Hitting Bricks Before Heading Home

Bricks

23820 Lyons Ave. 

Santa Clarita, CA 91321

We had it all set up that we would wake up early, leave the hotel we were staying at, and head to a brunch spot we had heard good things about in Los Feliz. Of course, those plans did not materialize. After a late night of drinking and catching up with family, we slept in until right about checkout time. There was a hurried rush to gather our things, as housekeeping waited patiently to clean our room. Still a little groggy, and in need of some sustenance before our hour and a half drive back to OC, we did a quick Yelp search of brunch spots around us, and arrived at Bricks.

Bricks was a short five-minute drive from our hotel, and the perfect spot to get Katie some coffee, and me some much-needed food to help counteract the rum from the night before. Located in an old-style Taco Bell, Bricks has gotten a lot of love for their burgers, fries, and shakes, and in four short years has become known as a burger destination. They have a solid four-star rating on Yelp, with over 700 reviews. Pretty impressive.

We arrived here at just before noon on a recent Sunday. There's a register with an order window, but we were directed to a table, and our order was taken by a waiter. There's plenty of patio seating out front, but on this rather warm day, we chose to sit in the more climate controlled inside portion of the restaurant. A steady stream of customers followed us, but I'd never say the restaurant was packed.

Bricks have their specials neatly displayed on a huge blackboard above their register, flanked by two flat screens that were turned to sports. The two-paged brunch menu has plenty of egg options for you, and for people that enjoy sweeter brunch items, they got you covered as well. We made our selections and waited for the food that we hoped would be able to keep us content for our long car ride home.

Man, I had a tough time making a decision here, but finally went with their Pulled Pork and Chorizo Hash ($12). This brightly colored plate came with a hash made up of tender pulled pork, chorizo, onions, red pepper, and potato, and was then topped with two poached eggs and served with toast points. I really enjoyed this. The meats were prominent, the eggs were done perfectly so that when punctured, the yolk would spill out over the rest of the plate, and the toast was a great vessel for adding texture. Yes, I would have liked a little more spice included here, but a good first meal of the day.

Katie ordered the Breakfast Sliders ($11) as her selection on this morning. These came three to an order and were supposed to come with two eggs, but they were not included here. After being alerted to that fact, they brought them out separately, so Katie did a little assembly and ended up liking these sausage patties and egg sliders. This was a good quality sausage, which was spiced well, and the buns were not only visually appealing, but they were baked well also. If they use the same bakery for their hamburger buns as these sliders, I'd be pretty excited to try the burgers at Brick. The menu made no mention of fries being included with this dish, but we really enjoyed these skinny fries, which were made even better when dipped in the provided ranch.

At brunch I'm always one to mix sweet and savory, so we needed something to satisfy our sweet requirement, so we got this Brioche French Toast ($11). Beautifully plated and very tasty, this was a good plate of french toast, which was topped with mascarpone, mixed berries, and a dusting of powdered sugar. I'm not a big fruit guy, so I favored the maple syrup to sweeten these up, which definitely did the trick. The french toast had a good crunch to it but could have been a little more flavorful on its own. I'm trying their breakfast Monte Cristo which come with peanut butter, marshmallow, banana, Nutella, and a Nutella ice cream on my next trip here. Sounds awesome.

For not being on our original itinerary on this trip, Bricks was a solid option for brunch. Would it have been better than our original destination? Not sure about that until we go, but having something in our stomachs on the way back down to OC was exactly what we needed. There's more I'd like to try at Bricks, including one of their 19 varieties of burgers, which all sound so good. Brunch was good, even if the service was a little on the spotty side. We were not the only table that had issues with food missing from items, but they rectified things quickly. All in all, a very good unscheduled visit, and we'll look forward to coming back when we are up this way.

Out of five lassos, (because every spring, the Cowboy Festival invades Santa Clarita, and you can be sure that where there are cowboys, there will also be lassos), five being best to zero being worst, Bricks gets 3 lassos.

For more information about Bricks, head over to their website here: https://www.bricksnewhall.com/