Theresa's Family Restaurant

I was up early this morning and it felt even earlier on account of the time change. Instead of lunch, we decided to head over to Theresa's for breakfast. We got there around 11 and it was pretty crowded but there was still seating for us. The parking lot was full, but there is plenty of street parking on the side streets.

When we walked in I was a little confused as to what they were doing with the entry. There was a counter with space for pastries but it was empty. That led down along a thin hallway. The cash register was also right there and I think it backed into the kitchen. It was a really small entry way and would be incredibly uncomfortable if we had to wait longer.

We were ushered to a booth with menus. The restuarant is country themed and the inside doesn't even hint at the fact that it used to be Chinese.

There were three people in our party and we all ordered something different. I started with a cup of hot chocolate which turned out to be a bad idea. It was a really small cup and it was just water and some kind of powdered mix. I guess I was hoping for something more like the one I had at the Emporium in Ojai. The cocoa ended up being really expensive too, I should have stuck with coffee.

The menu has a lot of choice for both breakfast and lunch. We saw a hamburger pass by that looked pretty good--but we were there for breakfast. I ordered the crepes Swedish style--it came with nothing extra. The other orders at my table were the Wet Burrito and the Studio Plate. The studio plate came with bacon, sausage, potatoes, eggs and 3 pancakes. The wet burrito was another stand alone. The side items a la carte were pretty expensive, but I needed it.

When the food came I was told that they were nearly out of Swedish topping (lingonberries) so they gave me the blueberry topping as well. The Swedish topping was much more my style with a slight tartness combining with the sweet of the crepes. The blueberries were far too sweet. The crepes had a nice texture and were filling, but, again it was a lot of the same thing--I needed something salty to go with it.

The Studio Plate seemed like it was the best deal. It wasn't too expensive and came with a little bit of everything. You could even split half and half bacon and sausage. The only thing was that the potatoes were a tiny bit cold and possibly undercooked--to me, true hash browns are more brown and crunchy than white and raw. The pancakes were also a problem, of the three, only one is cooked to perfection. One of the other ones was undercooked and the other was burned. The wet burrito ended up not being wet enough.

The service was OK, but not particularly speedy. I also thought that the large fish tank at one end of the restaurant didn't really fit with the country theme. It was more like country meets Los Angeles. There were a couple of special menus on the table for the weekday deals that seemed to be good. For example the all you can eat pancake deal seemed really good--except based on the quality of the pancakes in the stack of three--it might be a little iffy.

Overall, it is nice to have a new breakfast spot in town, but this one hasn't shaken out all the kinks yet.






Theresa's Family Restaurant
1520 W Olive Ave
Burbank, C.A. 91506
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