Salt and Tart — Restaurant in Santa Monica

This is going to be a negative review but hopefully the reasons for it are mostly temporary and due to being short staffed rather than overall policy.

So we wanted some brunch but apparently several menu items are time-gated off the brunch menu and the happy hour menu starts later in the day which leads to a confusing ordering experience at the register. Breakfast burritos are a no go, but sandwiches are? Egg plates? Pancakes? Who knows...it's not clear and with a line building up behind you there's pressure to not ask questions to figure it out or play "guess the item" so we ordered lunch stuff instead.

We both got combos with drinks but apparently coffee doesn't exist and neither does the fountain machine despite both being out for display. Instead we had a choice of well-picked over bottles in a half-empty and room-temperature "cold" case. Alright.

The food itself was okay. The burger was good but nothing special and the wife's caprese sandwich was "pretty good" and the prices are relatively decent given this is Santa Monica.

Service was a bit odd and here is where I think they are really understaffed/struggling and that may make the above more understandable. There seemed to be a chef and one other person working the brunch/lunch hour and the other person clearly wasn't comfortable in any "front of the house" position. The chef ended up doing most of the running of food to tables while the other guy cleared tables and ran a register. He cleared my wife's canned drink before she was finished with it, realized his mistake and offered to retrieve it from the garbage bag for her. Thanks, but no.

Anyway, this is probably a one and done for us. If you live/work in the area, I'm sure this place is a welcome addition to a fairly limited set of choices within walking distance but otherwise, cannot recommend based on...

Yesterday 2/17 at about 12:30 noon I ordered an American burger from here with chips. It had turkey pattie, avocado, red cabbage, lettuce, and onions. 8 hours later I was horribly sick, vomiting uncontrollably for a few hours. All the contents of the burger came up!! (Only the burger) I hadn't eaten anything after this meal and had a light breakfast of fruit earlier that morning. It was some of the worse food poisoning I've experienced in a really long time!!! Finally, at about midnight, I was gagging sheer acid as nothing was left on my stomach to throw up. This was my first visit to this venue and will be my last. Something clearly...

HIDDEN. GEM! I didn’t think there were good places that were reasonably priced in Santa Monica. Southwest breakfast sandwich is quite possibly the best (though somewhat messy) breakfast sandwich I’ve gotten in LA and at only $7, you can’t beat it. It’s also reasonably sized.

All the things I’ve tried so far are great. Quick and friendly service. Cheap price but good quality. I regularly get breakfast/lunch from here. I just wish they were open for dinner and on...