(No official web-site.)
1426 Polk Street (between California and Pine Streets)
phonicular contact: (415) 771-9598
(Now neither Jackie Wilson nor Van Morrison said to link these EweToob videos, but I couldn't figure out any good correlating "Village" songs ~ and "YMCA" and "In the Navy" were definitely out. The Van Morrison video is actually kind of cute if you watch it, too.)
I had breakfast at New Village Cafe this morning. This is a friendly little Asian family-owned "Mom and Pop" diner place located on that part of Polk Street in Nob Hill that is just becoming nicer (read: safer and less scary) after the Tenderloin, and just around the corner from the California Cable Car Line terminus. "Mom" takes your order and serves you while "Pop" does all the necessary cooking-stuff. They have eight (maroon Naugahyde[1]) booths that seat four and a few more tables for 2-4 people; plus, ten round stools at the diner-counter. The walls are covered with photos of customers from over the years (and by "covered" I don’t mean "adorned with a few photos here and there", I mean that the walls are absolutely plastered with thousands of photos and there is no spacing between them), they even have each persons name on the photos. However, I am not so sure where the "New" part of their name comes into play, unless that is an age comparison to the slightly older villages of Babylon and Beijing.
New Village Cafe is only open for breakfast and lunch; they open at 7:00am every day (except on Tuesdays when they don't). They offer a pretty decent selection of breakfastary fare: Scrambles, Three Egg Omelettes, Pancakes, French Toast, Waffles, and a few other items on their Specials board. I ordered Village Garden Omelette ~ sautéed spinach, onions, mushrooms, tomato, & Jack cheese and topped with salsa; served with homefries and choice of toast. I also had a cuppa the house (or village) coffee.
This omelette was actually very similar to yesterday morning's Breakfast Wrap with many of the same ingredients. I went with sourdough for my choice of toast. The omelette was made with fresh sautéed spinach and grilled onions, both really make a lot of difference in flavour (as opposed to using frozen spinach and just plain ol' raw onions, that is). The homefries were very good and had a very tasty and interesting spice mix on them, which reminded me a bit of an Asian flavour to them and I thought I might have even caught a bit of cinnamon in there. Well, I asked "Mom" what the spices were and she told me that it was a special blend of their own and that it is not "Asian" but an "American" blend with black and white pepper, cayenne, some other spices, and, yes, even a little cinnamon in it, too. I knew it! (I didn't have the heart to tell "Mom" that is basically an "Asian" spice blend now-a-days.) The coffee was just your plain ol' diner-ish coffee (it probably could have used some of their special 'merican Spice Blend to flavour it up some).
New Village Cafe has as condimentary supplements just Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (the standard red) and Huy Fong Foods, Inc.® Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce ("Rooster Sauce" as it is known to many). I came prepared with some of my own collection ("Mom" even made sure to compliment me on them) and used a good amount of Cherry Republic® KaBOB's Kick'en Hot Sauce (Thanks again, Cindy & Greg!) on the homefries, and just four (4!) drops of Blair's After Death Sauce with Liquid Fire (Thanks a lot, Sean!) mixed in with the salsa that was on top of the omelette (this ended up tempering the stupid Devil sauce a bit and was actually pretty palatable for a change).
This is one of those little local places where the service was so friendly and the food was good enough (even though it may not have been "The Finest Meal You Ever Want To Eat", Mr. Wilson) that you have to recommend it highly to anyone that would be in the area looking for a bite to eat.
Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Village Garden Omelette ~ 6.0
1. Herr Gates and his Spell-Check Nazis do not seem to recognize this 'merican trademark word. Really, Billy-boy?! Perhaps if it were in Nazi gesprochen or G33k-133t they would understand it better.
Not really a stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer, but just more of a stupid, useless 'mericanism pointer of the day:
The word "Naugahyde" is an American brand of artificial leather. The name comes from the Borough of Naugatuck*, Connecticut, where it was first produced.
*(But here is a stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day:
The name of the Borough of Naugatuck comes from the Algonquian word "Naukotunk". It is said to have meant "one large tree", and designated the preferred, shaded fishing spot used by the area's first inhabitants.)
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