Saturday, January 24, 2015

SUPERBA FOOD + BREAD (VENICE, LOS ANGELES, CA)

Superba Food + Bread
1900 S. Lincoln Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90291
www.superbafoodandbread.com
Tel: 310.907.5075
$$ ($15-30)
Tues, 01/20/2015, 9:30am walk-in
    (3.5 piglets)




Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It should be warm, satisfying, enticing, and ultimately delicious in all aspects of the palate. Superba Food + Bread attempts to capture the essence of breakfast, but misses the mark. Sure, they offer a decent selection for breakfast. Sure, they serve a decent cup of joe from Heart Roasters of Portland (which was hand picked by Tyler Wells, one of the original co-founders of Handsome Coffee). But the mere fact is: the food is almost repetitive and dull which loses the excitement that I was looking for in my breakfast selection. 

The interior:



Approximately one-third of the breakfast menu consists of toast. The toast is composed of various spreads and garnishes to accompany the pain au levain bread. This is where the problem arises: just one type of bread for all the various toppings. What if I didn't like the pain au levain and wanted a biscuit to go with my maple custard and bacon confit? C'est la vie! 

Jam of the week ($8.00): Quince jam, ricotta on pain au levain. Quince is a fruit that resembles a pear but tastes like an apple/pear mixture. The ricotta went well with the very sweet quince jam. This dish was good, but nothing to be excited over. 






Prosciutto ($9.00): Cultured butter on pain au levain toast. The toast may photograph well and looks pretty, but looks are deceiving. This was good, but quite honestly, a bit dull. The toast was accompanied with arugula and comprehensively, it lacked flavor and was considerably dry. 



Maple Custard ($9.00): Bacon confit, crispy sage. My favorite dish. If you were looking for something sweet, salty, and a bit creamy, then this is the dish for you. The creaminess and sweetness of the maple custard sugar coats what would have been a very salty bacon confit. It was like having thick cuts of bacon drizzled in maple syrup. Disappointingly, the hint of sage barely came through in the dish. 




Moroccan Eggs ($11.00): Tomato, peppers, runny egg, marcona almonds, pain au levain. This was like having tomato soup for breakfast. The eggs were poached and definitely runny. The peppers gave the dish a slight kick that was needed. And guess what? They served this dish with none other than pain au levain bread. Seriously, by the time this dish came, I was drained from eating the same type of bread. 




Daily brew ($4.00): Heart Roasters coffee. Good coffee. Strong. A bit aromatic. Goes well with all the dishes. Presented beautifully. Enough said. 





Overall, Superba Food + Bread is quaint and very Californian. The food is satisfactorily, although a little variance to the bread selection presented wouldn't be a bad idea. This place simply fails to elicit dishes that give the meaning to originality that would entice one to be a regular (unless you lived close by out of convenience). Recently, the bread master Lincoln Carson and chef Jason Travi of Superba Food + Bread have since departed the institution. What could have been an outstanding breakfast spot is candidly a coffee and bread-to-go locale. 

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