Sunday, October 19, 2014

grindz

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." ~ Hank Davey Thoreau

(I want the epitaph on my headstone to read: 
"Here lies a desperately quiet man."
Well, after I am dead, of course.)



http://www.grindzrestaurant.com/


Place: grindz
Location: 832 Clement Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues)
Hours:  open for "Brunch" Friday, Saturday, & Sunday (luckily) at 9:00am
Meal: Veggie Scramble ~ mushrooms, zucchini, spinach, Plantation Potatoes, chili oil (veggies may vary); and a cuppa (with 2-3 refillas) Bicycle Coffee co

http://www.bicyclecoffeeco.com/





(Today's EweToobular juxtaselections are because they usually are playing Reggae Music all day long on the house stereo.

The first song is a classic Bob Marley song that was actually playing this morning. Perhaps buffalo meat is the secret ingredient in SPAM®. [See below for an explanation of that stupid little quip.]

The second song is just a reference to all the Coffee that I drank this morning; it really has no relationship whatsoever to either Bob Marley or Reggae Music, though.)


Today's Breakfastary Rotation visit was a trip back to grindz (see last 'blog-entry from July 19th, 2014). 

This turned out to be my back-up plan this morning. I was originally planning on eating at Cafe GoLo ~ Boutique Cafe. But after driving all the way over to the Marina and trying to locate a nearby parking space for about thirty minutes (I am not exaggerating there; if anything, it may have been longer) ~ Thanks a lot, Nike Women's Half-Marathon! ~ I bagged it and just decided to head back over to the Richmond and go to grindz (it was due up next week, anyway). Parking in the Marina is normally bad enough, but this morning it was worse than trying to murr-ma[1]. It all would not have been so bad this morning if it were just the Marina neighborhood that was messed up to traffic due to this event, but even the Richmond had a fifteen to twenty minute delay along Geary Boulevard (at both the 26th Avenue and 27th Avenue intersections). However, I had actually planned for that delay this morning by parking my car on the eastern side of 25th Avenue last night; even with the 10-block walk to my car, I still beat all the cars that were stuck on Geary by about ten minutes or so.

grindz has a very limited menu for stupid "veggie"-eaters, but some of the other options for me were: Kalua Benedict (toasted Hawai'ian bread, Kalua pig, taro leaves, 2 poached eggs, tarragon Hollandaise, Plantation Potatoes; which I usually get without the dead, decaying porky stuff ~ Kalua or not); French Toast (grindz famous bread pudding, pina-berry compote, vanilla whipped cream); and Apple Banana Pancakes (surprisingly enough, this is made with both apples and bananas, coconut crème anglaise, crushed macadamia nuts; which I just had the last time there). 

Don't worry, for any of you "meaty"-eaters, they offer a pretty decent selection of "meaty" dishes, too. This includes several dishes which include the Hawai'ian Patron Saint of Meats, SPAM®. I overheard the couple at the next table asking the waiter-server dude what did SPAM® actually stand for. The waiter-server dude was stumped, so I butted-in with my 2¢-worth and said it probably was from "SPiced hAM" (after getting home, I confirmed this via WikipediA, and saw that it may also have been from "Shoulder of Pork and hAM"). The guy at the table said that he heard it jokingly said to mean: "Specially Processed American Meat". 



(Yeah, I know. This is a pretty crummy photo of the meal. Just pretend it was all supposed to be in a bit of bokeh.)


Other than the unfortunately named "Veggie" Scramble (sorry, this is just one of my pet peeves ~ or "vegetable peeves" even), this was a pretty decent meal. It was actually served as more of an open-faced omelette, with all the "veggies" on top of the eggs, than a standard scramble with all of the "veggies" mixed into the mess. Today's varied "veggies" were: mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, red bell peppers, celery, (white) onions, and green onions. This was basically all of the same "veggies" that are also in their tasty Plantation Potatoes ~ red bell peppers, celery, and (white) onions ~ plus a few more. And because Brussels sprouts happen to be one of my favourite "veggies" (I am sure that there will be a lot of very dissatisfied customers when they see that this was an included "veggies" this weekend ~ much like I would if one of the varied "veggies" turned out to be the vile weed), I am adding an extra .1 or .2 points to the GBS Rating. I actually like that the "veggies" may vary, as this means I can get this same dish a few times a year and it may be different each time.

For some reason, no bread/toast side comes with this meal, though.

The cuppa Bicycle Coffee co was very good as always.

grindz has as condimentary supplements just Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (the standard red) for commercially-bottled hot sauces, but they do have on all tables both their homemade chilli oil and Hawai'ian Spicy Ketchup. From past visits, I knew that the Hawai'ian Spicy Ketchup went very nicely with the Plantation Potatoes, so I made sure to use some of that on the potatoes; and just because it was also on the table, I used some of the chilli oil on the potatoes, too. I went with some of my own Born to Hula presents Devon Allman's All Natural Hot Sauce Chipotle Blues (Thanks, Kerry!) on top of the scramble mess.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: "Veggie" Scramble ~ 6.5 (with the Plantation Potatoes factored in)


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

"Murr-ma" is a Wagiman* verb meaning "to search for something in the water with only your feet".

*(You may ask yourself, "But just what the heck is 'Wagiman', anyway?". Let's steal… er, borrow that information from the friendly people at WikipediA again:

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


You may also be asking yourself, "Why the heck did Brian include a stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day about a dying Australian aboriginal language when he had breakfast at a Hawai'ian joint?" Well, this makes about as much sense as Reggae Music playing all day long at a Hawai'ian joint, bra'.


And stop asking so many damned, nosy questions, Mr. Byrne!)


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