Brunch is back at Sunny Spot, served Saturdays and Sundays in David Reiss and Roy Choi’s Caribbean concept bordering Venice and Marina del Rey. As it sometimes happens at Choi’s restaurants, a few of our favorites seem to have disappeared from the menu, like the festival bread and its unfathomably delicious trio of spreads, along with the oxtail stew and the bacalao brandade that came under ideally delicate, jiggly poached eggs. But a couple of new additions are taking their place.
We’ve always wanted to see Choi take on jerk chicken here and you can now find one over brunch, as well as a true-to-form rum punch and jerk Bloody Mary’s (at $10 for all you can drink) to turn you into one red rasclaat at eleven in the morning.
Choi also adds blueberry pancakes, bread pudding, and French toast to the selection, as well as heartier dishes that edge closer to lunch staples, like a Cuban torta, diablo shrimp and grits, and his popular two-fisted cheeseburger, which makes for a perfect dip into Americana diner eats when chased by Choi’s decadent and straightforward hot fudge sundae. An egg scramble with fresh plantains cites mofongo as its inspiration, and the simple pleasures of fried yucca are nailed in an exacting five-dollar side.
And as it also often happens at a Choi restaurant, some of the dishes that are hardest to comprehend in script alone eventually come across as the most nuanced and strikingly balanced, as in the acid-burst of a “Sunfire Salad” with grilled chicken and in the layered comfort of a veggie-speckled omelette that earned rounds of praise at a media preview last weekend.
Good food is just the main motivator to a morning at Sunny Spot though and not the only reward. As the roaring Saturday night scene of Venice yuppies replaced our evening ease with the restaurant, a bright and early day spent in its open-air climes, reggae coasting on a slight seabreeze, a potent potable in your mitts, there are moments when it’s harder to picture a more sublime way to appreciate what Venice is all about.
See the full menu online, now served at Sunny Spot Saturdays and Sundays from 11:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M.
