Sunday, September 7, 2014

Mission Beach Café

"Ours is the age which is proud of machines that think, and suspicious of men who try to." ~ Howard Mumford Jones



http://www.missionbeachcafesf.com/


Place: Mission Beach Café
Location: 198 Guerrero Street (on the corner of  14th Street)
Hours:  Weekday Lunch/"Brunch" open at 9:00am; Weekend "Brunch" also open at 9:00am
Meal: (the simply named) Scramble ~ cherry tomatoes, asparagus, summer squash, oyster mushrooms, goat cheese, field greens, and crispy Yukon Gold potatoes; and a cuppa (and two more refillas) Flying Goat Coffee Mission Beach Café Blend

http://www.flyinggoatcoffee.com/





(Today's EweToobular songs are just a continuation of last weekend's George Ivan Morrison birthday celebration. I had some leftovers and felt like using them up; just consider these a sort of videological frittata. Plus, these are a reminder that Summer is not quite over yet. Nothing's over until I say it is!)


While I was neither in San Diego (the one in California) nor Queensland (the one in Australia ~ please, no "But I thought 'Queensland' was San Francisco" jokes), I decided to go back to Mission Beach Café (see last 'blog-entry from June 16th, 2012; 
http://breakfastatepiphany.blogspot.com/2012/06/mission-beach-cafe.html). There is really no contiguous beach-side property in the Mission; I suppose the "Mission Beach" referenced here would be Mission Dolores Park (which is just four blocks away) where people will hang out on their blankets and soak up some Vitamin D on the sunnier days of Summer.

On this seemingly sleepy Sunday morning, I found that it was easy to find a legal parking spot just a half-block away. The restaurant space seating is: six window-counter seats (along the Guerrero Street-side, and where I sat this morning); eight tables for two; and about ten tables for four. However, it seems that many other idiots had the same idea as I did this morning and it all filled up pretty quickly, even at 9:00am on a Sunday morning. People really need to get a life and sleep-in or go to church… dammit!

Mission Beach Café offers about twelve to thirteen entrées on their "Brunch" menu. Some possible other decent ideas: MBC Pancakes (vanilla crème, market fruit ~ which does not include any zucchini or yellow summer squash, I hope ~ pistachios, and Bourbon syrup; I know from my last visit, that the Bourbon syrup is very tasty); Mission Beach Egg Sandwich (with housemade English muffin, fried egg, mushrooms, caramelized onion, Bravo Farms white Cheddar, potatoes; and for those of you that partake of the dead, decaying porky products, this can also be made with bacon or sausage added); or some kind of Duck Confit[1] meal (I really didn't pay much attention to what it was, though). And there is always their version of French toast that I had last time that I ate there and knew to be most excellent (see above reference to Bourbon syrup).




This was a simple enough scrambled egg dish, but I really liked all of the ingredients in it. There was lots of asparagus and oyster mushrooms, which I found to be a very interesting flavour combination (well, if you are like me and like both asparagus and mushrooms, that is). The asparagus was sliced width-wise (in little medallions like) not length-wise, which I also found interesting. The "summer squash" turned out to include both the yellow version and zucchini (and, like all squashes, are originally native to the New World, and are technically botanical fruits).

The side of roasted Yukon Gold potatoes were also very good.

This made two days in a row that I had a "salad" with breakfast ("Brunch", whatever). People may get the wrong idea and think that I am some kinda stupid vegetarian or something.

Mission Beach Café used to exclusively serve Blue Bottle Coffee, but haven't for about two years now. I noticed that it still says they do on their on-line menu; I think that they might need to update their web-site. Currently, they actually have Flying Goat Coffee  and even have a roast/blend made specifically for them. This was a very good Coffee, too. And they even ask if you would like some more Coffee "to go" when you are leaving… extra nice! (I didn't feel it necessary to take them up on this excellent offer, as I had enough Coffee already with the meal and didn't want to be up all day.)

For condimentary supplementation, Mission Beach Café only offers Tapatío®. I used some of my own Fat Cat® Strawberry Serrano Hot Sauce (Thanks, Cindy & Greg!) liberally all over the potatoes, and Blair's
After Death sauce with liquid fire (Thanks a lot, Sean!) on the scramble mess ~ but just four to five drops of this satanic sauce ~ and it was still almost too much, as the opening of the bottle is normal-sized and does not have a dripper or any way of pouring it out slowly. 


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Scramble ~ 6.7; Flying Goat Coffee Mission Beach Café Blend ~ 7.4


1. Stupid, useless cunning linguist (and pseudo-culinaristic) pointer of the day:

"Confit" (pronounced "con-fee") comes from the French verb "confire" (meaning "to prepare"), which in turn comes from the Latin word "conficere" (meaning "to do, to produce, to make, to prepare"). (See also: "confection".)

And, of course, once again, the stupid Spell-check Nazis at Microsoft have no clue as to what this cookery word should actually be.

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