Delancey Street Restaurant

The Pros and Cons of a Decent Breakfast*



http://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/enterrestbrunchsun.php


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BisS5JxeUW0

(If you ask me, Michael Stipe should have let his guitar player stick to playing the guitar. That guy will never have a career as a singer.)


For breakfast this morning, I ate at Delancey Street** Restaurant over on the corner of Embarcadero and Brannan, near AT&T Park (home of your 2010 World Champion San Francisco Giants). Now this ain't yer typical Bowery dive neither, Mr. Terrence Aloysius Mahoney, as both the décor and their menu are pretty fancy; however, their prices do not reflect this at all ~ everything seems to be fairly priced stuff. And unlike last weekend's Single Loser's Day breakfast, they didn't harass me by asking if I had a "reservation" or ridicule me for being a "party of one". There is more than enough ample seating in this restaurant, anyway.

With every breakfast they serve fresh-made bagel chips (whole, thinly sliced round chips, not little bits and pieces either) and bread basket with butter. Simple, but nice.

They have many different items on their menu that I could easily have chosen, but I went with Greg's Omelette ~ mushrooms, cream cheese, chives, garlic, & herbs. (Now this is a really minor grammatical point, but I was very impressed that they actually used the additional comma after "garlic" and before the ampersand in the description. Many places would just omit it and figure most people would not notice it; I always do.) All omelettes are served with home fried potatoes and toast, I skipped the toast as I also ordered a side of Potato Latkes*** ~ with sour cream and applesauce. I rounded out the meal with a decent cuppa Mr. Espresso® coffee.




The reason I chose the Greg's Omelette is that is the name of my annual Christmas Holiday host in North Yorkshire, England. The real joke is that I am pretty sure Mr. Greg Omelette would never make an omelette with mushrooms (or fresh tomatoes) in it, but this was a decent combination with the cream cheese, chives, and herbs.

The home fried potatoes are made with lots of green and red peppers, and red onions. These were perfectly cooked and absolutely greaseless (well, "greasy" is not always such a bad thing) and I just assumed that they were baked/roasted in the oven. I mentioned this to one of the servers and he checked in the kitchen and told me that they were in fact deep-fried. They must do a great job of letting them drip before serving them.

I know what you're thinking (and you should be ashamed of yourselves!), "Home fried potatoes AND potato pancakes?". So I happen to like potatoes, plus I skipped the extra carbohydrates in the toast (well, I did have some bagel chips and bread before the meal came). The Latkes were very good; however, here is my only minor critique with the entire meal: these were served with plain ol' applesauce (like something straight out of a jar), and I feel these would have been soooo much better with a home-made/fresh, chunky style applesauce (or even a German-style Apfelmus).




For their condimentary supplements they only have Tabasco® (and just the standard red). I had brought a few of my own collection just in case and used some Palo Alto Fire Fighters Pepper Sauce on the omelette (Thanks again, Amy!) and some Sylvia's Restaurant™ Kickin' Hot ~ Hot Sauce (Thanks again, Sean!) on the home fried potatoes; but on the Latkes, I just stuck with the sour cream and applesauce.


Glen Bacon**** Scale Rating: Greg's Omelette ~ 6.7; Potato Latkes ~ 6.6


*(Their actual corporate slogan is "An Ethnic American Bistro" ~ which beats "A Snooty French Joint" any day ~ but I prefer mine. Somehow, I doubt they will ever want to "steal" it, though.)

**(Delancey Street Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides residential rehabilitation services and vocational training for substance abusers and convicted criminals. I am not sure where the "Delancey Street" name comes from, but it does not seem to have anything to do with the street of the same name in New York City's Bowery neighborhood. I think the group was started locally in San Francisco by that great humanitarian and philosopher, Thayer Buttfore.)

***(In case you were wondering, these were not invented by Andy Kaufman's character on Taxi. Latkes are a type of Jewish potato pancake similar to German Kartoffelpuffer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latkes )

****(At dinner this week, it was pointed out to me that my way of rating things ~ the highly scientific and not at all biased Glen "Bacon" Scale ~ is a bit ironic as I am a vegetarian, but still very appropriate with the whole breakfast subject. I really had never even thought about that. Thanks, Christopher!)