1428 Haight ~ Patio Cafe and Crepery

"All things are to be considered and called into question ~ there are no limits set to thought." ~ Robert Kennedy

http://www.1428haight.com/


Place: 1428 Haight ~ Patio Cafe and Crepery
Location: (I can not really be sure, but… I think they are located at) 1428 Haight Street (between Masonic Avenue and Ashbury Street); phonicular contact: (415) 864-8484 (they have an official web-site ~ see above ~ but it is currently "under construction")
Hours: open for breakfast daily at 8:00am
Meal: Veggie Omelette ~ Tomato, Roasted Eggplant, Spinach, Kalamata Olives, & Feta Cheese ~ choice of Rosemary Garlic Potatoes, Fries, House Salad, Fresh Fruit, or Soup of the Day & choice of toast; and a large glass of homemade lemonade

(Time… Daylight Saving… get it?

The interesting thing about this EweToobular video is that both Sheryl Crow[1] and Steve Earle are performing it live together. The story was that when it was originally recorded ~ for the soundtrack to "Steal This Movie!" ~ Steve and Sheryl actually recorded their respective parts in separate studios: Steve was in Nashville and Sheryl was in Los Ångeles. I don't think there was any animosity between the two of them; it was probably just that was the easiest thing for both of their busy schedules.)


While walking through the Panhandle on my way over to 1428 Haight ~ Patio Cafe and Crepery for breakfast this morning, I kept scanning the trees for any signs of my fine-feathered buddies, the Wild Parrots of San Francisco. I didn't see any of the noisy little buggers ("noisy little budgies"?) this morning, but I did see a few Crows (not Sheryl, unfortunately; and they may have actually been Ravens) and some Mockingbirds (and me without my .22, Atticus) and a bit of komorebi[2] to boot.

1428 Haight has lots of available seating (because unavailable seating isn't much to speak of, really): two front/window booths for four people, eleven tables for two, five tables for four people, and one round table for six people. Plus, there is a large covered (but open-aired) patio café area (hence the Patio Cafe and Crepery part of their name) that has twelve more tables for two. It was still a little cool in back, so I just fair-weathered it and stayed up front.

Talk about turning back your clocks today, it seemed that 1428 Haight had turned back the calendar all the way to the 1980's as they were primarily playing Rock-and/or-Roll songs from that era all morning long while I was there (e.g. Spilt Enz "I Got You"; .38 Special "Hold On Loosely"; Pet Shop Boys "Always On My Mind"; Whitesnake "Is This Love"; and Frankie Goes to Hollywood "Relax"[3]).

Like a lot of places along Haight Street, you order and pay at the front counter first and then they give you a number (well, here they actually give out street name signs; I got "16th Street" today) to place on your table (of course, I would much rather have food placed on my table).

A lot of items remain on their menu from when they were still part of the Squat & Gobble Cafe & Crepery mini-chain, but they have added some new items, too. A couple of other ideas for me this morning might have been: Huevos Rancheros (two eggs over easy, in between two corn tortillas, melted Pepper Jack cheese, topped with tomatillo & guajillo salsa, crispy tortilla strings, jalapeño cream, & black bean chili); Cali Omelette (grilled chicken apple sausage, roasted tomatoes, the vile weed, avocado, mushrooms, onions, Pepper Jack cheese, topped with fresh salsa & jalapeño sour cream; of course, I would have ordered this without either the ground-up dead, decaying poultry flesh or the vile weed); or Haight & Ashbury (grilled ham, caramelized onions, sautéed mushrooms, tomatoes, & Cheddar cheese; again, I would have ordered this without any of the dead, decaying porky bits). Additionally, as they are a crêperie (it says so right in their name, if not mispelded), the Mediterranean (eggplant, spinach, Feta & Cheddar cheese, oregano, Kalamata olives, onions, roasted tomatoes, roasted red peppers, toasted pine nuts, & cucumber yogurt dressing; this really wasn't very different than the omelette I decided on, anyway) crêpe sounded interesting. Plus, they offer a few different types of pancakes, waffles, and Stuffed French Toast (house made sweet cream, Bourbon maple glazed plantains, fresh strawberries, whipped cream, and hot maple syrup; which may need looking into another time).

Other than the disappointing  and ubiquitously pedestrian "Veggie" moniker of the omelette, this was all very good. It had lots of Feta and Kalamata olives in it, which are usually the ingredients that most restaurants will cheat you out on (… cheat you out of? … with which they will cheat you out? … whatever). My side choices were: Rosemary Garlic Potatoes (Why would any sane person ever choose a "salad" over potatoes?) and sourdough toast. These were really very decent roasted potatoes, and I was glad of that choice; they were chunky and full of flavour, and there was a good amount of them, too (while these were not quite as good as the Excellent! Roasted Home Potatoes at Eats, they were still very good on their own).

The homemade lemonade was as good as I could ever make at home (well, much better, as I have never really made any homemade lemonade before). And after I had finished it, they have these lemon-mint water pitchers that are really refreshing, too (well, the water is refreshing, but the pitchers are also a pretty refreshing idea on their own).

For condimentary supplements, 1428 Haight has Tabasco® Brand Hot Sauce (both the standard red and green jalapeño), Tapatío®, and Huy Fong Foods Inc.® Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce. I went with a little of my own Fat Cat® Strawberry Serrano Hot Sauce (Thanks, Cindy & Greg!) on the omelette and some Born to Hula presents Devon Allman's All Natural Hot Sauce Chipotle Blues (Thanks, Kerry!) on the potatoes. I had to ask if the raspberry jam (preserves/jelly) that was provided with the toast was homemade. I was told no, but that they do order it and have it made special for them; it was very chunky and tasty, which was why that I assumed it had to be homemade.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: "Veggie" Omelette ~ 6.9 (this is factoring in both the good Rosemary Garlic Potatoes and the good raspberry jam/preserves/jelly stuff)


1. Do you think that when Sheryl has a family reunion, it is quite a murderous affair?

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

"Komorebi" is a Japanese noun that simply means "The sunlight that filters through the leaves of the trees."

3. I heard that in an effort to modernize their image, the Catholic Church had recently printed 1,000,000 
t-shirts to be given away at this year's Christmas Service at the Vatican with the phrase: "Pope Frankie says 'Relax!'"

And, of course, once again, they prove themselves to yet still be about thirty years behind the times.