A Salty Brunch at La Bête on Capitol Hill

The first thing about La Bête is to be clear where on Capitol Hill it actually is. It turns out to be down around where The Saint is, but around the corner on Bellevue. It's a decent-sized spot, able to crowd in a good amount of brunch-goers; brunch on the weekend begins at 10:30 a.m. Coffee comes in French presses. The food and drinks are the work of Tyler Moritz and Aleks Dimitrijevic, with cocktails and wines by the glass generally ranging from $8-$10. We were looking for a brunch spot suitable for an editorial meeting, and this fit the bill nicely--it was never too loud, even when full. Read on for thumbnail reviews of brunch options.

The eagerly anticipated coffee cake showed up at the table moist and still warm from the oven. It had a healthy amount of crispy brown sugar on top, which is a non-negotiable coffee cake requirement.  Audrey wanted to put it in a bowl and pour cream atop it until it became gooey mush cake.

MvB: My default at a new brunch spot is Eggs Benedict, and this was close, poached eggs with hollandaise and smoked salmon, atop "rosti" potatoes. The salmon eggs were a fun addition, and little waterfalls of hollandaise made it an unusually attractive dish before you even tucked into it. However, as became a theme, a mildly tangy hollandaise paired with the immense saltiness of the generous amount of smoked salmon had me draining my water glass. Also, the rosti was like nothing I've tasted in Switzerland, amounting to crispy-to-dry hash browns. So, high marks for conception and visual details, but not the most successful execution.

Josh: I was intrigued by the duck egg, seemingly so much more exotic than its chicken cousin. It was just the right amount of runny (in the yolk department) and capped a low rise construction project of spinach and mushrooms (chanterelles?) swimming on a solid brioche foundation. Delicious, though, the high salt content felt aimed at those who had thoroughly depleted their electrolytes during the prior evening. 

Jay: I really wanted to try the chicken fried rabbit bellies with chanterelles gravy and braised rapini that I saw on an online version of the menu, but settled instead for a beef tongue reuben on rye with choucroute and thousand island dressing. Tender was the tongue; a tad salty were the fries.

Audrey: At any brunch, I always order a breakfast sandwich--I'll DIY it with a farmers' breakfast, if nothing else. La Bête's menu had an egg, bacon, and cheese sandwich, so that was clearly my item on the menu. The accompanied fries were, yes, quite salty--that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean I'm not going to be able to finish them all. But that wasn't the main problem with this dish. The flavors were good, but the sandwich was unwieldy. While some of the breakfast sandwiches, made on a delicate brioche, left the kitchen cut in two, mine did not. So it was up to me to tame the beast. The bacon was on the soft side (I like mine to be extra crispy), so with every bite, grease from the bacon was spilling out the sides, along with liquid from the lettuce and tomatoes, creating a bit of a deconstructed sandwich waterfall. I made it about two-thirds of the way through the sandwich before putting it down and picking through the ingredients to create a simple open-faced egg sandwich, and even that was kinda sloppy. Heartier bread and more well-cooked bacon would've made a big difference.