Casual restaurants in the South Bay tend to have a visual signature that is bright and cheerful – think of Good Stuff, Scotty’s, or the Ocean Diner as examples. Even the places that aren’t explicitly beach-themed look like a place you’d go on the way to or from the sand, colorful and welcoming.
Compare this with Bolt, the restaurant that opened last year at the corner of Second Street and Hermosa Avenue. The entire façade is brooding black, and though the name is on the corner of the building, if you’re driving north all you see is a picture of a bolt. The outside color scheme, oblique signage, and meaningless name make the place look more urban hipster spot than a South Bay local, and that’s not a coincidence – the Hermosa location is a spinoff of an eatery located on Hollywood Boulevard near Western.
From that exterior presentation you might expect an avant-weird menu, but the food is American traditional. Bolt is best known as a breakfast and brunch spot, at which egg scrambles and benedicts seem to be on every table, with a scone, muffin, or cinnamon roll on the side. They also offer sandwiches and salads at lunch, and started serving a limited dinner menu a few months ago.
We visited for breakfast the first time and started with a slice of cinnamon cake and a cheddar bacon biscuit, plus coffee brewed from Beanstock, their supplier in Cape Cod. The cinnamon cake was the kind of simple homestyle item you might find at a school bake sale, and that’s not an insult. It’s wholesome and light, lightly dusted with powdered sugar and a little sweet for my tastes, but nicely done. The cheddar bacon biscuit had some scallion bits mixed in, but they didn’t dominate the flavor, and the drip coffees we ordered were a nice medium roast. So far, so good. We enjoyed our meal on their bright, serene back patio – they also have seating with a view of Hermosa Avenue, but this is quieter and you can hear birdsong from neighboring trees.
For our meal my wife ordered the spinach and feta scramble, while I had the corned beef hash. A small portion of spinach had been blended with the eggs, kalamata olives and feta evidently tossed in at the last minute so the flavors didn’t meld, and there was a different balance in each bite. It was still curiously bland – my wife doesn’t like onions much but agreed that caramelizing some in the pan or adding some garlic would have been an improvement. Salt and pepper helped, but it was still a bit one-dimensional.
The hash was similarly minimalist, and the description was misleading. The menu had mentioned housemade corned beef, potatoes, and brussels sprouts, and I ordered it because I had never had hash with sprouts in the mix. The hash was tender and mild corned beef tossed with soft-cooked potatoes, with the sprouts on the side. Both the sprouts and the potato and corned beef mix were cooked with no perceptible seasoning, and the sprouts were so lightly cooked that there was almost no caramelization. If I ordered this again, I’d ask them to add onion and pepper and fry the potatoes so they were at least a little crisp. I might ask them to chop the sprouts and fry those in with the hash too, because that still sounds like an interesting idea.
We visited again after hearing they had opened for dinner, though there was no evening menu on their website. The selection is short, smoked brisket or pork shoulder on a plate or in a sandwich, rotisserie chicken, or three variations on a burger. Three salads and a few snacks round out the menu. We decided to start with a blue cheese wedge and then continue with the chicken and pulled pork.
A wedge salad is almost always a simple affair, iceberg lettuce topped with a tangy dressing, blue cheese crumbles, a sprinkle of bacon crumbles, some tomato on the side for color as much as for flavor. This one had a lot of bacon, a small amount of very mild dressing, and no blue cheese crumbles. The thing that makes a blue cheese wedge enjoyable, that robust, funky cheese flavor, was missing, making it a bacon salad with a little dressing that straddled the line between ranch and blue.
The roasted chicken and pulled pork sandwich arrived as we finished the salad. The portion of chicken was impressive. The half-bird had a crisp skin and was fall-off-the bone tender, but if there was even a dash of salt and pepper on the skin, it was invisible and imperceptible. If you enjoy the plain, concentrated flavor of chicken with minimal seasoning, this will delight you, and I did enjoy it. The pulled pork hit the spot too, smoky with a small amount of mild but tangy barbecue sauce and some pickled red onions (they do have onions in the kitchen somewhere, and this was a good place to use them). It was on a soft and sweet Hawaiian-style roll, and I’d ask for sourdough next time, but all in all it was a good sandwich.
On the evening we were there the fryer was down, and the only available sides were a salad or mac and cheese. Since we already had a salad we ordered the latter, in which the noodles had been baked into a cube held together with cheddar cheese, with some extra cheese on top to brown in the oven. I prefer that to the soupy style and enjoyed these, though I did add some salt and pepper to mine.
Boutique beers are available as well as some interesting wines. Our server offered a taste of one I was curious about, the Union Sacre orange wine. This was interesting, bone dry and floral, but I preferred the Valravn Chardonnay. This was described as buttery but crisp, and they got that balance right. My wife preferred the fresh and slightly citrusy Liwa Sauvignon Blanc, though the service in a standard water glass might have dulled a bit of the delicate scents of the wine.
The only desserts offered at Bolt are house-made cookies, some of which are filled oreo-style with pastry cream or ricotta cheese. They are simple and wholesome, and a fitting end to the meal.
Bolt is a curious amalgam of ideas, a family restaurant that looks like a nightspot where you can enjoy unadorned flavors of quality ingredients. They have found a loyal following at breakfast and lunch, so there are obviously a lot of locals who have been looking for what they do. I prefer bolder and more varied flavors and am not their target market, but I can respect that there is a consistent theme that can win over a certain segment of the South Bay audience.
Bolt is at 190 Hermosa Avenue in Hermosa Beach. Open daily at 7 a.m., close 5 p.m. Mo-We, 9 p.m. Thu-Sa, street parking only. Beer and wine served, some vegan items, noise level low, wheelchair access good. (310) 921-8693. BoltLA.com. ER
