Hangover Cure: Rush Street's Red Eye Brunch

You had an awesome night of barhopping but one cocktail too many, you mixed your spirits and you didn't drink a drop of water before you went to bed. Next morning? Raging headache, and the last thing you want to have for brunch is some buttery pancakes drenched in sweet syrup. Blech!

Chef Dave Northrup of Rush Street in Culver City completely understands and that's why he created a hearty new brunch menu of hangover cures for Saturdays and Sundays. Choose from red-eye burgers, sloppy joes, breakfast paninis and andouille sausage and roasted peppers pizza. Just what you need to coat that irritated stomach.

We checked out the panini sandwiches -- breakfast and California -- and found that the thick bread pretty much dominated the sandwich. And even though the breakfast panini has andouille sausage it wasn't as flavorful as we had hoped. Fortunately a couple of dashes of tabasco sauce fixed that right up.

If you're aching for a little hair of the dog, there's more here than just mimosas and kir royales. Take advantage of the brunch cocktail menu of beer cocktails as well as a well-stocked Bloody Mary bar featuring Santa Barbara Olive Company garlic stuffed olives, blue cheese stuffed olives and spicy habenero olives so you can customize your own cure.

However, we just had to order the Caribbean Rush cocktail made of Myers Dark, pineapple juice, ginger ale and grenadine and found it as potent as a Mai Tai. Yikes! But it would probably be really tasty with the benedict sandwich of hot coppa, fried egg, arugula, roasted tomato, red onion and sambal hollandaise.

Thankfully, the bartender hooked us up with a much lighter cocktail of Sauvignon Blanc, gin and St. Germain. Subtly fruity and floral, this would go well with the tuna melt deluxe sandwich.

Rush Street's regular specialty cocktail menu is also available for the hard-core folks who seek something stronger than the usual breakfast cocktail fare. By the way, if you're not drunk when you arrive, you will definitely require a designated driver when you leave, because these cocktails are potent stuff.

To also soothe your aching wallet, all brunch items are under $10! And that includes the cocktails and beer. The only things that cost $10-plus are the $11 glass of Russian River Ranches, Davis Bynum Pinot Noir and the $12 Lindemans Lambic Frambois.

And another thing we liked about brunch here, besides the crunchy tater tots, is that not only are there TV screens hanging over the bar so you can watch a game but the music playing in the restaurant is thoughtfully played at a low volume.

Rush Street
9546 Washington Boulevard in Culver City (map)
(310) 837-9546