Jaunted

High
· The Inn of the Seventh Ray is conspicuously zen. There are the small things: the rolling landscaping, the trickling rivers, and the bleached stone statues. And then there are the more noticeable things: the way they spell "omelette" as "aumlette," the heavy emphasis on organic and vegan fare, and the attached bookstore hawking guides to maximizing your karma.

Their webpage actually has a weather section because they're so high in the Topanga mountains that they apparently have their own weather patterns. The brunch offers vegetarian and full buffets as well as options from their vegetarian upstairs kitchen and their less hippy downstairs kitchen. The phrase "our own tofu cream cheese" makes an appearance.

Sunday brunch lasts from 9:30am to 3pm and--according to their menu--is "a time for sealing the past and creating anew... [t]o be refreshed and energized by the universal spirit of Nature, to feel lifted within the music and nourished by the cosmic energy within the food."

Nota bene: by all accounts they spectacularly boned Valentine's Day reservations this year. Must have had their chi out of whack.
128 Old Topanga Canyon Road, Topanga, CA 90290

Low
· Overlooking the marina, the Sunday brunch at Shanghai Red's features multiple rooms of banquet goodness. There are stations set up in various corners of the restaurant: omelettes and waffles, pasta, sushi, etc. The main room is filled with a variety of hot and cold options. Seafood--from crab legs to shrimp to oysters--is particularly emphasized.

For the end of the meal there's a wide-ranging dessert buffet offering fruits, cakes, and cookies. You can dip any of these into the fondue fountain, although it turns out--upon experiment--that some options are more amenable to the laws of physics than others.

They even serve bottomless champagne, which we like since we prefer our Sunday hangovers to kick in before sunset. The brunch lasts from 9am to 3pm and costs $32.95 per person.
13813 Fiji Way, Marina Del Rey, CA 90292