It can probably be said that nearly everything on the East Side is trendy, essentially catering to the crowd of hipsters that have overtaken Echo Park, Silverlake and Los Feliz. One of these places is a restaurant called Ostrich Farm in Echo Park that has no ostriches to be found, but it does have a brunch.
The brunch menu definitely caters to the kind of crowd that likes things such as quiche and lentils, but I was able to find a dish that seemed fit for an unvegan. It was in the “Tartine” section, which is just a pretentious way of saying “Open Sandwich,” and was simply listed as grilled ham, poached egg, gruyere, sourdough. These all seemed lovely to me, so I made no adjustments.
Little did I know that Ostrich Farm had a trick up its sleeve known as grilled onions. These were nestled in between the bread and the ham and were a terrible sight to see. I had to somewhat deconstruct the “tartines” to remove the onions, which is never fun. Then, when I got to the eating part, I found that the poached eggs had been fully cooked through, leaving no fun-loving runny yolk. Had these been ostrich eggs I would have let it pass (because really who knows how to cook those), but they were not and I could not.
The ham was actually pretty good, and the gruyere was everything gruyere should ever be, but they were not enough to salvage this disappointment of a brunch. Perhaps I would have been better off ordering something with the word chickpeas in it, because at least I could have known to ask the waiter to leave them out.
