HAPPY BELATED MOTHER’S DAY TO ALL THE MOMMIES OUT THERE! <3 <3 Sorry I’m posting this a day late, but yesterday was surely busy! Celebrated with my mommy and then the bae’s mommy.. Wow, a dayful of events and festivities! I hope your days with your mommies went splendid as well! 🙂 For MY mommy, the boyfriend and I decided to “kidnap” our mommy and take her to Venice Beach! Poor mommy.. she’s always busy doing household chores.. all the cooking and cleaning.. we wanted her to get away from the house and out and about! 🙂 See some sunshine.. Oh yesss the sunshine came out just in time for us to enjoy our brunch together at Gjelina, Venice, CA. This is the highest reviewed 4-starred restaurant in Venice Beach for brunches. Was definately on my bucket list for a while!

Note: I’ve traveled to Venice Beach all the time but I never ventured to Abbot Kinney Blvd! That place is filled with amazing restaurants and stores! IT. IS. SO HIPSTER. So cool!!!!! Haha! Great place to walk around and explore.. not to mention shop.. That’s what we did while we waited 45 minutes for our table! And Yes.. they do NOT take reservations. First come, first serve and well worth the wait!

So… what better way to start the day off than with a fresh cup of coffee! How do you like your coffee?! I love mine in many ways.. today, I decided to enjoy my food with a crazy shot of expresso.. yess, let’s just shoot some caffeine straight to my brain! I need the hypes for today! 🙂

a shot of expresso (I like the small brown sugar piece in my spoon! What a creative and cool way to serve me sugar)

straight up black coffee (just like how the bae loves it! straight up black)

lemon buckwheat ricotta pancakes, creme fraiche & blueberry compote
(the better of the pancake flavors.. all the others taste wonderful, but I heard blueberry ranks #1 here! And healthier too.. ;)) The pancakes came in 3 fluffy layers. The blueberries weren’t too sweet and the creme fraiche was the perfect creamy top to it all! I was personally afraid the pancakes would be too soggy with all that blueberry juice, but it wasn’t! 🙂

house smoked salmon toast, housemade pickles & herbed goat cheese
(I can put these ingredients together at home.. no seriously.. I can.. and presentation is fun to play with.. that’s what I always tell myself when I’m tempted to order this type of dish at a restaurant, but today I absolutely am so grateful I tried it here because this was just so good! Oh my god! Even had capers! (hidden in the shadows) and the smoked salmon didn’t smell disgustingly fish either. Props <3 And what was wonderful about the pickles were that even though they were tangy and crispy, they were sliced so thin that it wasn’t too much of its strong flavors! Just a little enough to not overpower the salmon and the rest of the flavors.

duck confit-potato hash, sunny duck egg & grainy mustard

I love egg porn.. you guys will soon to know.. 😉 If you’re not already on my snapchat.. hehe And What did I do after this? Mix it up REALLLL BADDD with my two big spoons

mixed mushroom, rosemary & garlic oil (thick crust with thin.. undersides? HAHA.. it was good.. 🙂 I just didn’t eat the crust *guilty look* WHO LOVES THE CRUST? Eat pizza with me and you can have mine! Haha!

moroccan baked eggs, merguez, chili, tomato sauce, cilantro & spiced yogurt
BEST FOR LAST! This dish was so good. so good. so good. It definately is not over-hyped on Yelp. It was just so good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wish they gave more toasty bread with this dish though.. But stirring everything together created this thick and creamy spread of light tomato soup and the merguez.. oh yes.. what is merguez? I didn’t know what it was either so I googled it. Merguez is a spicy, red beef-based sausage! AND I LOVE SAUSAGE! The chewy texture of the sausage was wonderful sustenance to the whole dish itself 🙂

I would definately come back here to try their many other dishes! Stay tuned for my future “FOR SURE” adventure back here to try their GRILLED PEACHES that’s set to premier in July for the summer seasonal menu!!!!!

What did you guys do for your mother’s day! Please share below if you wish! I would love to know 🙂 Thanks for reading again guys! Good night and don’t let the bed bugs bite! <3