Grub

http://www.grubsf.com/


I met up with a few friends and old co-workers (Marta, Lori, and Juan) and had breakfast this morning at Grub on Valencia Street, between 18th and 19th Streets. Marta's sister-in-law (and her husband) are part owners of Grub. Sheesh, you woulda thunk we would have gotten at least a few freebies with the meal! (Marta did not tell them we were coming and only after we had eaten and paid did Marta go up and introduce herself to the hostess and our waitress. I think Marta owes us all at least free coffees.) Grub is located right in the heart of the new Mission District eatery row. It seems like a new and shiny restaurant opens every other weekend around there (we walked around after eating to work off the meal and noticed several new and interesting restaurants). Grub is still pretty "new"-ish itself and has been open only for about two years now. This was my first visit there for breakfast (well, they call it "Brunch") or dinner.

Grub has a pretty decent "Brunch" menu from which to choose. I was debating on getting either one of their frittatas (topped with grana padana[1] Parmesan cheese, and you get to pick and choose your own ingredients to add in; I was thinking about sun dried tomatoes, arugula, and shaved fennel) or the Maple Caramelized French Toast. Marta happened to point out their pancake selection at the bottom of the menu, which I had skimmed over quickly without really even looking at. I wouldn't usually get pancakes when there is a choice of egg dishes or French toast. However, I just had Pain Perdu yesterday, and I liked the look of one of the pancake dishes. So I opted for the Sweet and Savory pancake duo ~ fluffy buttermilk pancakes, one savory & topped with a sunnyside egg & greens, the other sweet with seasonal compote and apricot butter. I also ordered a side of Shoestring pomme frites with truffle salt, just because it sounded good and I wasn't getting enough carbohydrates with the rest of my meal.

Luckily everyone at the table ordered different dishes so we could sample a nice cross-section of what they have. Marta had the Breakfast Burger ~ Brandon's beef ground patty, aged white Cheddar, fried egg, sliced tomato and crispy bacon, served on a pain de mie[2] bun with pomme frites or grub potatoes (she went with the grub potatoes). Lori ordered the Peanut Butter French Toast & Fried Chicken ~ rice crispy breaded chicken breast, sunny side up egg, cole slaw (Lori substituted some grub potatoes for the coleslaw; because coleslaw would have been too strange to go with peanut butter, French toast, and fried chicken, of course). Luckily, Juan is a French toast fan, too, and he got what I was planning on getting, the Maple Caramelized French Toast ~ vanilla[3] batter sour batard bread, star anise infused maple syrup, caramelized bananas or apples, applewood smoked bacon (Juan chose the bananas, I probably would have gone with the apples).

I was happy to see that I was not the only idiot at the table taking photos of the meal. Both Lori and Marta are iPhone photogs and I expect some pictures will make their way to defacedbook later today, too.

I really liked my pancake combo. The seasonal (fresh) compote on the sweet pancake was blueberry, and the apricot butter was very good, too. It also comes with heated maple syrup to use. The savoury pancake was interesting with the egg right on top. The greens were to the side of the savoury pancake and I just ended up eating them with some of the savoury pancake or just by themselves. The pomme frites were very good, too; however, I really couldn't tell what the truffle salt tasted like, but they were served with a decent garlic aioli to dip them in.

Marta liked her burger a lot (she had never had a burger with an egg on top before) after she figured the only way to eat it successfully, due to its girth, was to use a knife and fork; but she didn't like the grub potatoes (which are just home fries) as much, mainly because they were made with lots of red, yellow, and green bell peppers. Juan said the French toast was okay (but not as good as the Pain Perdu at Baker Street Bistro; I had pointed out that particular establishment to Juan and Lori several months ago and he agrees with me that it is the BEST FRENCH TOAST in San Francisco), but he didn't like something that was either in the batter or the bread itself; I wonder if it might have just been the star anise (which we had forgotten was an ingredient in the infused maple syrup). Lori said that she really couldn't tell that there was any peanut butter in her dish and mentioned that the chicken seemed a bit under-seasoned. All in all, everyone seemed to like their meals (most of the plates were cleaned and empty), and I would like to go back and try the Maple Caramelized French Toast on my own.

For condimentary supplements Grub offers both Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (the standard red) and Cholula® Hot Sauce. I brought a few of my own hot sauces to use just in case, but there really wasn't much that any of us had ordered that needed extra heat. Just because I had brought it and it's one of my favourite hot sauces, I used a little Palo Alto Fire Fighters Pepper Sauce (the regular one; Thanks, Amys and Brian!) on top of the egg on the savoury pancake.

And just like when eating at Tangerine and Pomelo, I noticed that Grub doesn't really have anything on their menu which highlights their eponymous ingredient in it. Thankfully.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating:  Sweet and Savory pancake duo ~ 6.7; Shoestring pomme frites with truffle salt ~ 6.5

(I really didn't poll the rest of the table for their Glen Bacon Scale ratings, but they are always free to either let me know their input, or to start their own stupid breakfastary 'blogs.)


[1] Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-culinaristic pointer del giorno, numero uno:

"Grana padana" directly translated simply means "grain valley" in Italiano. There is an Italian cheese with the specific denomination of Grana Padano which is similar to Parmigiano Reggiano. I think that the menu may be incorrect and that they meant that they use one or the other of the two cheeses.

[2] Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo culinaristic pointer du jour, numéro deux:

"Pain de mie" is a type of bread in French. "Pain" means "bread" and "de mie" means "cougar that once was married to Bruce Willis".

Actually, you can read more about pain de mie here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_de_mie

[3] Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-culinaristic pointer of the day, numero trium:

"Vanilla" comes from the Spanish word "vainilla", meaning "little pod"; this is the equivalent of "vain(a)" ("a sheath", from Latin "vagina", meaning "sheath"), plus "-illa" a diminutive suffix.

So, if you really are a vanilla fanatic, you can truly can say you would make love to it if you could.