2022 best brunch in the San Fernando Valley

Editor’s note: Restaurant critic Merrill Shindler returns with his annual recap of the area’s best eats. He’s highlighting the best local restaurants for Italian food, French-American food, Lebanese food, seafood and brunch. Look for all of his reviews and stories here: www.dailynews.com/author/merrill-shindler

Best brunch

Saddle Peak Lodge

419 Cold Canyon Road, Calabasas; 818-222-3888, www.saddlepeaklodge.com

Brunch at Saddle Peak makes you wonder why you’d ever want to live anywhere else? Saddle Peak Lodge is a restaurant with a history. It dates back at least a century – a brochure available at the entrance titled “History,” suggests no one is really sure – as a destination for gold miners, a campsite, a general store, a roadhouse, a movie set, a weekend retreat and, since 1985, in its current incarnation as an upscale dining destination.

It has a penchant for game – elk, buffalo and emu are all found on the menu, separately, and on a Chef’s Game Trio. But game is found just once on the brunch menu, for which most opt to sit outdoors, on the patio with its view of the distant Saddle Peak, its humming birds, its foraging critters and the occasional wedding on the edge of the patio.

The menu is decidedly fancy, a sit-down brunch (rather than a buffet, which would probably thrill the foraging critters!), with dishes that are recognizable – but also given a steroid boost to make them so much more than they usually are.

But first, let us deal with the skillet hoecake. The popular story behind the name comes from the contention that field hands would cook cornmeal over an open fire, using their hoes as skillets. Which is sweet – and possibly apocryphal. For there’s also evidence that “hoe” was simply a colloquialism for a skillet. Whatever.

The hoecake at Saddle Peak is an essential side dish – or as the menu refers to it, “For the Table” (along with the wild game sausage trio, the goodie basket of breads, the bacon, breakfast potatoes and fruit). It’s a joy to dig into – served in a small skillet, dripping with maple syrup and impossible to resist.

This is time to forgo your low-carb diet; it’s worth it.

The brunch menu meanders from a proper platter of house-cured smoked Norwegian salmon with a toasted bagel, cream cheese, cucumbers, red onions, tomatoes and capers; through a goat cheese and broccoli quiche, a salmon or bacon eggs Benedict, a flat-iron steak with eggs, French toast, buttermilk waffles.

The choices do not include anything that might be confused with a Denny’s Breakfast Slam – though I guess you could create one with the two-egg side added on to the waffles. But I’ve long preferred the lunch side of brunch to the breakfast side. And Saddle Peak does not disappoint.

The flat-iron steak certainly pays homage to the savory joys of lunch. But even more so, there’s the rosemary roast leg of lamb sandwich with sweet potato fries – a delicious reminder that the kitchen at Saddle Peak is a bastion of fine meat cooking.

There’s an oversized Snake River Farms wagyu beef burger on a brioche, with bleu cheese, a fried egg and French fries on the side. Should you want to go even lunchier, the roasted Skuna Bay salmon is a finely turned hunk of fish, with a mix grill of veggies – a perfect lunch, say I.

And, since we cannot live without salads here in the Malibu Mountains (or anywhere else in SoCal), there’s a fine seared albacore model, and a first-rate Mary’s chicken cobb.

For brunch, we also need our alcoholic-tinged exotica, which the moody bar in the front cranks out: Bellinis, Mimosas, a properly spicy Bloody Mary and even a bottomless Mimosa.

For dessert, there’s banana bread pudding, cappuccino pots de crème, and a trio of house-made sorbets.

As you leave, consider the taxidermy in the main dining room, and the half timbers and the fireplace. Consider returning for some elk filet, or bison short ribs. And then, head for Malibu Creek State Park, and hike out to the old “M*A*S*H” set. And be glad you live here, and not there. Like they say, that’s a nice place to visit – but this is a grand place to live.

Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email mreats@aol.com.