Lisa's Café and Bakery

Lisa's Bon Appetit moved to a new location. It is in the shopping center where Honey Baked Ham is located in Torrance. I heard they serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The beauty of this restaurant is that it opens at 7:30 a.m. Monday to Friday and closes at 7:00 p.m.  On weekends, they open at 9:00 a.m. and close at 3:00 p.m.

Last Thursday, Amy, Nako, Sandi and I headed to Lisa's Cafe right after our workout at the gym. I was excited since I haven't been there for many years and I used to have them cater at the surgery center I worked at in the 80's and 90's. If I'm not mistaken, they were the ones that started making the famous Chinese Chicken Salad. Their croissant sandwiches were very good too.

We were the only crazy ones at 7:30 a.m. The restaurant was spacious and they had their famous Chinese Chicken Salad for sale and their dressing as well. They had cinnamon rolls, an assortment of cookies, cupcakes, brownies, various fruit tarts. They had samples of the lemon tarts which were good.

Sandi and I agreed on splitting an order of Avocado Toast and an order of  Banana Waffles. Nako decided on the Strawberry Waffle. Amy who is not a breakfast person thought she would just get a croissant with butter and jam. We had to wait awhile before the first order came out which was the Avocado Toast. It was pretty and colorful; it had a spread of beet hummus underneath the slices of avocado. It was good but it lacked something. That something was salt. Amy got her croissant shortly after. Her croissant looked pathetic. It was flat as if it had been wrapped and was forgotten in someone's purse. The butter was packaged and so was the jelly. If I were to order a croissant, I would want it fluffy and light with lots of layers and served with good butter and homemade jam like I used to have at L'amande Bakery.

Our waffle finally came.  We had to push the bananas out of the way so we could slather it with butter which refused to melt because the waffle was not hot.  Nako in the meantime had not gotten his waffle. They must have just 1 waffle maker. We all were not happy with our waffles. It was not very good. Eventually, Nako got his waffle. There really was no good excuse for the slow service especially since we were the only ones there.  We all agreed this was not a good choice for breakfast.  I guess we will just stick to what they do best; Chinese Chicken Salad.