Joe’s Restaurant
1023 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice

We visited Joe’s on Saturday @ 1 pm
Dish we will try to cook – “Bacon & Eggs” $16

Restaurant Visit
Another wonderful week in the world of food blogging – we had quite a battle going between the restaurant choices and we would have been happy had any of the three won. But we were secretly cheering for Joe’s to come out ahead. With so many acclaimed restaurants in the Los Angeles area, Abbot Kinney may not be the first area one thinks of to go out to eat, however, Joe’s is well worth leaving your neighborhood for.

Small but elegant, the front of the restaurant greets you with a bar that seats about 10 people and a very friendly Maitre D. We did not make a reservation in advance (however it would probably be a good idea to do so) but lucked out and were seated immediately in their back patio area. Unlike other outdoor patios, you are hidden from the street by a tall wall so your meal is still intimate while also being able to enjoy the fresh air. The inside of Joe’s can be described as beachside sophistication. White linens adorn the tables and honey colored wood paneling accent the windows and doorways. The space has touches of soft, earthy colors throughout that give an air of calm to the dining experience.

The brunch menu consists of about 10 options, with the entrees including a choice of one of four starters. Prices range from $13-$18. We ordered the Cottage Ham & Buttermilk Biscuit (fried eggs, braised greens, red eye gravy) $13, and the “Bacon & Eggs” with Tomato Jam & Grilled Toast (crispy pork belly, fried eggs, avocado, leaf lettuce) $16.

For starters, we enjoyed the seasonal fruit plate and the little gem salad. Hands down, the salad was our favorite appetizer. The fruit dish was slightly plain and the ricotta cheese seemed an odd choice to accent the fruit. Something creamy, or a bit of sweet honey might have synched better. The salad on the other hand was a nice balance of flavors that all worked well with each other. Fresh peas and the creamy vinaigrette were the stars of the dish.

Both entrees had us practically licking the plates. It was a hard choice deciding which dish we wanted to try to recreate for the blog, but the “bacon & eggs” won out in the end probably because we had never cooked with pork belly before and we liked the play on the traditional bacon and eggs. The plate is served with a thick slice of brioche bread, which they bake daily, topped with two fried eggs sprinkled with chives. Underneath two generous slices of pork belly is a not-too-sweet tomato jam that worked to pull all the flavors together, especially once you break the egg yolk onto the plate. The part of the dish that was confusing to us was the side of creamed avocado and piece of leaf lettuce. We were torn with how these flavors tied in with those of the pork belly, egg and tomato jam. While the dish is named as a twist on bacon and eggs, with the avocado and lettuce on the plate, we wondered if they were also trying to make a play on a breakfast sandwich. Either way, we ate every bite that was offered to us.

The cottage ham and buttermilk biscuit is a dish we also highly recommend to our readers. The red eye gravy was so subtle on the plate that you almost didn’t notice it, yet a bite without a little gravy in it seemed to be missing something. They slightly browned the edges of the buttermilk biscuit which we enjoyed as it gave a bit of crunch. And greens were the surprise hit for this dish. We debated as to whether they were collard greens or not and finally asked the waitress and were informed that they were actually mustard greens. Being lightly flavored with oil and bacon bits, the mustard greens were very mild in taste.

If you live on the west side, or find yourself having to pick up/take someone to the airport one weekend, we highly recommend stopping by Joe’s restaurant. While we only ate two of their dishes we really feel that you can’t go wrong with anything on the menu. Even though it opened in 1991, Joe’s is still a hidden gem on the west side.

Shopping
(prices reflect the cost of the package, not the portion we used.) The rest of the ingredients we already had in the kitchen.

Whole Foods-
Extra Large Brown Eggs $2.50
Slab Bacon, 1/2 lb. $4.12
Lemon $.69
Green Onion $1.29
Red Leaf Lettuce $.99
Vine Ripe Tomatoes $4.25

McCall’s Meat & Fish Co.-
Pork Belly, 1 lb. $11.99

Huckleberry-
Brioche, 1 loaf $8.00

Recipe
Below is our take on Joe’s “Bacon & Eggs” dish. While we have no idea exactly how they cook theirs, we looked around online at different suggestions for cooking pork belly and making tomato jam. We then simply started combing the flavors we felt we could taste in their dish and had fun creating ours from there.

Serves 1

Pork Belly-

1 lb pork belly, skin on
1 garlic bulb, halved horizontally
1 cup white wine
Olive oil to drizzle
Salt and black pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Score pork belly skin on a criss-cross pattern with sharp knife. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

On a shallow roasting dish or cookie sheet, place garlic halves, cut-side up in center. Place pork belly on top of garlic to avoid contact of pork belly to dish. Pour wine in to dish and place in oven for 4 hours. Remove from oven, let rest for 5 minutes, then slice into pieces 1” thick.

Tomato Jam-

1/2 lb bacon
2 lbs tomatoes, cored and chopped
2 TBSP reserved grease from bacon
1 yellow onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup sugar
3 TBSP Apple cider vinegar
Salt and black pepper to taste

In a skillet, cook bacon until crispy, about 5 minutes. Drain bacon on paper towel.

Heat a saucepan on medium-high. Add bacon grease to coat then add onions. Sautee until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add tomatoes, sugar, vinegar, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, occasionally stirring, then reduce heat to medium-low. Crumble bacon into mixture. Simmer until thick, about 1 hour. Sprinkle with additional salt and pepper if needed.

Pour mixture from pan into large bowl. Lightly blend with an immersion blender until desired consistency.

Fried Egg and Brioche-

2 large eggs
1 TBSP olive oil
2 tsp fresh chives, chopped
1 slice brioche, 1” thick
butter to spread on brioche
freshly ground sea salt

Heat an 8” skillet on medium. Add buttered brioche and toast on each side, about 4 minutes each side. Turn heat down to medium low, add olive oil to coat. Crack two eggs on skillet, salt and cook until white is cooked through, about 7-8 minutes.

Avocado and Red Leaf Lettuce-

1 hass avocado
1 scallion, chopped
Juice from 1/4 lemon
1 piece red leaf lettuce, washed and bottom cut off

Mash avocado in a bowl. Add the scallion and lemon juice. Accompany lettuce with avocado mixture.

Plating-
Place a thick slice of brioche bread at one end of plate and top with fried eggs. Sprinkle eggs with chives. Smear a generous serving of tomato jam across the rest of the plate and place two thick slices of pork belly in the middle. Garnish with avocado and leaf lettuce.

Rating- We give our dish 2 out of 5 stars.
Our thoughts- You’d think at this point in blogging, we’d learn to second guess ourselves when we look at dish and think “it won’t be too hard to make.” But no, we still think we can do anything! And we certainly still enjoy the experience of finding out the contrary. Overall, our dish was fairly successful but we decided to give ourselves a 2 mainly on the bases of the lack of refinement to the pork belly and the fact that instead of baking our own bread as Joe’s does, we bought ours from a bakery. To see what we mean about properly preparing the pork belly, visit this link: http://www.wonderhowto.com.The tastes of our ingredients, however, were very similar to theirs and we feel that most of our readers will be able to achieve a high rate of success with this dish.

Please don’t be afraid of the pork belly. The first difficult part of the dish will simply be finding a store that carries it. We found that Whole Foods does carry pork belly but they only get a shipment in once a week and it quickly sells out. So if you plan ahead, you can order it and have them reserve some for you. You may also want to try butchers in your area, as we did, and be successful that way. Secondly, it can be a bit daunting when you read that the pork belly needs to cook for about 4 hours, but the length of time is really the only hard part. So put it in the oven early, enjoy your morning or afternoon and then enjoy a delicious plate of bacon and eggs.

How would you rate our recipe? We look forward to hearing feedback from you guys on whether you think we got close or if we missed the mark, what would you add to make the dish better. Feel free to email us if you have any questions on the cooking instructions and don’t forget to vote for next week’s restaurant!