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.

A white garden arch greets visitors to La Tea Da! Tearoom & Parlour. Just a few more steps down a walkway lined with flowers and lush foliage brings them to the doorway of a Victorian building—hard to miss, in its brilliant shade of violet. Once inside, one may be excused for thinking that one has stepped into a time warp. Pastel-colored tables surround an elegant couch in a parlor decorated with a hodgepodge of porcelain sculptures and decorative plates that evokes an era long past.

With their easygoing demeanor and willingness to strike up a conversation on the spot, the parlor’s friendly staff members are also an anachronism of sorts. Their menu includes selections for brunch, lunch, and afternoon tea, from bite-size pastries to hearty slices of quiche. Steamy brews such as earl grey, peach rooibos, and Japanese sencha tea pour forth from teakettles emblazoned with polka dots or cast in the shapes of plump bunnies and perky frogs. Children play-act in the parlor during tea parties, pulling on sequined dress-up clothes and communicating through vocoders that embellish their voices with British accents.

Yummy Hot Pot and Grill’s chefs create a menu of more than 100 Chinese favorites, from spicy kung pao beef to general tso's shrimp, scallops, and chicken. The menu features such savory selections as lo mein, fried rice, and seafood dishes, plus family packs for two to three people that include different meal combinations and passive-aggressive fortune cookies.