West Coast Eats: This Santa Barbara Brunch is Eggtastic

DATE: Summer 2015

LOCATION: Jeannine’s Bakery

15 E. Figueroa St.

Santa Barbara, CA 93101

As we said goodbye San Diego and moved on from LA (and Santa Monica), we said hello to Santa Barbara. After being in those fun-filled, active and hopping SOCAL cities, Santa Barbara was a more leisurely paced and quiet town. So quiet and tame, that this seemed to be a bit of a sleeper on our trip. But looking back, Santa Barbara held a lot of good moments, photos and memorable foodventures. Fun tip: the Santa Barbara County Courthouse is a beautiful Spanish Colonial revival building, with lovely architecture and gardens, this place would make for a great wedding. Which there was one going on as we were exploring the grounds! But anyways, this is a food blog so onto the food!

Strolling around downtown Santa Barbara was glorious, with its Spanish Colonial influenced buildings and street after street full of places to shop and eat. We decided to stop at a cute corner with al fresco seating. Jeannine’s Bakery definitely was a great brunch pick! It had one of the BEST coffee drinks to satisfy my finicky tastes. Since I’m not much of a coffee connoisseur, I was a bit overwhelmed with the menu. I asked the barista if he could recommend one for me. I explained my taste usually goes for something iced or blended, like a mocha frappe/frappacino and was wondering if they had anything like that. The super friendly Cali barista suggested he could do a specially made iced freddo. This sounded good and OH-MY-NOSH, to this day I’m still dreaming of this coffee concoction! I tried to recreate this moment whether it was days after that at another CA coffee stop or whenever I see freddo on a NYC cafe menu.

As for our brunch entrees, I ordered the Norwegian Benedict: smoked salmon, soft poached eggs, cucumbers, tomatoes, red onions, capers, dill, cream cheese, and house-made hollandaise sauce, served with fruit. It was as good as a benedict typically can be with the combination of the smoked salmon, poached eggs and hollandaise sauce. This was a fairly good dish but the entree my husband ordered was truly eggtastic.

I couldn’t help but take several bites from his Breakfast Club Sandwich. I wish we had swapped orders. A club sandwich sounds very basic and boring to me, but this one surely was not. This club consisted of eggs (over medium/omelet-style), applewood smoked bacon, tomatoes, grilled onions, spinach, mayo, and melted mixed cheese, and served with potatoes. I don’t know what it was about this sandwich that was so AH-MAZING, but the flavor balanced well and had a juicy depth to it that I didn’t expect from a club sandwich. Maybe it was the melty mix of the cheeses but whatever it was, this tasted even better than it looked!

Bottom Line: The entrees are what you expect if not better. The benedict was a fine dish but the Breakfast Club Sandwich was an even better choice. The Iced Freddo was so good, it’s something I always compare my finer coffee finds to (I’ve had perhaps 2 other comparable and great coffee finds… stay tuned.) In the meantime, just sip back and enjoy the Santa Barbara scenery, it’s quite lovely.

After Note: I saw this Conan O’Brien clip a week before we left for California, and I had this Kevin Bacon moment in Santa Barbara, when we were ordering at Jeannine’s Bakery. Needless to say, while I was still learning to adjust from my efficient and fast-paced NY mentality, I did learn from our super nice & friendly barista this quote from the Mary Schmich essay made known by Baz Luhrmann - Everybody's Free To Wear Sunscreen. It's a good take on how each coast has its own strengths & disadvantages, but incorporate aspects from each side, and you'll have the best of both worlds.

“Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.”