Ella's

"The one with the southwestern benedict."

http://www.ellassanfrancisco.com/

(No reason for this EweToob video of the Beatles. It's just overcast here this morning and this is wishful thinking.)


I went back to Ella's for my breakfastary repast this morning (see last 'blog-entry from April 14th, 2012). They are located on the corner of Presidio Avenue and California Street in Laurel Heights. This is one of my favourite "Brunch" places (their term, not mine; they open up at 8:30am on the weekends, so it's really breakfast) and has been in my Breakfast Rotation for several years now.

They offer a different "Brunch" menu every weekend. It is not very extensive, but what they offer will usually incorporate the freshest ingredients from whatever is seasonally available. There were a couple of items that caught my eye: open faced omelette with smoked salmon, lemon dill cream cheese, grilled asparagus and toasted onion; or folded omelette with house made sausage, basil, sun dried tomato and ricotta ~ I could have always ordered both of those without the dead, decaying fish or animal flesh. This weekend's potato scramble was the exact same combination that I had during another visit. I decided on the southwestern benedict ~ cilantro lime biscuit, ancho chile niman ranch pulled pork, poached eggs, chipotle hollandaise, avocado; served with home fried potatoes. I also ordered a glass of ginger orange juice punch.

Of course, I had this sin la carne de cerdo muerto y en descomposición. This was made with a very good hollandaise sauce. It was not overly spicy, but very tasty. It did have a bit of heat, but nothing your gringa grandma would think was too hot to handle. The biscuit was exceptionally good ~ fresh baked in their kitchen daily~ and was the real key to the success of this meal. I would like to have those as an alternative to ordinary biscuits normally. It all worked together very nicely.

As always, the ginger orange juice punch very good. This is one of the things that has kept me coming back year after year.

I skipped a cuppa coffee with breakfast and am now enjoying a cuppa my own Grumpy Mule Grumpy Yule blend while I type this up. (Thanks, Cindy and Greg! I say "Cindy and Greg"; whereas it is Cindy that did the actual buying and gift giving, but Greg is her coffee expert. Cindy doesn't actually drink coffee ~ tea is her forte[1]; so she has to rely on Greg for any coffee choices. Otherwise, it would be like me deciding which cut of beef would be best for you to have for dinner.) This is a very robust and tasty Christmas blend.

http://www.grumpymule.co.uk/
 
Ella's has as condimentary supplementation just Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (both the standard red and green jalapeño versions). Knowing this, I came prepared and used a little of both Cholula® (Thanks, me!) and Serious Food… Silly Prices Mango Hot Sauce (Thanks, Cindy!) on the potatoes. I had tasted the chipotle hollandaise before any unnecessary additions to it and deemed it more than sufficiently flavoured before I ruined it with any more hot sauce.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating:  southwestern benedict ~ 7.0; ginger orange juice punch ~ 6.8; Grumpy Yule ~ 6.8


[1] Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer del giorno:
 
"Forte" is not spelled avec l'accent aigu as it is an Italian word, not French (which I had always assumed by its pronunciation). "Forte" comes from the Italian word for "strong", which comes from the Latin word "fortis" also meaning "strong".