~ Eric Hoffer (or Frank Caliendo, I always get those two mixed up)
http://frenchsoulfood.com/
Place: Brenda's ~ French Soul Food
Location: 652 Polk Street (at Eddy Street)
Hours: open for breakfast Monday-Friday at 8:00am; open for "Brunch" Saturday & Sunday at 8:00am
Meal: Two Eggs Any Way You Like 'Em ~ with potato hash or grits, plus toast or cream biscuit; a side of Three Granny Smith Apple Beignets[1] ~ sweetened with cinnamon honey butter; and a cuppa Community Coffee® with chicory
http://www.communitycoffee.com/
(There is really no juxtaselection with today's EweToobular songs, I just recently discovered Lake Street Dive and like their sound. Plus, in the first video, I think it is so cool to have the sheer audacity of filming a video in an actual playground in front of a buncha loud, obnoxious, indifferent rug-rats, which is just sheer awesomeness.)
A sunny Sunday morning? Half the city is cut-off by the San Francisco Marathon, anyway? What better destination than to head over once again to Brenda's ~ French Soul Food (see last 'blog-entry from June 17th, 2012). Even though they call the early morning meal "Brunch" on their menus, any place that opens up earlier than 9:00am is breakfast with me, Jake.
There are several items on their standard printed menus that are good for both stupid vegetarians and those that partake of the dead, decaying animal (particularly of the porky persuasion) flesh, and there were a few other good ideas off the weekend Specials chalkboard (which I would like to point out is an actual chalkboard, not one of those new-fangled, fake "dry-erase boards"): Bananas Foster French Toast (w/ warm butter-rum sauce; I had this the last time I ate there, and it was excellent, but I opted for something where I could also enjoy their excellent beignets, too); or Muffaletta[2] Sandwich (w/fries or slaw; the sandwich isn't really stupid vegetarian- or Vegan-friendly, though); additionally, they had a Guava Mimosa as a weekend drink special.
Apparently "I like 'em" over-medium. For a change, I went with the grittier choice of sides ~ and they were nice and buttery, too. I had the cream biscuit (which I can only assume is some version of a buttermilk biscuit) as my bready side. Why would anyone not choose this over plain ol' toast? And this is not insulting plain ol' toast in any way, but fresh-baked always trumps out of a loaf bag any time. When taken as separate pieces of an entire breakfastary puzzle, there really wasn't anything overly exciting with each component (over-medium eggs ~ okay; grits ~ good; cream biscuit ~ very good); however, when you add all of them together, it was truly very tasty.
Now here is probably as good of a place as any to mention their outstanding homemade jams (I couldn't wait to do so in the condimentary supplementation area). There were two different types on the tables today: strawberry and peach. The peach happened to be on my table and I am very glad of that as I might have missed it otherwise. It was extra chunky and made with cinnamon and cloves in it (I asked the manager/maître d'-guy; my palette ain't that discerning). I generously used a good amount of it (seriously, I thing I used up half the jar) on my cream biscuit. I also saw fit to use a good dollop (or three) on one of my beignets.
I only ate one of the beignets before/with breakfast ("Brunch", whatever), and took the other two home with me to enjoy later in the day. I really liked this N'Awlins version of a jelly doughnut. ("Ich bin ein Louisiana Krapfen."?!) I have had them a few times now there and knew them to be very good. I wonder what a banana beignet might taste like. They don't offer that particular choice at Brenda's, but it is a standard flavour in N'Awlins. Plus, it's just fun to say "banana beignet"; go ahead say it ten times fast, you know you want to.
The cuppa Coffee really turned out to be more of a small bowla Coffee if you ask me, which didn't stop me from getting a few refillas all the same. What is the opposite of "Demi-tasse"? A "Bruce-bol"? (And I know that an "Ashton-bol" would be more current, but Bruce Willis is still much cooler than Ashton Kutcher any day.)
In addition to the abovementioned homemade jams, naturally, Brenda's has Crystal® Louisiana's Pure Hot Sauce on all of the tables. I just used some of my own Nando's® Extra Hot Peri-Peri Sauce (Thanks, Kerry!) in with the grits, and some Hula Girl Chipotle Habanero (Thanks, Jim!) liberally all over the eggs.
Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Two Eggs Any Way You Like 'Em ~ 6.2 (with their homemade peach jam factored in ~ 6.4); Granny Smith Apple Beignets ~ 7.2 (with their homemade peach jam factored in ~ 7.4); homemade peach jam ~ 7.5
1. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day:
"Beignet" comes from French, from Middle French "bignet", from Old French "buyne/buigne" (meaning "bump" or "lump").
2. I had to ask my waiter-server guy if a "Muffaletta" meant a sandwich made with a slice of black bread and a slice of white bread.
Actually, this can be spelled several different ways: Muffaletta, Muffuletta, Muffoletta, Muffiletta, Mufullettc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muffuletta
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