On Weekend Mornings, La Serenata Gourmet Gets Cracking

Driving west down Pico Boulevard a few weeks ago, I noticed a banner on the front of La Serenata Gourmet, the more casual offshoot of Boyle Street’s beloved La Serenata de Garibaldi, announcing breakfast on the weekend. (Closed for more than a year for renovations, the original La Serenata is slated to reopen sometime in the fall.) One of the things I loved going there for was Sunday breakfast. Nobody made better huevos rancheros--when you touched your fork to the eggs, the yolk flowed into the light, fresh ranchero sauce.

Craving some of those Mexican-style eggs, I made a note to try breakfast at La Serenata Gourmet at the first opportunity. That was two weeks ago. On short notice, I could find only one other person to come with me that Saturday. We found a parking place right in front, and a table on the little patio adjoining the restaurant. The breakfast menu was larger than I expected, two pages actually, complete with side orders of ham or refried beans and, to drink, fresh-squeezed O.J. and Mexican hot chocolate. The surprise is that, along with more than a dozen Mexican egg dishes, they also offer French toast, buttermilk pancakes and waffles.

But huevos rancheros were what tempted me, and they were every bit as good as I remembered. Especially with the small bowl of fat brown beans, and a basket of freshly made corn tortillas that come with every egg dish. My breakfast companion ordered the chilaquiles verdes. That’s stiff wedges of stale tortilla simmered in broth and a spunky green chile sauce until the tortillas soften and absorb the flavors.

The next Sunday, when I woke up hungry, I longed for warm tortillas and that little bowl of juicy beans. I hadn’t tried even half the menu yet, a good excuse to go back. After devouring practically the entire plate of chips along with the vivid orange salsa and a watermelon agua fresca, I tried the two eggs in Molcajete sauce this time.

I just may switch allegiance from huevos rancheros to this, which is basically the same thing except for a different, spicier sauce made with several kinds of chiles punctuated with the red and green of chopped tomatoes and avocado. It was all I could do to keep it out of the hands (and mouths) of everybody else at the table. Huevos campesinos featured the two eggs, this time with strips of roasted chile, onion and cheese melded together. It’s delicious with a few bites of it all piled into a warm tortilla. So are the cruzados (eggs scrambled with strips of black-green pasilla pepper and golden coins of potato) and the machaca (stewed beef, shredded and mixed into soft scrambled eggs). We had to order more tortillas to finish it all, but I could eat those freshly made disks of tender masa dough all day long.

The beauty is that La Serenata Gourmet serves breakfast until 3 p.m.

BE THERE

La Serenata Gourmet, 10924 W. Pico Blvd., West Los Angeles; (310) 441-9667. Breakfast, weekends only, 9 a.m.-3 p.m.; breakfast dishes $3.25 to $7.95. (La Serenata is also open for lunch and dinner daily.) Parking behind the restaurant or on the street.