Coral Tree Cafe - Brentwood

After Sunday morning yoga at the Brentwood Lululemon store yesterday, I stopped by Coral Tree Cafe on the way home for brunch.   I had been to the Coral Tree many times before for dinner, but it was my first time there for brunch.  It was such a nice and sunny day, and I just couldn't resist the idea of sitting outside on the patio and soaking in the vitamin D!

It's one of those places that serves way over priced organic salads, sandwiches, coffee, smoothies, and wine.  Pretty much the same concept as the Urth Caffe.  For the big Entourage fans out there, the boys always go there to eat in the show.  I don't normally mind paying $12-14 for a sandwich and salad, and $5 for a vanilla latte since their portions are pretty big and the food pretty tasty.  Also it's one of those places that you can just sit and chill in.  Pretty nice to take guests to too, or to meet up with friends and chat.  It's in a prime Brentwood location, so lots of people go there.  I guess it's pretty trendy.  Supposedly the Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger loves it.  The restaurant caught on fire in 2008, and they were closed down for a year.  Must say it felt like Brentwood was missing something since everyone always went there.  Finally they reopened a few months ago, and it got immediately popular again.  People couldn't wait to pay for overpriced sandwiches I guess! 

Anyway, so I go there once every few weeks or so and get their turkey meatloaf sandwich - yum.  But yesterday I decided to try their brunch and have the breakfast burrito.  Ok so the description said it came with eggs, cheese, chives, avocado, sour cream, fresh salsa and black beans.  Not bad.  I figured it would come with a side salad as well like all their dishes do.  While waiting for my food to come, I noticed that everyone around me had amazing looking dishes on their plates, so I was excited for mine to arrive.  But when it got there, it was so sad looking!  The portion size is normal, but there were 2 tiny splashes of sour cream and soapy watered down guacamole on it.  When I dug into it, I found that it only contained eggs and cheese inside (I opted for no beans).  So basically the sappy looking green paste thing smashed on top of the burrito that they call "avocado" was it!  For $12, they couldn't give me a couple slices of REAL avocado???  WTF??  Wow, it was pretty gross.  The burrito itself was not bad, but not anything noteworthy.  Afterall, if you f-up eggs, that is really sad.  It didn't come with a side salad, but only some greasy looking chips that were not even crispy, and a tiny little cup filled with some salsa.

I was so sad about my food that I almost asked for my money back, and I've never done that before anywhere!  I kept thinking they couldn't have added some potatos either?  Or some meat?  I mean it would be ok if it was $4, but for $12, I expected way more!  It simply was not acceptable.  The other brunch menu items though looked pretty legit from the descriptions and from what I saw.  All for the same price or cheaper.  Me and my boyfriend both got the same gross breakfast burrito, so we were thinking we could have bought 6 months worth of eggs for $24 and cooked them up ourselves.  Oh well, what can you do.  I'm very wary of going back to Coral Tree for brunch again.  But I may just give it another try since 1. other people's food looked pretty decent, and 2. it's located less than 100 feet from where I live.  But I almost want to boycott it forever just to stick it up theirs.