Of course I’m as broke as the next girl, but as I was waiting for my car to get serviced, I decided to treat myself for having to suffer two hours in Santa Monica. I called a friend and she suggested Huckleberry. I had only been there one other time and the breakfast was completely fabulous, so I was excited to try it again. But on this last visit, the service was verging just on the brink of truly awful (like surprised that the people in line "actually want to order something" awful) and the ready-made salads (which are even more expensive than they are at Joan's on Third) looked as if they had been sitting out way too long and that they might not have been that great in the first place.
My mocha was still perfect – the way the Europeans and Israelis make coffee – the type of coffee that is getting harder and harder to find in LA. However, my friend ordered an iced coffee (which cost her $4 by the way) and when they brought it out (after a fifteen minute wait) it seemed a little watery. For the price of an entire meal from Trader Joe’s, this starving writer wasn't about to get skimped on her much needed afternoon coffee. She marched back in and demanded (by demanded I mean politely asked) for a less watered down coffee. The baristas confessed that they had run out of iced coffee and simply poured hot coffee over ice. They promptly made her a proper iced coffee and after bringing it out to our table told her that the milk and sugar were inside. Call me lazy, but for $4 a cup I don't want to schlep my own add-ins! My snap peas with mint were unspectacular and when I related the whole debacle to my roommate, who obsessively raves about Huckleberry, she confessed that on her last visit the $11 loaf of bread she’d purchased was stale and then chided me for not knowing that she’d long ago (by long ago I imagine she meant about three days ago) written off Huckleberry for the equally pricey but apparently more consistent Tavern.
The only way to counterbalance this experience and not let it completely ruin my day was to go back to my side of town and go to the one place in the world where I knew for sure I'd get good service – Book Soup.
The people behind the help desk are always helpful and never snooty and the books strategically placed across the front tables are almost always worth reading. I had to buy a present for someone who is completely impossible to shop for and after a brief, rather vague description from me about this person and his taste, the knowledgeable and friendly staff led me straight to Pat York’s new photography book "Fame & Frame
Book Soup
8818 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90069-2125
(310) 659-3110
Maia Harari is a writer and choreographer, born and raised in Los Angeles. You can follow her on twitter at www.twitter.com/maiacalypso