nola breakfast/brunch favorites

my favorite meal to go out for is breakfast. if you have time to go out for breakfast, the rest of your day can probably be spent pretty leisurely. i'm not including picking up a pastry or bagel at a coffee shop. i'm talking about sitting down to enjoy breakfast as a meal, one that is often overlooked compared to lunch and dinner. i always try to go out on the weekends, and since we've been in new orleans, we've kept going back to two places.

because surrey's juice bar is within walking distance from where we're staying, we've been going there every weekend. depending on when we get there, we're usually able to get a table pretty quickly. the food is delicious, not as non-dairy conscious as i would love, but their menu is still focused on healthy food that supports the local community and tastiness. their specialty, as the name of the restaurant suggests, are juices, freshly prepared and usually organic. one i have a hard time passing up is the orange-pineapple-mango juice, served with a slice of lime. i can't say yet what my favorite dish is on their breakfast menu. my mood takes me in different directions. i can attest that everything i've tried has been excellent. i intend on trying everything on the menu before we leave the city.

the alternative is the bluebird cafe. because it's a little farther from where we are, we haven't gone there as often. a friend introduced me to it on my first saturday in nola. they offer a more traditional american breakfast menu, delicious but not necessarily as health-oriented as surrey's. i finally tried their yellow grits last sunday which was delicious. they throw in cornmeal which turns it yellow. i think i will have to include their grits as part of my breakfast from now on when we go there.

we've also tried slim goodies. the food is good but nothing extraordinary, and the place felt kind of unclean. we also tried tomatillos for a mexican breakfast which was good. but i definitely have to say surrey's and bluebird cafe are my favs.