![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Apr. 7th, 2008 01:23 pmNow that the weather is finally improving I've embarked on a rolling tour of breakfast joints in the area on Saturday mornings, just me and the girls. ("Daddy, why do you call it Mommy's Mental Health Morning when she's not with us?") I'm relatively unfussy with greasy-spoon style breakfast, provided the eggs over are still runny and the grease pool in the bottom of the dish is less than 1mm thick. Still and all, now, I'm thinking about it more as we try various places and gauge them against one another. The girls have been no help so far: "Angie's has the best colouring books!" and "Harvest has nice bathroom soap!" don't fit into my matrix of needs.
Here's my thinking so far:
- cheerful or surly service, doesn't matter. Just be accurate and keep the coffee cups filled.
- FAST is not a big deal as long as it all comes together and is still HOT.
- breakfast links aren't worth the trouble unless they are from local farmer's sausage, which thankfully around here is about 50% of the time. One place makes it a major selling feature.
- bacon should look and taste like bacon, not a thin photocopy of bacon.
- stay the hell away from the pancakes, they're definitely being reheated from bulk mix and won't be 5% as good as what we make at home on Sundays. I've had to debate this point quite firmly with Sequel.
- over easy is the way to go, since it allows good leverage of yolk onto bread and homefries. Except I really should get poached instead...I always forget until it's too late.
- home fries need to be made from real spuds in house. We had a really good breakky this weekend, except the HF were from a bag. Cast a pall on the whole deal. I would almost rather go to the place that I know has crappy bacon and cold toast because the home fries are from real spuds, in a pile on the grill (and they do runny yolks)
- I am a sucker for the Skillet o' Death breakfast technology in all its forms...but I draw the line at sausage gravy. Thankfully SG is not a Canadian phenom.
My fave breakfast joint of all time is Skyway Jack's in Mississauga. Run by a Greek clan of indeterminate size but unstoppable aural volume. They sell all their eggs in threes -- my theory is that they get med eggs wholesale for ubercheap. The menu is a chaos of small signs all over the counters and walls, you order at the window and they bring you the dish, and there's a 50% chance you'll have to share your booth with a couple of cops, ambulance drivers, or Hydro workers. When I was doing heavy fieldwork in Toronto I would go there at 6:00 am, have a Death By Pork Platter and about 6 cups of coffee, and not eat again until I got back to the hotel at 7 or 8pm. Housemade homefries and runny yolks, natch.
Tell me about your breakfast joint!
Here's my thinking so far:
- cheerful or surly service, doesn't matter. Just be accurate and keep the coffee cups filled.
- FAST is not a big deal as long as it all comes together and is still HOT.
- breakfast links aren't worth the trouble unless they are from local farmer's sausage, which thankfully around here is about 50% of the time. One place makes it a major selling feature.
- bacon should look and taste like bacon, not a thin photocopy of bacon.
- stay the hell away from the pancakes, they're definitely being reheated from bulk mix and won't be 5% as good as what we make at home on Sundays. I've had to debate this point quite firmly with Sequel.
- over easy is the way to go, since it allows good leverage of yolk onto bread and homefries. Except I really should get poached instead...I always forget until it's too late.
- home fries need to be made from real spuds in house. We had a really good breakky this weekend, except the HF were from a bag. Cast a pall on the whole deal. I would almost rather go to the place that I know has crappy bacon and cold toast because the home fries are from real spuds, in a pile on the grill (and they do runny yolks)
- I am a sucker for the Skillet o' Death breakfast technology in all its forms...but I draw the line at sausage gravy. Thankfully SG is not a Canadian phenom.
My fave breakfast joint of all time is Skyway Jack's in Mississauga. Run by a Greek clan of indeterminate size but unstoppable aural volume. They sell all their eggs in threes -- my theory is that they get med eggs wholesale for ubercheap. The menu is a chaos of small signs all over the counters and walls, you order at the window and they bring you the dish, and there's a 50% chance you'll have to share your booth with a couple of cops, ambulance drivers, or Hydro workers. When I was doing heavy fieldwork in Toronto I would go there at 6:00 am, have a Death By Pork Platter and about 6 cups of coffee, and not eat again until I got back to the hotel at 7 or 8pm. Housemade homefries and runny yolks, natch.
Tell me about your breakfast joint!
