Coastal Kitchen is an important neighborhood institution—it’s where you take B-list friends. Actually, Coastal Kitchen itself is kind of like a B-list friend. You ignore it for months at a time until one lonely Friday night you convince yourself that it would be awesome to hang out again—you know, just do something simple with someone who isn’t so complicated. Why jockey for a table at some foodie haunt where you recognize maybe one out of every three ingredients when you can enjoy ”Cuban Pete’s Paella?” Just a little low-stakes companionship, and the same old stories respun slightly.

You see, Coastal Kitchen changes its menu roughly monthly to highlight the flavors of one country or region. A celebration of Greece might dress up filets, crab cakes, and chowders with falafel croquettes or honey-cucumber coulis. But nowadays, when chefs change up the menu every half hour to match the drops in barometric pressure, it just seems less exciting as a concept and more a doorway to the inconsistency that so frustrates us.

Breakfast, however, is pretty darn good, and solely responsible for the above-average food rating. But then again it’s hard to mess up omelettes, coffee cakes, and hashes that bear only the slightest hint of Venezuela or Basque country, and are accompanied by excellent mimosas and bloody Marys.