Cafe Blue

Saturday and Sunday, 9 to 3: Benedicts, lobster omelets, French toast and an oyster bar

If your weekend plan is "eat something good before noon and not rush it," Cafe Blue in the Hill Country Galleria has you covered. The Bee Cave seafood and oyster bar serves brunch every Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and the menu is long enough that a table of six can order six different things and nobody's settling.

Why it's this week's craving. Brunch around Lake Travis tends to be either a quick breakfast taco or a long drive into town. Cafe Blue sits in the middle: a real sit-down brunch with seafood on it, close to home, with a cocktail list that starts at a $9 mimosa. Brunch opens with complimentary beignets, which sets the tone.

The story. Cafe Blue didn't start in a shopping center. It began on the water at Sandy Creek Marina on Lake Travis around the turn of the century, and by 2012 it had moved up the hill to the Galleria. The kitchen calls its food a celebration of coastal cuisines from all over the world — Gulf, New England, Caribbean — and the menu reads that way, from lobster to Cuban to New Orleans BBQ shrimp. The same crew later opened Sundancer Grill on the lake in Lakeway, so if you like one, you'll recognize the other.

Good to know. There are eight Benedicts alone, from the $15 Eggs Florentine to the $22 beef tenderloin, plus migas and a chicken-fried rib-eye and eggs for the hungry. Brunch drinks include a $13 Bloody Mary, a $13 espresso martini and a Captain Crunch French Toast Martini, also $13. The oyster bar is open too — oysters on the half shell at market price, peel-and-eat shrimp ($20) and ceviche ($16) — if you want to make it an occasion. Save room for the fresh-squeezed key lime pie ($10). Outside of brunch, Cafe Blue runs lunch and dinner seven days a week, with lunch specials and a kids menu. It's in Suite G-115 at the Galleria, so park on that side and follow the crowd.