Nanciful’s Blog

On the suggestion of our good friend R, (Hi R!) Hubs and I traversed to Downtown LA a couple Sundays ago to have brunch at Nickel Diner. I have been wanting to go especially for the famous maple bacon donut. However, when I was laying in bed that morning and looking at Nickel Diner’s menu on my Iphone, all I wanted was the bacon, spinach, garlic and goat cheese scramble.

I have worked in Downtown almost my entire life and there has been some great transformation in the area. The streets use to be trash strewed and buildings dilapidated. On Sundays mornings back in the day, there would be no reason to come to this part of town unless you were looking for your dealer. But that has changed in past few years in the redevelopment of Downtown LA. It has become much more urban chic so to speak and Nickel Diner is a great addition to this.

Although there was a long line outside, we were lucky enough that a couple of parties ahead of us left and we only waited for about 15 minutes before getting seated. The inside of the restaurant looks like a cross between a small town diner from the mid west and a New York deli.

After taking our orders, the waitress brought us a sample of the strawberry crumble donut and the bacon maple donut. Hubs said that the strawberry crumble taste like Good Humor strawberry shortcake bar and I thought the maple bacon donut tasted like one of those ham and cheese bread from the Taiwanese bakery. They were both good.

I debated whether I should get an full sized donut since they had a plethora of amazing choices such as red velvet, nutella and samoa just to name a few. However,  I resisted because we were planning to head over to the Beer Float Showdown later that day where I was ready to consume large amounts of beer and ice cream. The donuts looked might delicious in their cages though.

I was really torn between the baked pancakes or the scramble that I was hankering earlier. I ended up getting the scramble anyways. Once I get my mind made up, it’s almost impossible to deter it. Although this is just the run of the mill scramble with bacon and garlic, the goat cheese adds a different texture and taste to it.

Hubs got the 5th and Main which is spicy bbq pork has topped with 2 eggs, sunny side up. There was a tad too much BBQ sauce and it was a little too sweet for my taste but all in all, BBQ for breakfast is awesome and sinful.

I look forward to returning to Nickel Diner to try the rest of the donuts and to experience peaceful Downtown on a Sunday morning.