That can do justice to the Hen?
Like Royalty, she goes her way,
Laying foundations every day,
Though not for Public Buildings, yet
For Custard, Cake, and Omelette."
~ Oliver Herford, "The Hen"
(No official web-site)
1309 9th Avenue (between Irving and Judah Streets)
phonicular contact: (415) 564-4723
(What good is a Keely Smith song without another from King Louie? There really is no correlation between these songs and today's breakfast; it just happens to be a great, sunny, almost-Spring day in San Francisco.)
I had breakfast this morning at Howard's Cafe. This is a hustling, bustling little nebby joint (if your neighborhood happens to be the Inner Sunset, just a block and a half from Golden Gate Park). They open at 8:00am on the weekends, 7:00am the other days of the week (especially Monday through Friday). I sat at their u-shaped diner counter (which has seating for ten) in the back. There are about eight to ten other tables that seat two to six people, and the place was completely full and jumpin' the whole time I was there. For a change I remembered to ask my server if there was an actual "Howard" that was associated with the place, and she informed me that Howard was the previous owner that had passed away years ago, but the current owner (who was the cook when Howard owned it and is still the cook today) maintained the old name. I didn't ask if his last name happened to be "Fine", though.
Howard's Cafe has lots of the standard breakfastary choices on their menu; and these are definitely "breakfast", not "Brunch" choices as there are no pretenses served here (not even as a snooty side dish at a nominal fee). As it sounded the most interesting, I settled on the Pizza Omelette ~ salami (which I skipped, Mr. Way), Swiss cheese, mushroom (sorry, I didn't pass on these, Skip), onion, and spaghetti[1] sauce; with potatoes and choice of toast (I chose English muffins again this morning). I also had a cuppa their house coffee.
I was kind of picturing the omelette to have the Pizza sauce on top of it, but it was actually inside with all of the other ingredients. This was a fine enough omelette, but I thought the Swiss cheese was a rather odd choice of cheeses. I think this would have been much better with either Mozzarella or Parmesan, or a combination of both; when I think of "Pizza" (and I do think of Pizza pretty much all the time), Swiss cheese is not usually an ingredient I would choose. And for you dead, decaying porky product eaters, which do you think is a more classic Pizza topping: pepperoni or salami? Additionally, I think that using green bell peppers instead of the mushrooms may have been a little more universally accepted. My favourite part of the meal ended up being the potatoes; they were expertly prepared and thinly sliced ~ for maximum crispiocity ~ and were like a cross between hashbrowns and homefries. The coffee was nothing special, but, then again, I really wasn't expecting it to be; it was just your typical diner coffee: black, hot, and bottomless (and that is not another "wardrobe malfunction" of Miss Jackson).
Howard's Cafe has for condimentary supplementation Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (both the standard red and the green Jalapeño) and Tapatío®. As usual, I came prepared with a few of my own and used the last of my HP™ Guinness® (Thanks one last time for this one, Cindy & Greg! It is really not necessary to send me another bottle of this fine product: 1. I have plenty of other bottles still to use, and 2. I have seen it being sold it at a local Irish bakery/import shop if I ever need to replenish it myself.) on the potatoes and a little Cholula® (Thanks, Brian!) on top of the omelette.
After breakfast, I went for a little stroll (well, two hours or so) through San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum to walk off the breakfast. This is a great place in the middle of Golden Gate Park of which more people really should take advantage (and it is free to any San Francisco resident). (Okay, Cindy, I see what you mean. That does sound a bit awkward like that, but "… that more people should take advantage of..." just bugs me. You can start your own damn 'blog-thingy if there are people that you want to force your own incorrect grammar ideas upon.) Along the way, I saw an adolescent Peregrine falcon (or it could have been a Millennium Falcon for all I know; my Audubon-y skills are atrocious) having his breakfast (or it may have been "Brunch") underneath a tree; I had an olfactory overload at the Garden of Fragrance; and I sat and listened to a solo Chinese violinist playing in the Exhibition Garden (What is the sound of "Serenity", Captain Reynolds?).
http://www.sfbotanicalgarden.org/
Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Pizza Omelette ~ 5.8; San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum ~ 8.2
1. Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-culinaristic pointer del giorno:
"Spaghetti" is the plural form of the Italian word "spaghetto", which is a diminutive of "spago", meaning "thin string" or "twine".
Hmmm? Seeing as Wolfgang Puck is Austrian, shouldn't he have named his first restaurant "Schnur" instead?
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