grande Orange Cafe, which is opening a new location next week in Santa Monica, invited a bunch of food writers/bloggers to “brinner,” or breakfast for dinner. The special menu (you can’t actually order breakfast food for dinner right now, though some dishes may be added to the dinner menu in the near future) included eggs Benedict with the cafe’s signature English muffins, lemon-ricotta pancakes and huevos rancheros.

I had the egg-white omelet with turkey, tomatoes and avocado, which I found nice and light, though there was a bit too much parsley. The eggs Benedict I tasted had great flavor, with the sourness of the sourdough English muffins a great touch. My favorite dessert of the myriad the restaurant gave us to sample was the cucumber sorbet – it was refreshing.

The cafe is adding a pizza parlor in a space adjacent to its patio. As of last week, the space was used as storage for some of Santa Monica’s furniture, but the restaurant says the pizza will be ready to go some time this fall. Pizza will be served from the get-go at the Santa Monica location, and they’ll also be selling packaged English muffins there, too.

Deviled eggs, with basil!

Cinnamon roll. They serve these in place of biscuits.

Malted buttermilk waffles

Key lime pie

Pizza space

English muffin. They gave these to us to take home. No, they do not come presliced.

More photos on Flickr (on right).

[UPDATE: LGO's Pasadena location doesn't actually serve breakfast; it's brunch. The restaurant opens at 10:30 a.m. on weekends and 11:00 a.m. on weekdays. The new Santa Monica location will open at 6:30 a.m. every day for breakfast.]

[UPDATE #2: I neglected to mention the names of the other bloggers at the brinner - e*starla, LAist's Lindsay William-Ross, Caroline on Crack and EaterLA's Yolanda Evans.]

• Tavern From Suzanne Goin and Caroline Styne (AOC, Lucques, Hungry Cat) comes the ladies’ newest creation, a restaurant/lounge/marketplace, in Brentwood. Yes, it did open today. I called.

• Pourtal A high-tech wine bar in Santa Monica, Pourtal offers wine via preloaded punch cards and electronic dispensers. Fancy.

To open in the near future:

• Trader Vic’s The Beverly Hills institution moves downtown to L.A. Live. Scheduled to open Saturday, May 2.

• La Grande Orange Cafe The Santa Monica location is scheduled to open May 7. Food being tested and staff being trained, according to tweets from @LaGrandeOrange. Pizza will be added to the menu at the new location, with Pasadena getting pizza some time this fall.

• Playhouse and Sweet Love Hangover The nightclub/24-hour restaurant taking over the Fox Theater space on Hollywood Boulevard is now slated to open June 11. We’ll see. This is like the third or fourth time the opening date has been pushed back.