Restaurants in Brighton

Pizza for breakfast? Eastside Café's Chef Sal Cimino can make it happen. He and his crew are up early anyway, crafting daily batches of dough that become buns for grinders, crusts for gourmet pizzas, including a Loaded Potato Pie with bacon bits and cheddar cheese, and calzones served with homemade dipping sauce. During dessert, their handiwork is fried and transformed into signature cinnamon pillows, tossed with butter, cinnamon, and sugar, providing an airier alternative to the signature sallyoos––battered, deep-fried Oreos dusted with powdered sugar, topped with whipped cream, and sprinkled with the remnants of shredded New Year's resolutions.

The Eastside Café team also raises another kind of dough to combine its support of local artists with a passion for helping those in need. In 2010, the crew hosted an art exhibition in which artists were invited to create pieces on site using watercolors, pencils, and other media. The works were then displayed on the walls and raffled off to benefit a charitable organization that helps children in Haiti.

At Label 7, fresh ingredients such as crisp shaved fennel and gruyere cheese garnish entrees inspired by the light, healthy cuisine of California's Napa and Sonoma Valleys. Wicker chairs flank tables in the softly lit indoor dining room. Oversized white flowerboxes stand guard along the perimeter of a canal-side patio, where a brigade of umbrellas shields patrons from splashing during nearby diners’ attempts to literally wade through the wine list.