After the gloomiest of Junes, during which crawling out of bed on the weekend felt as if you were escaping from a grave, it’s nice to see July make a turnaround. As a recent sunny weekend dawned, not only were the lazy chihuahuas doing circular races around the bed, but I also got in on the fun. I jumped up on the bed and, in fully naked karate stance, proclaimed the need to brunch somewhere, preferably outdoors, as all hungry breakfast ninjas do.
“Hey, Google,” I said, “text friends list, brunch at 11 at Pour Company in DFT.”
“Text who?” it asked.
“My friends list,” I replied, annoyed.
Then it said the coldest thing a robot could ever say: “I’m sorry; I can’t find any friends.”
Way to spoil a perfectly good start to the day, Google. If I had nunchaku, I would have whipped them around a few times at the Google Home device—before knocking myself out, hitting a dog, or popping a hole in the ceiling.
I do have actual friends, and we did meet at Pour Company, whose hidden gem is a covered back patio that has its own bar. “I’ll get the michelada,” I said, eyeballing my options.
Pour Company’s tap list is well above average, with plenty of hits from Green Cheek, Chapman Crafted, Stereo and Beachwood. Pleasantly absent are the mango carts that clog the tap lines of every other Fullerton eatery. Even my tall-handled michelada used whatever craft lager was available; it was so good I had two.
My wife set the timer on her phone, ordered a mimosa and informed the table, “It has a two-hour limit.” This woman brunches hard.
Chef Nick Oberlin’s weekend brunch menu features a lot of shareable dishes, which is great for those who like to graze on a few different items, such as the breakfast nachos, which are piled high with tangy salsa verde and cotija cheese, then topped with runny eggs. My only complaint is that adding chorizo costs $4 more when it probably should come standard considering the $13 price.
The steak and eggs dish is also surprisingly shareable, with large hunks of medium-rare hangar steak topped with piquant chimichurri and eggs. The crispy potatoes make a great vessel for sopping up whatever leftover juices and garlicky nuggets remain on the plate.
Like yellow on a madras plaid suit, a common thread lies throughout several dishes: a deep-yellow mustard hollandaise sauce. It’s not only on the prosciutto Benedict, but also in the pastrami sweet potato hash. And it’s deeply yummy and addictive.
I’m pretty sure that mustard sauce is also somehow mixed into the breakfast burrito, which is splittable, but not so much shareable. First-timers should definitely give it a try as it features a lot of the flavors on the brunch menu.
Post-brunch, I’m as full as I am on Thanksgiving day, and I no longer feel like doing much bed-karate. “You’re pretty much Brunch Lee,” my wife said.
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 brunches once,” I replied, “but I fear the man who has practiced one brunch 10,000 times.”
Pour Company, 136 W. Wilshire Ave., Fullerton, (714) 525-7468; pourcompany.com.
Greg Nagel has been writing about beer since 2011, is an avid homebrewer of wine, cider, and beer, is a certified Cicerone Beer Server, level 1 WSET in Wine, a podcaster with the Four Brewers Show, and runs a yearly beer festival called Firkfest happening on June 29th in Anaheim!