~ Mae West
http://lscaffe.com/
Place: L's Caffé[1]
Location: 2871 24th Street (between Bryant & Florida Streets)
Hours: open Monday-Friday 6:30am, Saturday-Sunday 8:00am (per their printed menus; however, according to their web-site, Monday-Friday 6am, Saturday-Sunday 7am ~ I am going with the hours on their printed menus because they were just setting up this morning when I arrived at 8:00am)
Meal: Banana-caramel French Toast ~ Texas style bread dipped in the L's banana and spice batter, topped with fresh bananas and caramel; side of homefried potatoes; and a Medium size cuppa The Organic Coffee co.® French Roast
(You may ask yourself, "Why is Brian playing Tom Waits songs on Lonesome Losers Day?" Because Tom Waits music is the traditional music of Star Trek Day[2] ~ well, since I started the tradition last year. Of course, Star Trek Day fell on a Saturday last year, and Lonesome Losers Day is always on the first Sunday of May. Last year it just happened to coincide with Easter, Mothers Day, and Cinco de Mayo.
As they say in Outer Space and at all the geek conventions: "Mae West and the fourth day in the fifth month be with you as you live long and prosper!" ~ or something close enough to that. )
L's Caffé is a very friendly little local joint en el Corazón de la Misión. They were cranking out a bunch of 60's and 70's Rock-and/or-Roll and R&B hits the entire time I was there (Mr.'s Kipe and Cabucio take note: they even played Boots Randolph's "Yakety Sax" ~ aka "the Benny Hill chase theme"). They have been open since 2005, but this was my first time ever stopping in there; hopefully it won't be another nine years before I do so again. I even found a good parking spot right along 24th Street just a block away, too.
L's Caffé is mainly a coffeehouse with just bagels and sandwiches and such during the week, but they do offer some more traditional breakfastary items on their "Weekend Menue [sic]". For example: Garden Benedict (2 poached eggs, baby spinach, avocado, and Canadian bacon layered over a toasted English muffin, topped with a citrus Hollandaise sauce; served with potatoes and fresh fruit salad) or something called Mollletes (French baguette open face, spread with butter, refried beans, topped with Swiss cheese and served with freshly made pico de gallo salsa). I have never had Molletes before, but they sound pretty interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mollete
This was served as two thick-cut (Texas toast-style) slices of bread and it had lots of bananas and a very thick caramel sauce; a very, ooey-gooey (meaning "very ood-good" to me) mess it was. I wasn't a diabetic when I walked in there in the morning, but they did offer a complimentary insulin injection with the bill. The only thing that might have made this just a little bit better (and it's not as if I could ever have done so myself) would have been if they sautéed the bananas first, but for being "just a coffeehouse", it really was exceptional.
They really don't offer a side of potatoes on their Weekend Menue, but were nice enough to make one for me ('cause I asked). See ~ stuff like that is what will keep people coming back and give you a great word of mouth (Sound of ears? Sight of eyes? Smell of noses?). They weren't actually red potatoes, though, but no points are ever deducted from the GBS Rating due to Achromatopsia. The side of potatoes ended up being a good idea on my part to cut all the sweetness of the main dish.
The cuppa Coffee was another nice find this morning. The Organic Coffee co.® is a local Northern California roastery, but I don't think I have ever had any of their Coffee before. Apparently L's Caffé usually has three different roasts/blends of fresh-ground Coffee available and I was given a French Roast this morning. It was rich, strong, and chock full o' body.
http://www.organiccoffeecompany.com/
L's Caffé offers for condimentary supplements just Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (the standard red) and Cholula® Hot Sauce, which is not that bad a choice for a coffeehouse, but being situated in the Mission, I was expecting a few others still. It didn't really matter as I had come well-equipped with a few of my own, and went with a little Dave's Gourmet® Ginger Peach Hot Sauce (Thanks, Jim!) and a little Born to Hula presents Devon Allman's All Natural Hot Sauce Chipotle Blues (Thanks, Kerry!) on various areas of the potatoes.
Not that I needed any additional sugar coursing through my veins (besides, it is a well-known scientific fact, when you convert sugar into caramel, it reduces the levels of "bad sugar" ~ well, that is my story and I am sticking with it), but whenever I am in the area, I like to stop by Dynamo Donut + Coffee for a breakfast dessert treat (I really need to come up with a good portmanteau for that one of these days; I am open to suggestions ~ sure, I may not like them, but I am always open). I had a Strawberry Earl Grey doughnut this morning ~ made with an Earl Grey tea glaze and lots of bits of fresh strawberries in the batter. Some other interesting flavours of the day: Caramel de Sel; Chocolate Rose; Ginger Orange; Chocolate Star Anise; Lemon Pistachio; Passion Fruit Milk Chocolate; Spiced Chocolate; Meyer Lemon Huckleberry; and (for those of you idiots that are enamoured with dead, decaying piggy bits) Maple Glazed Bacon Apple.
http://www.dynamodonut.com/
And I was very happy that for the dual-Holidays not one stupid parklet was to be seen anywhere in the entire neighborhood (or barrio, even).
Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Banana-caramel French Toast ~ 6.5; The Organic Coffee co.® French Roast ~ 7.4; Dynamo Donut Strawberry Earl Grey ~ 7.3
1. Of course, they are free to call their restaurant whatever they like, but the correct spelling of "Coffee" (or "Coffeehouse") in Italiano is "Caffè" (o "Caffè")… con l'accento grave, non l'accento acuto. Again, no GBS Rating points are ever deducted for errori di ortografia, Miss Tori.
2. Sure, the melodic croonings of William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, or Brent Spiner would have been much more sensible choices, but I couldn't find any Tom Waits covers by them.
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