Coral Tree Cafe
Friday, April 29, 2005 17:25I had lunch at Coral Tree Cafe today in Brentwood. It’s a huge space on the corner of Darlington and San Vicente (google map). The food at Coral Tree is American/California cuisine, with mostly salads, sandwiches some pasta and soups. 
I had the 1/2 sandwich and mixed field greens salad, with my sandwich being turkey meatloaf. I have had the turkey meatloaf before and enjoyed it, this time I was not disappointed. When I first got it, I was afraid that it would be dried out, it looked a little crusty on the edges. It was moist though and with the light spread of herb mayo on the bread, my fears were left to rest. The field green salad was good as well, lightly dressed with a somewhat creamy balsamic dressing. The addition of hearts of palm was a big plus. 
I have been to Coral Tree a number of times, often just for a coffee or a bite of dessert. There is $2 parking with validation, street parking is pretty difficult to come by. The space is big, but can get crowded during lunch. It doesn’t get too crowded at night, although there are some people who camp out and use the free WiFi. I was there once using the WiFi and the manager came over and turned off their router in order to encourage people not to camp out. I can understand their concern when it is crowded, but I have been there when it’s not crowded and they have the connection turned off. You can tell if they have the WiFi on because the cord hangs down from the router near the Darlington side entrance. When it is unplugged, there is no WiFi
Coral Tree also serves beer and a nice selection of wine by the bottle and by the glass. There is indoor and outdoor seating and even a fire pit near the street corner. Not too long ago they put in an awning on one side of the patio to add some much needed shade. If you’re meeting friends in Brentwood for lunch, this is a great choice. It’s not too far from the freeway and has a social atmosphere
By Jonah (see more of his posts). Jonah is the founder of la.foodblogging and also created Digesty, a food blog aggregator and Cheww.com, a spam free foodblog search engine.
ChefJoAnna says:
May 2nd, 2005 at 11:00 am
Why don’t they use an access manager program? I was visiting relatives in Rice Lake, WI, and the Internet cafe in the next podunk town over had a self-maintained wifi access program. If a business is going to offer a perq to entice customers to their restaurant, that’s awesome… but why just “pull the plug” when they could have their customers purchase more food to renew their access code? My friend Ronan at http://www.Cafe.com creates and manages Internet access on a grand scale, but any counter-jockey can do it in-house with a teensy bit of instruction.
BestofLA says:
July 27th, 2005 at 6:33 pm
I recently had the Rosemary Chicken sandwich with brie which was pretty good and the Chinese Chicken Salad which was not bad either. (I love brie cheese!) Personally, I like the sandwiches at Figtree’s Cafe in Venice much more.