Square One: Best breakfast in LA? Yeah, probably.

This is fruit salad at Square One. I think it makes a nice picture. However, I am a shitty photographer, my camera phone is a whopping 1.3 megapixels and the only commands I know on it are Shoot and Send.

All credit goes to Square One. And this tasted exactly like it looked. Apricots (ripe and tart, not mushy!), Gaviota strawberries, white peaches, cherries, nectarines. A few bananas, but nothing obnoxious.

"Fruit salad" is usually a sop for the low-carb crowd, one that translates to "underripe melon chunks with the occasional albino strawberry and a few pineapple chunks if you're lucky." Even at the Four Seasons, fruit salad feels like an afterthought.

Here, fruit salad is a classic bit of underselling: I've been to Square One three times, in three different seasons, and it tastes like a core sampling of whatever's at the farmers' market. Finish Sunday breakfast before noon and you'll have enough time to drive two miles to the Hollywood market and find the fruit for yourself.

Also great: The grits (like gutsy polenta), the Nueske's bacon, the baked eggs with fava beans, wild mushrooms and feta, the coffee. The space is unpretentious and the service is OK , thanks to an attentive owner (I foresee fundraisers for LAWS, LA Waitress Syndrome: An inability for the cornea to focus on customers, a side effect of overexposure to florescent lighting in casting agents' offices).

One bit of caveat emptor: When the restaurant website says it's "convenient to the Scientology Center," it's not kidding.

Square One, 4854 Fountain Ave. 8 am-4 pm, closed Monday. (323) 661-1109

Comments

[happybaker]

You've got to try their brioche egg sandwich - so yummy!

[foodette]

Yum - a fruit salad I would enjoy. I love that there are stone fruits in it - a wonderful upgrade from melon.

[Big Bomb]

Some wait-staff in LA aggressively avoid eye-contact. It's a little game to get you to wave your hand -- giving them the high ground in their moral indignation at another piggy customer. Then you go to a Thai places where the mere flicker of your eyes upward creates a scenario where an entire family appears around your table, like a crew from a heist movie, each with different culinary specializations ...

[Pat Saperstein]

Apparently the new apricot-almond French toast is pretty amazing, too. Totally agree on the fruit salad. I ordered one at Blair's, just to compare, and there was no contest.