ShopEatSleep

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.

Keep Reading

From SteveMcN (Flickr).

Here’s a partial list of upcoming Nordstrom Rack stores (full list at Nordstrom’s Web site):

• Los Angeles, CA – Beverly Connection – Opening Date: September 24, 2009

• Pasadena, CA – Hastings Village – Opening Date: October 8, 2009

• San Jose, CA – Westfield Oakridge – Opening Date: October 15, 2009

• Lakewood, CA – Lakewood Center – Opening Date: Fall 2010

Apparently Fashion Island in Newport Beach is getting a regular Nordstrom store (opening date: April 16, 2010), as is Santa Monica Place, whose re-opening date has yet again been pushed back (to Aug. 27, 2010). More on that at RackedLA.

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.

More photos after the jump

Just opened:

• 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.

In addition to the free froyo at Red Mango I wrote about yesterday and the 31-cent scoops at Baskin Robbins I tweeted about, here are a few more deals and steals:

Magnolia downtown. From mralenlin (Flickr).

• Magnolia, both the new downtown and original Hollywood locations, are offering 20% off your dinner bill through May 5 when you book a reservation. Looks like it’s a Daily Candy thing, so make sure to mention and/or bring in your DC email. Also, your dinner party is capped at 6 for this deal.

• From Friday through Tuesday (May 1-5), Provecho downtown is having a crazy-extended happy hour each day from 12:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., with $5 Cazadores margaritas, $3 Dos Equis and Tecate, $2 mezcal shots and $5 tacos. On Cinco de Mayo, the resto will also have burlesque dancers, luchadores and a mariachi band. From Thrillist.

• To kick off American Craft Beer Week (May 11-17), Brix 42 in Pasadena is offering $3 beers all that week AND giving one free entree per person on May 11 from 4:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. The gastropub will also be holding an all-night happy hour on Tuesday, May 12.