Restaurant Review #77: Buon Giorno Caffe, Santa Monica

The first time I went here, I was so hungry I thought I was going to pass out and had to get food from the nearest available place. Fortunately, I stumbled upon a lovely little Italian cafe. The small, rectangular interior had a dark green nicely tiled floor and a just few small tables, maybe about 8, and another 3 tables outside. It was very clean and bright, and somehow has a bit of atmosphere and tranquility in spite of its location on busy Santa Monica Boulevard. It's not enough atmosphere to impress any date, unless you've got a quick breakfast date (but who does that?) who would be impressed by your ability to choose a non-chain, but the atmosphere is definitely better than you-know-where. The back wall has lots of framed artwork. Metered street parking was very easy to find at 8:15 AM.

I did not want to spend my money on a full blown meal, so I got an orange cranberry muffin. The muffin was exceptionally good, and this is coming from a person who does not like muffins. And it wasn't just because I was starving that I thought it was tasty. Though it was because I was starving that I actually ate a muffin. Why don't I like muffins? I don't know. I don't like breakfast food much, except for pancakes and French toast. I can often be found eating pizza for breakfast. However, this muffin was exceptional, and even used real fresh cranberries, not dried ones! The service was friendly and respectful and offered to heat up my muffin for me. Fortunately, they did not ask if I wanted my muffin buttered.

In addition to breakfast pastry type items and coffee, the cafe has panini and a pretty extensive menu of other Italian stuff. They also have various desserts and other breakfast items, like eggs. I'm pretty sure they had some hot pasta dishes. I wouldn't mind eating here for real sometime, but we all know how often I eat Italian when I go out.

This morning, I tried Buon Giorno again, because I wanted coffee but wanted to give my money to someplace more unique than the Coffee Bean. I ordered a blueberry muffin and a medium decaf coffee. The total for these two items was a reasonable $4. My decaf coffee was excellent. It tasted fresh and rich-- not old, watered-down, dull, or burnt. The muffin was good as well, though I liked my previous cranberry muffin better. It seems these muffins don't have preservatives--it took me a couple of hours to eat mine since it was a busy morning at the office, and it started to dry out and get stale quite quickly. As I prefer to not eat preservatives, I consider this a good thing.

If you're looking for a potentially good undiscovered hole in the wall Italian cafe, you may want to check this place out.

Oh, and they actually said "thank you" when I put my change in the tip jar!

Buon Giorno Caffe
1431 Santa Monica Blvd
Santa Monica, CA 90404
310-260-0073

Restaurant Review #76: Lago, Santa Monica Farmer's Market

Parma Panini: Mozarella, tomato, and proscuitto

Lago, an Italian restaurant located on the Promenade, has a panini stand diagonally in front of their restaurant during the Santa Monica Farmer's Market on Wednesdays and Saturdays. They sell mostly panini, but also lasagne, polenta pancakes, and minestrone soup. All but one of the panini had meat, I believe. One may have been vegan, if the pesto spread did not contain cheese. They also sell $2 Italian bottled soft drinks, and less expensive cans of Coke, Diet Coke, and Sprite.

The stand has a short line most of the time, and a short wait for your food, which is all pre-made but needs to be heated and/or boxed. Unfortunately, they use large styrofoam boxes for everything. I wish more places would use Juliano's Raw/Real Food Daily style cardboard boxes. The service was smiley and appeared to speak Italian as a first language, rattling it off between customers and wishing me "buon apetito" when they handed me my food. Panini are $5-6 each for two medium sized triangles--about the perfect lunch portion to be full but not stuffed.

It took me about 15 minutes to get the panini from the stand back to my office where I ate it. By that time, it was only vaguely warm, so I popped it back into the toaster oven. The sandwich as a whole didn't taste like much and was a little too salty, and in my opinion, would have benefitted from some freshly ground black pepper and a basil spread. Cheese is not enough to moisten bread properly for a sandwich. The bread was very crunchy and covered me with crumbs, but this may have been due to its stint in the toaster oven. I prefer chewier, moister bread in general (a la Panera Bread, though I'm not a huge fan of the foccacia they use for their panini) and think that all sandwiches benefit from some sort of spread--just enough to moisten the bread without making it soggy.

I decided to take apart the second half of my sandwich and eat the ingredients individually. The tomatoes had a rich heirloom tomato flavor, but were ruined by a mealy consistency. The proscuitto was very thinly sliced and soft, not tough, and didn't have too strong of a flavor. I'd say the quality of it was pretty high, though I'm no expert, and my inner vegetarian couldn't eat all of it. The proscuitto had the effect of making the tomatoes and mozarella taste extra salty (or maybe they added salt to the sandwich?). The mozzarella was on the more flavorful side--not the best I've had (that was in Italy), but definitely above average. The proportions of ingredients were well-balanced, except that there was a bit too much bread.

The sandwich wasn't good enough to finish, and I doubt I'll return to try any of their other food. In generally, I'm not too quick to forgive a restaurant for a sub-par dish. Instead, I'll try the not-yet-opened Panini Grille on Wilshire at 6th in the old Mon Sushi spot (which, according to Tony Bourdain, means it's already destined to fail).