The Breakfast Pizza is also a great lunch option. | Photo: Christine N. Ziemba
The Daily Harvest Cafe & Juicery in Newhall has been a go-to breakfast and lunch spot for many since its doors opened in 2015. Known for its cold-pressed raw juices — made in-house with organic ingredients — the cafe changes its food menus to include seasonal produce and other items.
One staple that hasn’t changed on the menu is the Breakfast Pizza ($13), which we had for lunch on Friday. It’s a simple dish that includes two baked sunny side up eggs, breakfast potatoes, green onions and basil on a flatbread with pecorino cheese. It usually comes with pancetta, but we ordered the pizza without it. (A gluten-free dough is also available for $3 more.)
The thin and crispy flatbread and the melted pecorino were the dish’s flavor highlights. Since we didn’t get the salty flavor of the pancetta to mix with the other ingredients, we asked for a side of salsa, which elevated the pizza. It’s a great choice for any meal of the day (though The Daily Harvest isn’t open for dinner).
Other options for breakfast (or lunch) include corn arepas with a choice of protein; an acai bowl with fruits and granola; avocado toast or kale avocado toast; a hearty beet salad; a chicken chopped salad; plus beer, wine and coffee drinks. Many of the cafe’s items are gluten-free and vegan, too.
Though not a new restaurant, just we wanted to shout out an oldie but a goodie the next time someone says there’s nothing but chains in Santa Clarita.
The Daily Harvest Cafe & Juicery 22722 Lyons Ave., Newhall Open Monday through Sunday: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Fiesta Taco Grill (FTG) opened a brick-and-mortar location in Newhall a little more than three years ago. In 2019, the restaurant started selling their foods and products, such fantastic homemade salsas, chips, guacamole and agua frescas, at the Old Town Newhall Farmers Market on Saturdays.
Then, they made the decision to bring over a grill and offer up breakfast burritos, tacos and bowls — and our Saturday mornings just got a whole lot more delicious-er.
We’re partial to the vegetarian breakfast burritos, made with Fiesta Taco Grill’s handmade flour tortillas, refried beans, potatoes, eggs and cheese. They’re simple, generous with the eggs, and allow FTG’s salsas to stand out. Additional proteins are available at the Saturday market, including steak, chorizo, bacon, sausage and chile verde.
Our Saturday morning indulgence comes reasonably priced at $7.50.
Fiesta Taco Grill brings its foods and products to the Newhall Farmers Market on Saturdays.FTG salsas FTW.
The same proteins make up FTG’s breakfast taco ($3) choices on corn or flour torillas (just without the refried beans) and $9 breakfast bowls (refried beans, potatoes, eggs, cheese, pico de gallo, guacamole).
Fiesta Taco Grill is at the Saturday farmer’s market in Newhall from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. The storefront is located at 24623 Arch St., Newhall and open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Miami Cafe is a new(ish) stand that’s been serving up Cuban sandwiches, papa rellenas (potato balls), pastelitos (guava and cheese turnovers) and flan for the past three weeks at the Saturday farmers’ market. It’s proven to be quite a hit with the shoppers as nearly everything’s sold out by 10:30 a.m.
This morning, we hit up the market by 9 a.m. and had first dibs on their offerings, which also included ham croquettes this week.
The items were reasonably priced with the papa rellenas running $1.50 each, the croquettes at $1.25 and the flan at $4.25. The Cubano sandwich costs $12.
Scenes from Miami Cafe at the Newhall Farmers Market on Saturday mornings.
The Culver City-based Delvigne Croissant, a relatively new vendor at the Sunday Santa Clarita Certified Farmers Market at College of the Canyons, has been selling artisanal croissants (almond, butter, pan au chocolat) and seasonal fruit paniers, breads and brioche.
But our hands-down favorite treat is their bag of chouquettes (shoo-kets). Airier than a croissaint, the bite-sized chouqettes are traditionally made with a choux pastry and can be made into profiteroles (cream puffs).
But this chouquette is exceptional.
Delvigne’s simple version, sprinkled with course sugar, pairs perfectly with a Sunday morning coffee. (There are five in a bag for $5.)
Santa Clarita Certified Farmers Market College of the Canyons / Parking Lot Valencia Boulevard & Rockwell Canyon Road, Valencia Open 8 a.m. to noon on Sundays
Peanut butter cookies are really hard to get right. Many times, there’s just not enough peanut butter. Or there are too many bits of nuts in lieu of peanut butter. (We didn’t ask for peanut cookies, thank you very much.)
But we recently found a nearly perfect peanut butter cookie at the Newhall Farmers Market. Bake Up pastries sells an assortment of sweets, including cookies, coffee cakes, homemade poptarts, loaves and bars.
The peanut butter cookies, however, are heavenly. The flavor balance is ideal: There’s enough peanut butter to savor without overwhelming the palate. If we had one nitpick, it’s that the decorative sanding sugar on top, while pretty, isn’t necessary. The cookies are $10 for a six-pack.
The six-pack from Bake Up | SCVFoodie.com
A few folks in the Santa Clarita Valley might already know of — or tasted —Bake Up, as Kimberly Gonzalez’s Acton-based home kitchen makes goods for several local coffee shops, including Bodhi Leaf (the blueberry cornmeal and cinnamon coffee cakes are hers, as are the assorted poptarts).
The Newhall Market is open from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays. Bake Up posts its weekly menu on Facebook on Tuesdays. Message them by Thursday evening to reserve baked goods.
Bake Up Newhall Farmers Market (Saturdays) Old Town Newhall Library parking lot 24500 Main St., Newhall
For this week’s quaran-treat, we stopped at the House of the Peruvian Cookie at the Saturday Newhall Farmers Market to pick up a dozen alfajores de maizena. These melt-in-your-mouth biscuit cookies, with dulce de leche filling, are made by hand in SCV resident Angie Schenone’s home kitchen.
For those not familiar with the cookie, the biscuits look a little like macarons, but the alfajores are delicate, light, airy and crumbly made from cornstarch rather than almond flour and sugar. Biting into one of these delicacies is probably comprable to biting a fluffy cloud.
The delicate alfajor de maizena. | SCVFoodie.com
The House of the Peruvian Cookie offers a traditional flower-shaped cookie, dusted with powdered suger (which are the ones we bought); a heart-shaped version; a coconut cookie in which the dulce de leche is coated in coconut; and multicolored alfajores.
Because these Peruvian treats aren’t mass produced, and it’s a local operation, the alfajor is $1.25 for a single, and $12 for a dozen of the traditional. Prices vary on the other cookie options.
The cookies are available at the Newhall Farmers Market on Saturday from 8:30 a.m. – 1 p.m. They can also be ordered online for deliveries in the Santa Clarita area on Wednesdays from 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
A sampling of Southern fried goodness from Blazin’ Chicks in Temple City.
If you live in the L.A. area, you’ve probably driven by Temple City without even knowing it. Located just south of Pasadena and between the 210 and 10 Freeways, the community is predominently residential. But the four-square mile city boasts a number of great restaurants, tucked in the strip malls.
SCVFoodie has written about several restaurants for Temple City’s Connect Magazine. Last year, we wrote about the Michelin and Bib Gourmand restaurants in the area, including Grand Harbour and Dai Ho.
Our latest adventure took us to Blazin Chicks, a fried HOT chicken place that opened just before the pandemic took hold of the country. It specializes in chicken sandwiches, wings, mac and cheese, butter rice, collard greens and other Southern-style comfort foods.
If you’ve been craving carbs during the stay-at-home pandemic, then SCV Foodie suggests an addition to all the sourdough and banana bread baking we’ve seen on Instagram lately.
The family owned and operated Italia Panetteria & Deli on Newhall Ranch Road bakes its rolls and breads daily each morning. Among the selections is its Pizza Bread, a deep, thick-crusted bread topped with a savory tomato sauce and dusted off with parmesan cheese.
The dense bread can be eaten by itself or add a bit of mozzerella cheese and toppings for a DIY pizza.
At $5.49, the Pizza Bread is a bargain because it’s heavy and filling and only the heariest of appetites can tackle in on sitting. There are limited quantities available on a daily basis so once they sell out, they’re gone.
Italia Panetteria & Deli 27674 Newhall Ranch Road #55, Valencia (661) 294-9069 Hour: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday
The shortribs are back at Wolf Creek Restaurant. | Photo: SCVFoodie.com
Toward the end of last summer, longtime SCV restaurant Wolf Creek did something that SCVFoodie didn’t agree with: They took their shortribs off the menu.
We couldn’t understand why…why take off such a tasty and popular dish? Wolf Creek’s version was so tender—dry rubbed and braised with the brewery’s own Midnight India Black Ale.
Oh, and the sides were plain and simple, but complemented the spices used on the meat: roasted garlic mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus. It was the perfect comfort food meal (for those who eat meat, carbs, gluten, etc.).
Wolf Creek heard from patrons about the missing menu item, and after the short hiatus, the beer braised shortribs were added back to the menu, just in time for winter. Right where they belong.
Wolf Creek Restaurant 27746 McBean Parkway, Valencia 661-263-9653 Braised shortribs: $23
SCVFoodie: Eats in and around Santa Clarita, Calif. 