Zazie

Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs.[1]

http://zaziesf.com/


Place: Zazie
Location: 941 Cole Street (between Carl Street and Parnassus Avenue)
Hours: "Brunch" is served on Saturday and Sunday from 9:00am to 3:00pm (however, it is good to note that they call basically the same meal "Breakfast" Monday through Friday and are open an hour earlier at 8:00am)
Meal: Eggs en la Marais[2] ~ savory challah bread pudding w/wild mushrooms, arugula[3], thyme, goat cheese, and two over easy eggs baked in a cast iron skillet, w/salad or homefries; and a cuppa LaCoppa[4] Coffee Organic French Roast (o Caffè ou Café ~ now would be an okay time to use either of these words con un accento grave, ou avec accent aigu aussi) 

(This wasn't going to be my first choice for a EweToob-ular link. I first had the idea to use Louis Jordan's "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" and then I had a better idea to use Lightin' Hopkins' "Meet Me At The Chicken Shack", but I couldn't locate that particular song/video. As is usually the case with EweToob, Norah Jones' name popped up on a list of other songs along the right column, so I just decided to use one of her songs instead.)


Je suis retourné à Zazie (see last 'blog-entry from October 14th, 2012) pour mon petit déjeuner. Mais qui est "Zazie"? One of these days I really should ask them if one of the owners is actually named "Zazie" or if they just named the restaurant after the main character in a 1960's Louis Malle movie (from an earlier French novel of the same name). It was a little too cold and damp still this morning to sit outside either in one of the two sidewalk tables or out back in their large backyard patio area (which is usually my preferred spot). I happened to notice that Zazie sells bags of both their Gingerbread and Buttermilk pancake batter mixes if anyone wants to make them at home (I doubt they would allow you to purchase the bags and let you make them in their own professional kitchen, though).

My meal this morning was off their "Brunch" specials menu. Seeing as they are "a French bistro in the heart of Cole Valley" (it is stated as such right on their menu and web-site), je ne sait pas why this dish wasn't called "Oeufs en Le Marais". Take heart, no Glen Bacon Scale Rating points are ever taken off due to confusing linguistics, though. Also off the seasonal "Brunch" specials menu, Miracle Pancakes (1, 2, or 3 sugar pie pumpkin spice pancakes w/ fresh whipped cream) sounded very good. A few other good ideas off the standard "Brunch" menu that are options for another return trip: Fontainbleau[5] (scrambled eggs with portobellos, shiitake, porcinis, spinach, and Fontina), or Italie (scrambled eggs with tomatoes provencales, cream cheese, and basil ~ they probably should have had this as "tomates provençales", but, again, no GBS points are deducted for not keeping with a Frenchy theme).

This was another very good recent find (even if it is only a seasonal special). I really had no idea what to expect from the description on the menu, but this ended up being very interesting and tasty. It was basically two eggs over easy (or "over easy eggs" ~ damnés Français!) placed on top of a bread pudding made in a small round cast iron skillet. It all worked nicely for me; sort of a baked Eggs Benedict dish (simplement sans sauce hollandaise stupide). There were three cloves of roasted garlic (trois gousses d’ail rôti) in with the homefries this morning ~ always a good thing.

The LaCoppa Coffee Organic French Roast was very good, too. They are a local coffee roaster in Marin and used to have a few coffee shops (o caffès ou cafés). From what I can discern, they have sold off all of their coffee shops now, but are keeping the roastery for wholesale coffee. This is a shame as I had been to their flagship coffee shop in downtown Mill Valley a few times and really liked the place. 

http://www.lacoppacoffee.com/

Upon request, Zazie has for condimentary supplements Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (the standard red only). I used some of my own Dave's Gourmet® Ginger Peach Hot Sauce (Thanks, Jim!) on top of the eggs and some Florida Gold Salsa Picanté[6] Premium Habanero Hot Sauce (Thanks, Kerry!) on the homefries. The Ginger Peach Hot Sauce went very nicely with the bread pudding as it had its own elements of savoury and sweet.

The Wild Parrots of San Francisco Interlude of the Day
Before breakfast I heard probably 6-10 of the noisy little buggers flying around the neighborhood, but didn't see any of them until afterward while walking around Richard Gamble Memorial Park (at the West Portal of the N-Judah MUNI line). I then saw a semi-large pandemonium of parrots (at least 20-30) flying southward (probably towards Twin Peaks). I wonder if they roost in this small park. There are several tall trees that they could call home. 


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Eggs (ou Oeufs) en le Marais ~ 7.1; LaCoppa Coffee (o Caffè ou Café) ~ 6.8


1. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, номер один:

This old saying in Russian would roughly be: "Яйца курицу не учат.", which literally means: "The eggs do not teach the chicken." 

I only know this as I came across it many years ago in my copy of Smirnitsky (the standard Russian-English dictionary that was used throughout the Military at the time) while I was still taking Basic Russian at the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey, and not really being familiar with the English saying, it stuck with me. 

This knowledge came in very handy a few years later when I completely amazed one of my co-workers, John Kurovsky ("long 'o', no 'v'…"), during a Mids Скрэббл® game session at the 6916th. (See, I was his supervisor and trainer at the time and we were supposed to be doing actual work and studying, but there was usually nothing much to do for us. So I brought in my Russian version of Scrabble® to play with to pass the time on boring Mids shifts. Yeah, it pissed off the Hebrew and Arab linguists some, but I just claimed we were utilizing our vocabulary. I am not saying they actually bought any of that хуй, but they usually left us alone after that.) Anyway, during one heated game, John had challenged my spelling on "egg" or "eggs" (silly boy) and looked it up in our Russian-English dictionary at work. He saw the saying "Яйца курицу не учат." in the entry and read it out loud, and I told him that just meant colloquially: "Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs." He was absolutely flabbergasted and truly couldn't believe that I even knew that. Of course, he never challenged any of my words or spelling/grammar thereafter.

2. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, numéro deux:

"Le Marais" means "the swamp" or "the marsh" in French. Le Marais is also a historic district in Paris. 

Now was this dish meant to mean "Eggs (I still can't believe they didn't use "Oeufs") in the swamp" or "Eggs in the mode of a historic district of Paris"?

3. Herr Gates and his stupid Spell-checker Nazis at Microsoft do not recognize this as a valid word. Really, Billy-boy?! You guys need to get out of die verdammten Bierhallen and go out to eat more often.

4. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, numero tre:

"La Coppa" means "the cup" in Italian. What that has anything to do with coffee (o caffè ou café), I will never know.

5. Not really a stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer, but more of just a stupid, useless geographical/historical pointer:

This should be "Fontainebleau" not "Fontainbleau". Again, no GBS points are ever taken off for any mispelded werds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fontainebleau

6. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, número cuatro:

I am pretty sure that "Picante" should be sin acento agudo. "Picante", meaning "hot, spicy" in Spanish, is the past participle of "picar", meaning "to prick, bite". (see also: "pique" and "piquant", Jean-Luc)