Blue Front Cafe

"You had your breakfast in bed before,
But you won't have it there anymore."~ Irving Berlin, "This Is the Army, Mr. Jones"

http://www.bluefrontcafe.com/

(I was going to link a few Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes songs here, but they were all kind of downers; even most of Clarence Carter's songs are more upbeat. Consider the second EweToob video link just a musical protanopia.)


After two weekends in a row where I broke my 2013 Breakfastary Resolution Restrictions, I went to a place that opens plenty early enough (at 7:30am every day of the week) for breakfast this morning. I ate at Blue Front Cafe in the Haight. For some reason, the actual front of the building is not blue (nor even pink, Amanda). This is a very laptop friendly place with several electrical outlets along one wall into which one can plug their computeristic devices; and they also offer free Wi-Fi (well, it is only free if you have a laptop or smart phone, otherwise you can't use it). This restaurant has been open since 1961 at this location (on Haight Street, between Masonic and Ashbury), but it has been family-owned by three Arab brothers (Greek Orthodox from the Old City of Jerusalem) since 1992.

Hence the reason why the menu is full of good Middle Eastern fare: falafels, gyros[1], lamb or chicken shawerma, lamb or beef kebabs, hummus, babaganoush, tabouli, etc. (Note: "et cetera" is not a Middle Eastern dish itself, but I think it is of Mediterranean origin from old Latinia). They offer lots of nice things for breakfast, too: many of the basic breakfast stuff (eggs & bacon), Belgian waffles, Banana French toast, omelettes, scrambles, one frittata, and Breakfast Wraps (6 different ones). You order and pay first at the counter (like a lot of coffeehouses and crêpes joints in the city; I think they do this to keep people like me from skipping out on the bill); then they call out your number (mine was #7 this morning… Ugh! That was damn Mickey Mantle's number! I suppose I could look at it that it was Phil Esposito's number, too) when it is ready to be picked up. I had the Fit Wrap ~ Egg whites with melted Cheddar cheese, spinach, tomatoes, onions, peppers, and mushrooms; all Breakfast Wraps are served with a choice of house potatoes and homemade hot sauce or fresh fruit salad. I also had a large glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice.

I had my Fit Wrap made with regular (whole) scrambled eggs instead of just egg whites. I figure that if I am going to be killing little baby chicks to get at their egg whites, I might as well eat all of them. These wraps are made with lavash[2] bread; consider these Middle Eastern burritos. The wrap was very good and made with lots of fresh sautéed spinach. I think this might have been a little more Middle Easterny if it had Feta cheese instead of the Cheddar cheese, though. As usual, I opted for the potatoes as my side choice, which were just homefries. I am glad I did so, as these were excellent homefries; very crispy and burnt in places, just like I likes 'em.

Blue Front Cafe offers for condimentary supplementation both Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (the standard red) and Tapatío®. I used some of my own Serious Food… Silly Prices Mango Hot Sauce (Thanks, Cindy & Greg!) on the potatoes, but their homemade hot sauce was really very good and I used that liberally on both the wrap and also with the potatoes. I think that the hot sauce was yoghurt-based and possible mixed with a harissa sauce; it had a very good flavour and a nice bit of heat to it (however, it was a little on the salty side for my tastes).


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Fit Wrap ~ 6.7


1. Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-culinaristic pointer της ημέρας, το νούμερο έναtis:

"Gyros" ("γύρος" in Greek) means "turn", denoting the spit on which the meat is turned. Other English words with the same word root would be "gyrate" and "gyroscope".

It should be pointed out that this word in Greek is pronounced more closely as "YEEros", not "DJEEros" or "GIRos". When my Greek landlady was trying to teach me how to pronounce the Greek letter "Γάμμα" correctly, she said it is pronounced similar to the "W" in "water". I don't get that, but it is more closely a "Y" sound than a hard or soft "G". I explain it to people more as a swallowed "G".

2. Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-culinaristic pointer այն օրը, քան երկու:

According to the Armenian-Soviet Encyclopedia,  the word "Lavash" is an Armenian word consisting of two parts. The first part "lav" in Armenian means "good"; the second part "ash" means "food, meal".

However, there is no truth to the matter that it means "Jillian Michaels' six-pack".