Brookside: The Going Gets Weird

OK. So the day after The festival was a Sunday. I had decided somewhere during my hellride up the 5 to take the 101 home. I woke up early and thought I would hit brunch near Santa Cruz. There was a nice restaurant at a group of upscale cabins in the hills I had been to several times. It offers a slammin' brunch. It was the first place I ever ate ganache. So you understand it has a deep and profound meaning to me. I remembered the cabins/hotel used to be a monastary so I got on the laptop and started searching.

So this is the place I was trying to find. Looks nice, doesn't it? I started driving and driving and driving. I wove through the hills until I was in the Redwoods. This couldn't be right. So I find the address and I was definitely in the wrong place. I ended up here.





The Brookdale Lodge is famously haunted by the ghost of a little girl named Sarah who supposedly drowned in the brook that runs through the center of the restaurant. Food is so much better when enhanced by the tragic death of children.

More on the haunted lodge



How to even describe this place? It was as if it had been built in many different stages during different eras. There was some attempt to make it into an alpine fairy tale inside of a castle inside of an abandoned church.



The bar seemed like a good place to get into a fight with a biker and the bathroom seemed like a good place to shoot heroin. I can't imagine staying here overnight. Then in the middle of haunted Alpine Village, there was an ernormous fading art deco light that looked to have been salvaged from the Titanic.



So the buffet was in a room even dimmer than this one. Nothing whets the appetite like dark, creepy buffets. My biscuits and gravy were ice cold, which sucked, and I was none to impressed with their special chicken and dumplings. Of course, I like fluffy dumplings, not Pennsylvani-style rolled dumplings.



But the omelette! Jesus Christ, that was one of the best omelettes I have ever had in my life. If you are ever randomly in this part of town, it's worth it for the acid trip and the omelette.



The pasta was also handmade and delicious.







Throwing fish to the trout in the pond. President Hoover fished in the pond when the water used to be higher