For French toast fans, Coral Tree Cafe’s for you. Mok and I went to this cute Brentwood restaurant — Look at the size of her stuffed French toast ($9.50).

To be honest, my breakfast burrito ($9.95) was a lil bland — especially cuz the salsa had no kick. Still, we got outside seating on a perfect day and drank coffee that’s, according to their website, “certified organic, shade grown, and fairly traded.”

I would bug these restaurants about the certification thing, except that the fair trade sticker’s assigned to the individual coffee blends. Restaurants that serve a good amount of coffee — like Coral Tree — often like to pretend they roast their own blends and don’t wanna admit their coffee actually comes from bigger roasters — say, like Green Mountain or Groundwork. Thus, even if the blend Coral Tree’s using is fair trade certified, the shop’s not gonna put it on their labels cuz that would mean outing their coffee as another company’s fair trade blend.

Other restaurants that do this: Pretty much all the Urth Caffe imitation places. You know — the kind with healthy, organic food with lots of veggie options and yummy coffee. The kind where you put in your order at the counter, take your number, and stake out a table till they bring out your dish.

Wanna try it out yourself? Try either of the Urth Caffe locations, Coral Tree Cafe in Brentwood (Culver City location to open), or Literati Cafe in Santa Monica. There are others — Feel free to plug your fave in the comments. All three give props to the importance of fair trade practices on their website, doing their lil part to raise customer consciousness.

Urth lovers — You’re ready to hit comments and let me know Urth has its own coffee brand. I’m almost positive, though, that Urth buys its coffee from another roaster — I’ve heard through the grapevine which company this is, but have been sworn to secrecy — and rebrands it under its own name. No probs with that on my part — but if Urth markets its own blends, that means Urth could market its own fair trade certified blends.

Meaning I’ve been e-communicating with Shallom of Urth about certifying at least one of his blends. More on that next week –

In the meantime, you might try one of these cafes out if you haven’t already. Look how happy it made Mok (right), even though I kept taking nibbles out of her French toast –

Coral Tree Cafe. 11645 San Vincente Blvd. Brentwood, CA. 310.979.tree.

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