Breakfast at the Village Bistro

I met up with some college friends this weekend at Santana Row, a place that is a convenient point between the places we live. We originally planned to grab lunch, and I had a few places picked out to help along Resolution No. 2 (eat at five new restaurants.) But since my family had tickets to Cirque du Soleil later in the afternoon (4 p.m.) and my sister at work in Campbell, we decided to get together earlier in the day.

The problem with meeting at 10 a.m. is that there are slim pickins' at a shopping center at that time when it comes to eating. In fact, the only place that was open was The Village Bistro and Bar. We were not drawn in by the sandwich board sign outside that promised a Bloody Mary bar inside, but simple by the fact that it was open.

Now here is where I should probably confess that I am not a breakfast person. My sister and dad love breakfast - the bacon, the sausages, the eggs, the pancakes, the chorizo - if it's on an early morning menu they love it. They even love breakfast burritos for dinner or just plain breakfast for dinner.

But me, I only eat in the morning because when I go to the gym at 5:30 a.m., I'm kinda hungry by 7 a.m. Most days I eat a piece of wheat toast with jam, a hard-boiled egg white and a glass of fat-free milk. And I don't crave anymore than that.

Paired my underwhelming feeling about breakfast foods with my attempt to eat healthier this year, and I was kind of at a loss about what to order off the Village Bistro and Bar menu. There were plenty of items that looked good. A BLT breakfast sandwich, eggs benedict, french toast. But I went with a three-egg scramble with sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms and jack cheese, roasted potatoes and a buttermilk biscuit. The potatoes were delicious, coated in a red spice mix that was reminiscent of Season-all. The egg scramble was pretty standard, though, and I ate about half of it, and I skipped the biscuit altogether.

Next time I am craving breakfast, I think I will stick with OD's Kitchen, a little hole in the wall restaurant in downtown Gilroy that has the best homefries and pancakes I've ever eaten. It's the kinda place only locals know about and the family pick for Father's Day. And next time I go to Santana Row, I'll make sure to get there after the lunch hour so I can try Pluto's or the Counter, or one of the many other restaurants only open for lunch or dinner.