So we were feeling breakfasty recently and, not really having a clear idea of where we should get said breakfast, we headed to an cute little beach community known as Solana Beach and then we, I can only think of the word ‘invaded’ a cozy little street littered with food places called South Cedros.  This is a very sweet looking little part of beautiful San Diego and we figured with all the little eateries our choices would be simple.  Well, there’s nothing simple about choosing which cute sweet niche-y little food spot to go with here.

So we started at the north end of the street and headed south, first coming across the Zinc Cafe.

Getting excited when we spotted a white picket fancy looking café we joined the line out the door.  They only have a limited number of tables and the other people waiting looked kind of excited so we waited right along with them, for a while.  Till I got close enough to see the menu.  At first it looked normal but I had this strange sense of foreboding.  I looked around and the people at the tables looked kinda happy but also pale and a bit tired.  With horror I realized, right when we got to the front, that there seemed to be an absence of meat items- no meat, to be clear.  None: there was a Zinc burger, not the tastiest sounding metallic aftertaste name to give a burger; it was a veggie burger…

Should you wish to try them they have a compost salad (sorry that’s composed)..an eggplant this and an eggplant that..great if you like that whole slightly poisonous nightshade variety of rubbery vegetable…a quiche plate and actually lovely looking desserts.  Actually, had I not been craving meat I would have stayed for the desserts.. It’s not often that you come across a place serving rice pudding to grown ups and the place was all whitewashed and pretty.  But Claire needed meat!

So I didn’t walk out, I jogged… and proceeded on down the road to the next likely candidate: the orange Blossom Café.  This place featured crepes.  I love crepes and naturally I stopped and double checked that they actually had laid in a decent supply of meat before making a commitment, and they had both kinds of crêpes- sweet and savory.  So here you can get a crepe for breakfast and then a whole other kind of crêpe for dessert, virtually guaranteeing that you won’t be in the mood for another crepe for at least 4 months.

Their crepes are laced with prosciuttos and bacons and cheeses and sun dried tomatoes and artichoke hearts — good, hearty breakfasty stuff.  We had a couple of these and then an orange blossom crepe for dessert:  it’s made with orange honey and butter –simple and lovely.  With breakfast we had the orange blossom mocha that has orange hot chocolate in it and comes topped with fresh orange zest.  They also have orange blossom soda- do you think this place is in love with itself?  I think maybe.

Feeling full of crêpe we moseyed on down the road to a lovely little wine tasting place — come in and taste from many huge barrels of wine! Cool. And then we were magnetically pulled into a little olive oil place that had more flavored oils and vinegars than you could shake a baguette at, they make their own olives too, some of them stuffed with cheeses and nuts and peppers and things — suitable for brilliant snacking or martini garnishing.

At the end of this great little strip of street you can see a parade of canopies- a little farmers market. Now, San Diegans really like their farmers markets — it makes us feel like we live in a tiny town full of friendly people and everyone grows things in their backyards which they smilingly trade with their neighbors for other goods like organic honey from local pesticide free flowers.  It’s a quaint idea but it’s still a nice thought so in we went!

Surprise! It’s a lot more than just fruits and veggies!  There’s the coconut lady who will jab a hole in a fresh one and stick a straw in it for you and tops it with a little drink umbrella, to cool you off.  There’s the weird mushroom guy where you can get all the locally foraged non-hallucinogenic fungus you can stand.  There’s the brick oven pizza which you get right there fresh out of an actual brick oven.  There are honeys and vegan gluten free pastries and locally caught fresh fish!  The fish guy will be sourcing some nice delicious black cod for me next week and the meat lady will get me regular rations of wascally wabbit, and even though I was still full from breakfast, I couldn’t help but stop at the Jamaican Jerk Hut.  The very sweet friendly guy in this booth offered us samples of everything and I could tell he was very proud of his recipes.  Normally jerk is a bit spicy for me but he had this braised oxtail with jerk spices that was explosively juicy and meaty and fun — plus it’s oxtail, which I love cuz its weird and it’s an animals tail — cool thing to gnaw on, the oxtail came with roasted plantain bananas, rice and beans and pickled cabbage-  every part of this meal was exemplary and we will be going back very soon!

Of course I bought more seafood and vegetables and organic cookies than I could possibly eat but that’s what makes these places fun!  What could be better than poaching a beautiful piece of fresh local fish and sautéing a bunch of organically grown sustainable little baby vegetables and lettuces and smothering them with salt and store bought generic salad dressing made more consumer-friendly white with titanium dioxide.

Actually we used just sea salt, lemon juice and some nice crushed garlic; that’s the true beauty of these foods, its not that you’re next door neighbors cut them from their yard or fished them out of the sea in the wee pre-dawn hours of morning, but that all their hard work is all done to save you any effort- because these foods don’t need the extra cooking or salts or seasonings or sauces to make them shine.  They shine all by themselves… its a beautiful thing..

We didn’t get a chance to try Claire’s, which is a darn shame considering it’s my namesake. I was already too full to stop at another coffee shop, especially without a coffee snob as my guide.