Tavern Denied: Sunday Brunch at The Jar

Jar
8225 Beverly Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(323) 655-6566
www.thejar.com



Last Sunday we high-tailed it out of Echo Park on two wheels headed for a 12:30 reservation at Goins' new Tavern in Brentwood. Ambitious, yes. However, we were convinced we would make our reservation barring mishap. Naturally, mishap occurs. One cyclist was alerted by a automobile driver that s/he had dropped her ID out of her pocket a couple miles back, and had to backtrack, searching the pavement all the way. After retrieving said ID, we carried on with the ride and at 12:30 on the nose found ourselves riding past the valet parker sitting outside of Jar. I love Tracht's food, and have a long history of following her from restaurant to restaurant. We locked up the bikes and sat our sweaty selves down in her elegant restaurant and had us some brunch.


Brunch started with this delicious cinnamony breakfast roll. We all picked at it (after washing our hands), pulling it apart to reveal itself as a nutty, sticky, slightly sweet breakfast pastry.

Pecans, brown sugar and cinnamon. Good.

I ordered from the specials selections. Open face prosciutto sandwich with pesto, arugula, Parmesan-Reggiano and a fried egg on ciabbata.

This was gobstoppingly delicious. Generous with the slightly bitter arugula, one of my favorite greens. This pesto was made with basil and olive oil, but arugula makes an amazing pesto also, as does cilantro FYI.

The egg was cooked so the yolk would perfectly drizzle down onto the prosciutto. It was a little rich, and I could only eat half. The other half went into my back pack, making it home safely and tastily to nibble at after the 22 mile round trip.

C ordered lox and a bagel For some reason she was a little unhappy with the lox. I think it is fair to call her a picky eater. I tasted the lox and it was of great quality. It was light in flavor and texture, not thick and oily like lox can sometimes be. I guessed that this was house smoked, but I would love confirmation on that. I thought it was really tasty.

D ordered Jar's Cobb salad. Tracht definitely has a way with veggies, which is one of the reasons I adore her food. This Cobb came in a huge wide bowl, with butter lettuce, red onions, bleu cheese, toothsome chunks of ham, cherry tomatoes, almost hard boiled eggs and a quarter of a ripe avocado, all sprinkled with chives and lightly dressed.

Brunch at Jar was a huge success, even if it was a stop-gap. Because we were cycling, we passed on alcoholic beverages *gasp*, which made our bill extremely reasonable, almost forgettable. Forgettable in terms of the weekly finances anyway. Amazing how much money one can spend on liquid self-medication. We have not been frequenting Jar much recently, as there has been a rash of new and interesting food offerings in LA on the past couple years. This brunch reminded me what I have been missing.