The Bistro Restaurant at Cliff House

"Read o'er this,
And after this, and then to breakfast with
What appetite you have."  
~ Wild Bill Shakespeare; Henry VIII, act 3, scene 2

http://www.cliffhouse.com/bistro/index.html

(Consider today's EweToob links as my public service reminder to change the time on your clocks. Stupid Time of Daylight-saving ~ that would be "STD", to those of us infected ~ ends on Sunday morning at 2:00am, whatever your local time zone is. You know what they say, "Spring backward and Fall on your face.", or something equally pithy like that. Just check with the time on your computers, as they are usually close enough, or ask Cosmo Kramer.)


I went back to The Bistro Restaurant at Cliff House (see last 'blog-entry from August 25th, 2012) for breakfast this morning. I figure that there are only so many weekends left in the year and I am going to try to work my way through my Breakfast Rotation again. Today was an exceptional day for this, too, as it was a great, bright sunny day out at Ocean Beach. The Bistro Restaurant at Cliff House is quite a mouthful ~ as are their World-Famous, Most Excellent Popovers(!) (See, Mr. Turner, I got a mention of their World-Famous, Most Excellent Popovers(!) into the first paragraph today.) ~ so I will refer to the joint as the Bistro for time consumption and word reduction (of course, I suppose if word reduction was really necessary, I could have just left out this entire last sentence and explanation).

The Bistro only has eleven items on their breakfastary menu (and it is listed as "Breakfast", not "Brunch", on their menus, I am happy to add) and I have tried most of the available vegetarian options many times over. So, I once again went with Farmer's Breakfast Scramble ~ Scrambled Eggs, Ham, Potatoes, Green Onions, and Cheddar Cheese. I also had a cuppa Peerless Coffee® (which I almost typed as "Peeless Coffee®", which actually would be a very interesting invention for long road trips).

Today's meal came with three World-Famous, Most Excellent Popovers(!) this morning. I ate them thusly: one with butter and orange marmalade, Ms. LaBelle; one with strawberry jam and butter on one half and the other half with just butter; and the last one with all butter.

I liked that this scramble incorporates potatoes right into the main dish. They substituted mushrooms (Sorry, Skip.) for the dead, decaying porky product (Sorry, Rudy.) for me. This was made with real Cheddar cheese, too. Well, I don't know if it was actually imported from Somerset, England, but it was authentic cheese, not that fake, tasteless, sliced Kraft® crap that they try to pass off as "cheese". (Not that the Cliff House has ever tried to fool me with the "processed" stuff, but there are many places that will actually slough off that slough on unsuspecting customers.) Today's side of fresh fruits was: strawberry (singular, but that is fine with me), grapes, cantaloupe, honeydew melon, and watermelon.

The Bistro has as condimentary supplementation just Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (the standard red). I had brought a few of my own and used a little Blair's Sudden Death Sauce® with Ginseng (Thanks a lot, Mom!) on the scramble; just two drops were more than sufficient, seriously. My server, Justin (see, Mrs. Huneycutt, I sometimes actually remember the names of the male servers; I just couldn't pick him out of a Police Line-up if needed), also stated that he is a salsa aficionado[1] and likes all manners of the fiery, chilitorial sauces. I told him he has to try Palo Alto Fire Fighters Pepper Sauce; he said he'd try and locate some and give me a report on it the next time I eat there.

I sat in one of the middle booths, not at one of the window-side tables, so I had to get up and choose a wall of Hollywoodland autographed photos to photo. I have documented probably 75-80% of what they have now already. Hopefully I chose a wall that I have not previously photographed.

(picture 1, top to bottom)

Huntz Hall; ???
(Henry Richard "Huntz" Hall; one of the "Dead End Kids" and "The Bowery Boys")
Antony Quinn; ???
(Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca; "Zorba the Greek", "Lawrence of Arabia", "Viva Zapata!", and many more; At first I thought this might be Cesar Romero ~ the Joker of the old Batman TeeVee show fame, but I couldn't locate any similar on-line photos of him without a mustache; I then thought it might be a very young Mike Mazurki ~ It's About Time on TeeVee and "Some Like It Hot" and other movies, but again I couldn't locate a similar photo on-line)

(picture 2, top to bottom)

Joel McCrea; ???
(Joel Albert McCrea; "Sullivan's Travels", "The Palm Beach Story", "The Virginian", etc.)
Frank ???; Jane Withers
(Jane Withers; "Josephine the Plumber" in Comet cleanser commercials, "Giant", and many other movies)

(picture 3, top to bottom)

Brian Boitano; Father Guido Sarducci
(Brian Anthony Boitano; 1988 Olympic Gold Medal Winner ~ Men's Figure Skating); (Don Novello; Saturday Night Live)
Smiley Burnette; Patricia Morison
(Lester Alvin Burnett; Petticoat Junction on TeeVee and sidekick to Gene Autry in many movies); (Eileen Patricia Augusta Fraser Morison; numerous stage, film, and TeeVee roles)
Paul Corni(???)
(Apparently he was on at least one episode of the original Star Trek series, but I can't really read his signature or name, and can't locate any on-line information on him; I did find it funny that he signed across William Shatner's chest, though)


Once again I am offering to treat anyone that can fill in the "???s" with the correct names to all the free World-Famous, Most Excellent Popovers(!) that you can eat (my treat even) or maybe even a breakfast at Dottie's True blue café.

Of course, the Bistro could serve me an uncooked egg still in its shell, with a slice of Kraft® 'Merican Cheese, and some over-boiled broccoli and I would still go back for more… World-Famous, Most Excellent Popovers(!)!


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Farmer's Breakfast Scramble ~ 6.5; World-Famous, Most Excellent Popovers(!) ~ 8.2


1. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer del día:

"Aficionado" doesn't have anything to do with someone that is a piscatorial worker. It is Spanish for "amateur". It is the past participle ending in "-ado" of the verb "aficionar", meaning "to engender affection".