Citizen’s Band (and Pinkie’s Bakery)

"Life is like an onion; you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep." ~ Carl Sandberg

http://citizensbandsf.com/

http://pinkiesbakerysf.com/

Place: Citizen's Band (and Pinkie's Bakery)

Location: 1198 Folsom Street (at 8th Street)

Hours: "Brunch" Saturday and Sunday 10am to 2pm (and sat-sun: 9am-3pm)

Meal: Hash & Eggs ~ potatoes, yam, butternut squash, onions, Brussels sprouts, and molasses[1] honey glaze; Pumpkin doughnut; and a cuppa Mr. Espresso® coffee 

(The first EweToob video's connection should be apparent from today's breakfastary destination; that is Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham on harmony vocals ~ they both had a bit of a career on their own, too. The second song ~ a great cover of a Tom Waits song, by the way ~ is just for the bleary of hearing.)

I had breakfast at another new (for me) place: Citizen's Band. They share a building with Pinkie's Bakery. I am not quite sure what the relationship is between the two joints, but it all works for me. There is only seating for a total of 30 people ~ with 18 table seats and an additional 12 diner-counter seats (which were these very cool black wrought-iron swivel stools). They state that there is seating for 40 total on their web-site (but who can sit on a web-site); however, they may be including some seating available next door at Pinkie's Bakery.

Citizen's Band only offers eight to nine different items on their "Brunch" menu, but there were a couple of nice choices even for stupid vegetarians. The Cornflake-encrusted French Toast sounded very interesting and may deserve a return trip one of these days, but potato-based dishes always win out with me.

You can get the two eggs on top of the hash any way you want them. I went with eggs over-medium (actually, they were a little "overly medium-well", but that beats not being cooked enough). I knew I was going to like this a lot with not only potatoes, yams, and butternut squash in it, but especially with Brussels sprouts in it, too. I don't care what a lot of people think; I happen to love Brussels sprouts (and these were fresh, not frozen). Brussels sprouts beat the vile weed any day. The only thing that might have made this dish even better would have been the inclusion of beets. This is easily the Best (as in "Most Interesting") New Breakfast (or "Brunch" even) Find of 2013 for me.

Mr. Espresso® is a local (Oakland-based) roastery and manufacturer of espresso machines. I have had it many times before. This was a good cuppa coffee (and I probably had 2-3 refills while there). I especially liked that it is served in all different kinds of mugs (shades of Eddie's Cafe).

(Sorry, for the quality of this photo. Like most of my photos, the entire picture encompasses a bit of bokeh[2] on purpose; well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I am blaming the over-lighting of the two restaurant fronts above on Mr. Sun, though.)

This was just a plain cake doughnut, but it was glazed with a great tasting pumpkin (and spices) flavoured frosting. Pinkie's Bakery offers about eight different doughnuts from which to choose daily. They are also a wholesale bakery and sell different types of bread along with many other fresh-baked specialties.

Citizen's Band has a pretty decent selection of condimentary supplementation; they offer the standard San Francisco Triumvirate ~ Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (the original red), Tapatío®, and Cholula® Hot Sauce ~ as well as Crystal® Louisiana's Pure Hot Sauce, and Huy Fong Foods Inc.® Sriracha. I still used some of my own Serious Food… Silly Prices Chunky Habanero (Thanks, Cindy & Greg!) on half of the pile and some Nando's® Extra Hot Peri-Peri Sauce (Thanks, Kerry!) on the other half of the pile; plus, just 4-6 drops of Big Papi En Fuego Hot Sauce Off The Wall Triple Hot (Thanks also, Kerry!) all over the mess. I didn't figure the doughnut needed any extra spicing up, though.

Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Hash & Eggs ~ 7.2; Pumpkin doughnut ~ 7.0

1. Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-culinaristic pointer of the day, número um:

"Molasses" (earlier "molassos") comes from Portuguese "melaços" (the plural of "melaço"), which comes from Late Latin "mellācium" ("half-boiled new wine"), for "mellāceum", neuter of "mallāceus" ("honeylike"), equivalent to "mell-", stem of "mel" ("honey") + "-āceus" ("-aceous").

2. Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-photographical pointer of the day, number ni:

The term "Bokeh"* comes from the Japanese word "ぼけ", which means "blur" or "haze", Jimi. The term can also be used in the sense of a mental haze or senility. It is pronounced "boKEH", which is not to be confused with the similar sounding "ボケ", pronounced "BOkeh", which is Japanese for "Japanese quince". It is also not to be confused with the stupid vegetarian substitute Boca Burgers. They just taste a bit out of focus too those that eat the dead, decaying ground animal flesh.

*(See, Cassy, I figured I could work it into this stupid 'blog sooner or later.)