An Unexpected Brunch Find

The kids had gone back to school a few days earlier, my husband took Friday off, and we finally had a date day after a very full summer. We started in Brentwood for the Sézane reopening and then headed toward Santa Monica for brunch. I pulled up Yelp, found Sweet Maple nearby, and decided to give it a try.

I hadn’t researched the restaurant ahead of time or planned our day around eating there. It was one of those decisions you make because you’re already in the area, the menu looks interesting, and you’re ready for lunch. Those spontaneous finds can go either way, but Sweet Maple ended up being exactly what we wanted that afternoon.

It also introduced us to Millionaire’s Bacon, which may have been reason enough to remember it.

More Than the Usual Brunch Menu

Sweet Maple originally opened in San Francisco and has since expanded beyond the Bay Area, bringing with it a brunch menu that is decidedly more playful than traditional. There are familiar breakfast dishes, but many of them come with unexpected additions, oversized portions, or the kind of presentation that makes you immediately look over at the next table to see what they ordered.

The menu is extensive enough that I wouldn’t arrive determined to order one particular thing. Part of the fun is looking through it, seeing what catches your attention, and probably ordering more food than you originally intended. That was certainly what happened to us.

Despite all of the attention-grabbing menu items, it didn’t feel as though the restaurant was relying solely on novelty. Our food was genuinely good, which matters far more to me than whether something happens to photograph well.

The Millionaire’s Bacon Is Worth Ordering

Millionaire’s Bacon is one of Sweet Maple’s signatures, and after seeing an entire bacon flight on the menu, trying it seemed like the obvious choice. The flight included four versions of their thick-cut bacon: Original, Citron, Cinnamon, and Rosemary.

The bacon itself is substantial, with the sweet and savory combination that explains why it has developed such a following. Having the flight was especially worthwhile on a first visit because we could try the different flavors rather than committing to just one. Each had a slightly different character, and sharing the flight made it feel more like part of the brunch experience than simply ordering bacon as a side.

I don’t always think the item a restaurant is best known for is necessarily the thing you need to order, but this is an exception. If it’s your first time at Sweet Maple, the Millionaire’s Bacon deserves a place on the table.

What We Ordered

The Tiffany Blue Mimosa immediately caught my attention when I saw it on the menu. The bright blue cocktail is certainly made to stand out, but it was also a fun choice for a date-day brunch and different from what I would normally order. I had the Blackstone Benedict for my entrée, while my husband ordered the Francis Skillet.

Between two full entrées and the Millionaire’s Bacon Flight, we had considerably more food than we needed, although that seems fairly easy to do here. The portions are generous, and the menu encourages you to add one more thing to the table because there is always something else that sounds interesting.

For a first visit, I’d embrace that rather than trying to make Sweet Maple into a restrained brunch. Order one of the dishes the restaurant is known for, share something you wouldn’t normally order, and give yourself enough time to enjoy it. This isn’t really a place I would choose when I needed to grab breakfast quickly and move on with the day.

Make It Part of a Santa Monica Day

Sweet Maple worked especially well for us because it was one part of the day rather than the destination for the entire day. We had already spent the morning in Brentwood, and continuing toward Santa Monica for brunch made sense without requiring us to build a complicated itinerary around it.

That is probably how I would recommend experiencing it. Santa Monica has enough to do that brunch can easily become the beginning or middle of a day spent exploring the area. There is no reason to eat and immediately get back into the car when you can take some time afterward to walk, shop, head toward the water, or simply see where the afternoon takes you.

Los Angeles can make you feel as though every outing requires a plan because getting from one neighborhood to another takes time. Some of my favorite days here, though, are the ones when we choose an area and leave enough room to discover something we hadn’t planned. Sweet Maple fit naturally into that kind of day.

Why Sweet Maple Is Worth the Stop

Sweet Maple could easily be dismissed as one of those restaurants built around highly photographable food. The Tiffany Blue Mimosa is bright blue, the Millionaire’s Bacon has its own following, and plenty of dishes arrive at the table looking ready for Instagram. What made me want to return, though, was that there was a good meal underneath all of it.

There was also something nice about discovering it accidentally. We weren’t working our way through a list of places we thought we were supposed to visit, and we hadn’t spent the morning trying to create a perfectly planned Los Angeles day. We had somewhere we wanted to go in Brentwood, found somewhere interesting for brunch afterward, and let the rest of the day unfold from there.

That is increasingly how I prefer to experience Los Angeles and how I like to travel in general. I want enough of a plan to know where I’m going, but enough space to change my mind when something interesting comes along. Sweet Maple was an unplanned stop that turned into one of the memorable parts of the day, and those are often the places I’m happiest to find.