Serendipity, Unexpected and interesting

One of the delights in life is to stumble across something wonderful by accident. The long-sought item found in a thrift store, the captivating tune when you turn on the radio, the roadside café visited on a whim that dishes out a great meal – all bring a particular joy. The word for this situation, serendipity, comes from an ancient Persian story of three exiled brothers who repeatedly find unsought opportunities, which they exploit through luck and wit.

Serendipity is also the name of a restaurant group that recently opened a location in the South Bay, in the former Ortega 120 in South Redondo. The look of the room couldn’t be more different – the lurid red rooms cluttered with Mexican Day of the Dead art and archaic hacienda furniture are now bright and minimalist, with pastel Scandinavian chairs around blond tables. Eye-catching murals extend along a few walls, with the rest left white. In lesser hands the vast space could look like an airport restaurant or a college dining hall, but it has enough character to be pleasant. The acoustics can be poor at peak times, but the outdoor patio is slightly better despite some traffic noise.

As you can tell from the foreground, the patio at Serendipity is dog-friendly.

Serendipity is an all-day restaurant with wildly different characters at morning and night. Breakfast and lunch are a vast selection that is mostly American classics, pancakes, waffles, and anything you can imagine folded inside, placed next to, or topped by eggs. We ordered a Greek omelet and a plate of corned beef hash with eggs and pancakes on the side. We were surprised when the first thing to actually arrive was something we didn’t order, a delicate rolled crepe topped with fruit, a dollop of whipped cream, and a dusting of powdered sugar. I don’t know whether they always do this or it was a welcome to new customers, but it was a tasty sweet morsel and a nice start to breakfast.

As for the things we did order, the hash was meaty and slightly salty, the accompanying home fries a mix of chunked potatoes with onion, tricolor bell pepper, and a bit of herbs and garlic. I ordered the eggs poached and they arrived nicely done with the yolk still liquid, and I was happy with the breakfast. It was a good start to the day even before you count the accompanying buttermilk pancakes, which were light and fluffy. The Greek omelet was also a generous portion, with spinach, olives, red onion, and fresh oregano cooked into the egg pancake, tomato inside, and feta cheese on top. Greeks in Athens don’t generally eat omelets for breakfast, but this Greek-American invention incorporates the popular flavors of that cuisine well.

A plate of hash and cottage fries at Serendipity.

Coffee is by the pot and adequate but not stellar – if you want fancy coffee drinks, this isn’t the place. It suits the upscale versions of diner food in a kitsch-free modern environment.

Dinner is an altogether different experience, the menu much shorter and more eclectic, with Italian and Mediterranean items that include seafood bouillabaisse and a Moroccan vegan tagine. In two evening visits we tried starters of a Caesar salad, falafel and hummus, and what were described on the menu as chicken wings tossed in a mango puree. That description wasn’t even slightly accurate – the wings had been coated with lemon pepper and herbs before frying, then placed over a pool of mango sauce with a powerful habanero bite. Not mentioning that very hot chili sauce is menu malpractice – it dominated the dish. I would have liked these wings with the sauces on the side and recommend that you order them that way.

The hummus and falafel, by contrast, were very mild, the falafel tasting mainly of garbanzo, hummus light on the garlic and with just a bit of tangy sumac. This is by design — when the restaurant owner came by to see whether we were enjoying our food, he said they expected diners in a non-Arabic restaurant would prefer the less assertive version. Perhaps he’s right, but I like it full-strength.

The hummus and felafel at Serendipity are less garlicky than the Middle Eastern traditional version.

The caesar salad was a slightly unusual version, made with sweet butter lettuce rather than Romaine, which is more bitter. The dressing had a delicate anchovy flavor, and I found it to be good as it arrived but improved with a dash of pepper.

We had cocktails and wine from their miraculously priced beverage menu – most drinks are around seven bucks and the most expensive is one penny short of ten bucks. They’re decently balanced and well made, and the fruity “party in the park” and siesta cocktails were standouts. (The menu doesn’t mention that the latter has chili in it, but it’s a mild heat.) Wines were a bargain too, with most priced at six dollars for an honest pour.

The dinner items we tried included spaghetti carbonara, blanquette chicken, codfish with pea puree and beurre blanc, and a ribeye steak. We had the fish and carbonara on our first visit, and of the two preferred the pasta. The sauce was very good, made in the traditional manner with no cream, the pasta topped with chopped scallion, grated parmesan, and chunks of both pork belly and bacon. I’d have preferred just a dash more garlic and pepper to balance the sweet richness of the sauce, but that’s a minor quibble. The fish was nicely cooked and well paired with the sweet pea puree and asparagus, but the balance of the plate was off – there was a lake of butter, but no rice, pasta, or bread to use it with. I noticed on our next visit that the fish now comes with polenta, so this seems to have been addressed.

On our second visit we had the ribeye steak with fries and salad and the blanquette chicken. Blanquette sauce, made with stock, herbs, butter, and cream, was popular in the early 20th Century but has fallen out of favor. When made correctly it’s delicate with undertones of clove, pepper, and onion, and they hit that balance here. The chicken the sauce was poured over had more vigorous seasoning, but the combination worked well. The accompanying mashed potatoes, carrot, roasted mushroom, and sprinkle of baby greens created a pretty, well-balanced plate.

Chicken Blanquette is a French classic from the late 1900s that is rarely seen in modern restaurants.

The steak plate was visually interesting too, the meat topped with a line of chimichurri sauce with a generous portion of hollandaise on the side, a small mountain of crisp fries, and a salad with radicchio and bitter greens. The steak had a good flavor but had not been well trimmed and had some tough spots – if you ate around those, it was a good piece of meat. I think the chimichurri would have been better on the side, so you could enjoy it or the hollandaise separately. The fries were very crisp, the way I like them, the salad so lightly dressed that I wasn’t sure they remembered to add it. It needed a little something to tie the flavor of the greens together, but that is my only quibble.

We only tried one dessert, the rhum baba, a yeast-risen cake with a rum infusion that was invented for a Polish king in exile in Paris in the 1830s. There are vanilla and chocolate versions of this cake, with the chocolate more common, but this one was the vanilla cake with a drizzle of caramel and cream. It was a classic well executed and a nice finish to the meal.

Serendipity’s menu is evolving, and the owner is almost constantly there getting feedback from customers. They’ve been open for two months and are already worth a visit for a comfort food breakfast or lunch or an ambitious dinner.

Serendipity is at 1814 S. Pacific Coast Hwy., Redondo Beach. Open 7 a.m. – 9 p.m. daily. Free parking in structure, wheelchair access good. Some vegan items, full bar. (310) 504-0739, no website yet.ER