BREAKFAST IN BERKELEY

As many of you know, Tom and I are early risers, so we enjoy going out for breakfast. After living here for over a year now, we certainly have our favorite places, but we're always looking for new ones to try, too. We've recently found two places to add to our regular roster of breakfast favorites. The first is a coffeeshop called Jimmy Bean's. We've often driven by this place and I'd heard good things about it, but we hadn't taken the time to visit it, so one morning we finally headed over to Berkeley to check it out.

Jimmy Bean's is owned by a family that owns several restaurants in Berkeley. Unfortunately, I haven't really loved the other restaurants that we've visited (T-Rex BBQ and Fonda), so I was a little skeptical about Jimmy Beans. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to screw up breakfast. When we arrived, the place was pretty empty, so it was easy to find a table quickly. We first ordered out breakfast at the cashier, helped ourselves to coffee and were given a number to put on our table.

This place is much more casual and has an unfinished look to it that their other restaurants lack. After picking a table and flipping through the paper a bit, our breakfast arrived. I had ordered a breakfast burrito, which chicken sausage, eggs and cheese.

As you can see, it was served with a side of 3 dipping sauces, and the green one, the cilantro pesto, made the whole thing worth eating. The breakfast burrito was good, but with that cilantro pesto, it was truly amazing. Meanwhile, Tom ordered corned beef hash.

He found the hash to be pretty good, and even liked it more than the hash he'd had at 900 Grayson. Breakfast ending up being very enjoyable - the only thing that wasn't was the price. This place definitely cost more than our usual breakfast places, so I think we'll visit it only when we have guests in town.

Another breakfast place that we've frequented lately is Berkeley Bagels. It's been known to have the best NY style bagels in the Bay Area. We finally checked this place out while dog sitting for a friend - they just live a few blocks from the store. Here's the bagel case:

And here's the bagel I ordered:

Though the coffee there isn't great, I do enjoy their bagels. I normally get a toasted Asiago bagel with light butter. We did try their whole wheat bagels, but they use real wheat, and it came out too heavy and chewy. It might not be as healthy, but I'll stick with their normal bagels. As for being as good as NY? Not quite, but since I don't eat bagels that often, I'm happy to have theirs.