By plan or happenstance, we are all creatures of habit. My breakfast/brunch habit used to be eggs Benedict. It was my dish of choice simply because I like the sloppy elegance of poached eggs topped with a very uptown slathering of fancy hollandaise sauce. For a kid who grew up on bagels and cream cheese, it seemed like a rich person’s breakfast. It made me feel very Ralph Lauren.
And then, at some point, my breakfast morphed from eggs Benedict to avocado toast. This wasn’t a conscious decision. It just kind of … happened. Perhaps my taste evolved. Perhaps my cholesterol numbers evolved as well. Avocado toast still has an edge of elegance to it. But it’s healthy elegance — the “good” fats in avocado, the “good” fiber in bread.
And I found, to my surprise, that like eggs Benedict, avocado toast is a palette waiting for chefly innovation.
It also, to my surprise, has a history. It was apparently a popular dish in Chile in the 19th century, and California in the early 20th century — back when spread avocado was known as “avocado butter.” The version we know owes its existence to an Australian chef named Bill Granger, who added notions like a poached egg on top beginning in 1993 at his café in Sydney. It’s hard to imagine anyone actually being given credit for such a basic dish. But there it is.
And indeed, here we are, sitting at the busy Marmalade Café (4910 Ventura Blvd, Sherman Oaks; 818-905-8872, www.marmaladecafe.com) one recent Sunday, wondering about the front desk’s curious insistence that even though I was 10 minutes early for my reservation, I wouldn’t be seated till the exact time, at a table that sat empty waiting for my arrival. As with the “we don’t seat till the whole party is present” rule, restaurants can be driven by rules that don’t add up for the diner.
The breakfast menu is large — including the temptation of six different Benedicts, a crab cake Benedict and a lobster Benedict among them. But I was there for the California Hass Avocado Toast. And it was a bit of a curiosity.
For $19.99, I would have hoped for a thicker spread of avocado. Which was largely lost anyway under a blizzard of kale. I felt as if I was eating kale toast. I also don’t understand why the poached egg came by itself, in a small cup. A very lonely huevo.
Ah well … the avocado toasts throughout the San Fernando Valley are many. And I set out to try a bunch. Though to my surprise, some longtime favorites — including The Nook, Nat’s Early Bite and Humble Bee — don’t do avocado toast. Pity, because I bet their versions would be memorable.
As is true of many breakfast spots, the first meal of the day is the raison d’être at Blu Jam Café (15045 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, 818-906-1955; 23311 Mulholland Drive, Woodland Hills, 818-222-1044; www.blujamcafe.com), where the meals are so substantial, that lunch, and even dinner, may be a caloric indulgence. Just consider the Argentinean Brunch Steak, aka Steak & Egg — a feast of beef tenderloin with potatoes, green beans, eggs sunnyside-up and chimichurri sauce. Or the Morning Hash, which instead of traditional corned beef is made of Black Forest ham, onions, spinach, sundried tomatoes, grilled potatoes and mozzarella to hold it all together. With scrambled eggs. Crazy — and crazy good.
And then, there’s the avocado toast, a properly thick smear of “smashed” avocado atop crusty sourdough toast with (of all things!) hard-cooked eggs, “edible” flowers (I guess) and a fruit cup. I’d rather have bacon than the fruit cup. And I did. I added on smoked bacon with a pair of poached eggs. Not served in a cup.
I like the eggs I consume with my avocado toast poached — for me, poached eggs are a very special treat, for the ones I prepare at home are sad creations. But I guess hard-cooked eggs is a … thing.
At the wonderful Leo & Lily (22420 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills; 818-222-6622, www.leonlily.com), which is actually on a narrow residential street just south of Ventura called Del Valle, the avocado toast is also served with a pair of hard boilers, atop more common than not sourdough toast. Everything But the Bagel seasoning mix is sprinkled on, a fine touch.
Another fine touch is that you can also get avocado toast as a side dish — for $7. You can have toast slathered with avo, with your “B.L.T.A.E. on a C,” which translates as bacon, lettuce, tomato, avocado, fried egg on a croissant with garlic mayo. The bacon is turkey bacon, which I regard as a distant relative of both turkey and bacon. I guess it’s thought of as healthier.
The menu lists a number of eggs Benedict dishes — one made with duck prosciutto, another with portobello mushroom, a third with smoked salmon. There’s one described as a “traditional,” though the presence of turkey bacon and braised leeks makes it something different.
I also love the Israeli breakfast dish called shakshuka — essentially a casserole of tomato, pepper and onion topped with poached eggs. There’s also the stuffed Middle Eastern pastry borekas, filled with feta, asiago and goat cheeses.
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The avocado toast at Lady C’s (18912 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana; 818-881-6704, www.ladycscafe.com) is listed under the heading of Artisan Toasts & Tartine, where it’s found next to the Honey Bee Toast (bananas, peanut butter, bee pollen and honey), the Cottage Peach Toast (peach coulis on cottage cheese), and the Smoked Salmon Tartine (smoked salmon with cream cheese).
Contrary to the other dishes, it’s an exercise in basics, titled simply the Classic Avocado Toast (I’m not sure there actually is a “classic”), a dish of mashed avocado, cherry tomatoes, red onions, olive oil, crushed peppers and pumpkin seeds, on sourdough toast, with a side of fruit of a green salad.
And actually, sticking to the straight and narrow has never been the path at Lady C’s (or the previous incarnation, CiCi’s Café). The menu is 30 pages long, with 80 variations on pancakes, French toast, waffles and so forth. The signature dish has long been the Tiramisu Pancakes.
Now, there are also Green Tea Tiramisu Pancakes. By comparison, the avocado toast is downright monastic in its simplicity.
Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email mreats@aol.com.