Zazie

"a french bistro in the heart of Cole Valley"




http://www.zaziesf.com/zaziesf/home.html
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKHYkoBxNgA

(For a change, I thought I'd include a little breakfast music to enjoy while reading this today: Tanita Tikaram* ~ "Valentine Heart"… thanks, Karen! You may need to open up another tab on your Intro-Net browser as I still haven't quite figured out how to imbed a video into my 'blog yet. Sorry, Jim.)
 

Zazie is located over in ("the heart of…" as stated in their on-line menu) Cole Valley. It is over near the intersection of Cahlancole**. There are only two sidewalk tables (which are great if you happen to come there with some canine friends, like I saw this morning), but they have lots of indoor seating, and, better yet, several backyard-garden patio tables. This is a very cool open-air patio space, and today was the perfect morning for it ~ a bit sunny, but still comfortable enough to enjoy with a sweatshirt on.

















They have a very impressive selection of pancakes and French toast (Pain Perdu ~ which they did not even state; what kinda Frenchy beestrow is that?) from which to choose (see their menu for particularly the French Toast Tahiti and the Gingerbread Pancakes ~ both of which I will have to go back and try another time). They also have a nice variety of poached egg dishes ("Served on an English muffin with our fabulous light lemon hollandaise, with home fries or salad"), which is what I went with today. When it comes to a choice of home fries or a side salad, I will always choose the potatoes. Like I want a salad for breakfast, what am I, an herbivorous rabbit or something?

I had the Valence: with roasted eggplant and spicy tomato-chevre sauce (no hollandaise). The tomato-ey sauce was very good; however, the roasted eggplant slices were still cold. I was not sure if this was by design or not, and thought the dish would be much better with warm/hot slices of eggplant. I asked the maitre d' while I was leaving and he told me that the eggplant should have been heated, much as I thought. I will chalk it up to their being very busy (I got there just as they were opening and there was a line out the door waiting to be seated) and someone in the kitchen not paying too much attention.

To drink I had the Zazie Spritzer: sparking blend of cranberry juice, fresh squeezed orange juice, and San Pelligrino; and a strong cuppa coffee ~ I should have asked what brand/blend they use, as it was very good.




I thought it funny that the two women sitting next to me also took pictures of their plates of breakfast; so I didn’t feel so strange when it came my turn to do the same.

They only have Tabasco® sauce (just the red/standard issue) upon request to use, so I used some chipotle-habañero salsa (with which I had come prepared) on my potatoes; the eggs were already fine with their own sauce.

In the patio area there was a sign stating "Défense de Fumer", which always beats "Offense de l'Air Frais" in my opinion.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Valence ~ 6.7 (this probably would have been a 7.1 with hot eggplant slices); Zazie Spritzer ~ 6.5


*(I had never heard of Tanita Tikaram before this morning. A friend on defacedbook had a few EweToob links of her music and I liked what I heard and have been listening to most of her songs while preparing this post this morning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanita
 
I don't know why she has never made it big in the States, as she has a great smoky, chanteuse voice and is very pretty. If you enjoy Joan Armatrading or Norah Jones, you will probably like Tanita, too.)

**(Stupid cunning-linguist story of the day:
 
Zazie is actually on Cole Street near the intersection of Carl Street. When I first moved to San Francisco I used to know a guy named Pete from Boston that lived around there. One night after going out drinking with Pete ~ who had a lot to drink and had a pretty heavy Bostonian accent to begin with ~ and having to drive him home, we asked him where he lived and he slurred what sounded like "Cahlancole". We asked him to repeat it several times, but it always came out sounding like "Cahlancole". We finally figured out that he was saying that he lived over on "Carl and Cole".

Now can someone explain to me what a "bubblah" is in Bostonian and why it is a very handy thing on a hot summer day?)