~ Елена Петровна Блаватская[1]
http://www.pomelosf.com/
Place: pomelo[2] ~ REFRESHINGLY GLOBAL
Location: 1793 church street (at 30th street)
Hours: "brunch" (at least they have the good sense to use the minuscule for this snooty-assed word; they do seem to like the whole small letter theme and use it throughout their menu): saturday and sunday (see?) 10:00am
Meal: motul (yucatàn)[3] ~ huevos motuleños - 2 fried eggs, 2 handmade crispy corn tortillas, puréed black beans, Niman (Ranch, not Leroy) ham, green pigeon peas, potatoes, fried plantain, queso fresco and spicy tomato sauce; and a cuppa (and two refillas) whatever the house Coffee was
(The juxtaselection of today's EweToobular song is simply the Latin Americaness of the "destination" of my breakfastary meal and the Lilliputian singer from República de Colombia.
It's really not that bad of a song… unless it happens to be playing everywhere you go on the island of Tenerife the entire time while on Christmasary Holiday.[4])
I sojourned all the way over to Noe Valley for a globally refreshing breakfast ("brunch", whatever) this morning and went back to pomelo (see last 'blog entry from September 1st, 2012). pomelo used to be in my Breakfastary Rotation several years ago (especially back when they were still called Valentine's), but I had to DFA them due to the distance and time it took to get all the way over there. It just wasn't really worth the whole rigmarole[5] of the half-hour drive or more over there on a Saturday or Sunday (or saturday or sunday) morning.
I am glad to see this place is still overly dog-friendly ("Valentine" was the name of the Scottie-dog of the human owners of the old place) as there was a small family of four humans with their two canine members (a Cocker Spaniel and a Black Lab-mix) sitting outside at one of the sidewalk tables.
There are many other goods ideas for breakfast (or "brunch"), both for stupid vegetarians and those bent on the carnivorous proclivity alike, that I still have yet to try: monte cristo (italy) (polenta sandwich with prosciutto, Mozzarella, sun dried tomato and basil, pan fried in olive oil, served with a balsamic reduction, two eggs your way and seasonal greens); makena (maui) (crunchy french toast - banana rum-stuffed egg brioche dipped in mascarpone egg batter and rolled in corn flakes, with roasted macadamias and warm coconut syrup; this was going to be my fall-back this morning, but I would have ordered it with a side of house potatoes); or masantol (philippines) (filipino style spicy sizzling tofu with chili peppers, garlic, onion, soy sauce and lemon; again, I would have had to order this with a side of potatoes). In case you hadn't noticed, each of these meals (as well as the one I actually went with) begins with the letter "M" (well, the letter "m") which would complete the whole "m-m-m-m…" of breakfastary goodness. Today's noe valley (san francisco) (which changes seasonally and can be made as either an omelette or scramble mess) was "3 organic free range eggs (I am not sure if that was supposed to mean "organic-free, range eggs" or "organic, free-range eggs"), shrimp, thai chili pepper, thai basil, tomato (they don’t specify if the tomato was of Thai origin or not), shallot and cilantro, served with multigrain toast and choice of house potatoes or organic field greens"; I suppose that I could have always ordered that without any of the dead, decaying aquatic insects.
This was all very good and reminiscent of Huevos Rancheros, just on crispy corn tortillas. Of course, I ordered it without any of the dead, decaying porcine hind leg slices, though. It had a nice enough salsa roja fresca. I liked the addition of the fried plantains (plátanos fritos) as a side-dish. However, the "pigeon peas" tasted just like "chicken peas" to me, Teddy. (Oh, come on, who didn't see that one coming?!)
I just had two minor complaints with today's meal:
1) I was not given a freebie mini-muffin or mini-scone (which is usually placed in front of you as soon as you sit down).
"Well, Brian, perhaps they stopped that practice since the last time you had visited two years ago."
Nope. I saw them giving one to everyone else that had sat down after I did.
and
2) I really could not discern any potatoes anywhere in my meal.
So, I felt it absolutely necessary to steal the mini-pumpkin ornamental off my table. I am sure that all of my raccoonny and squirrelly buddies over at Raccoon Island will enjoy that small snack of fresh fruit (which, of course, we all know is actually a botanical berry).
Two years ago, the house Coffee used to be Mr. Espresso®, but they may have changed the brand since then and I forgot to ask what they currently have. No matter, it was still all good.
If you order tea, they bring it out in these really cool-looking wooden boxes from which to choose your preferred blend. At first, I thought that these were Backgammon board games and was about to ask for my own set, too. (Hey, I can play it solitary if I want; I just have to make sure that my opponent doesn't cheat like usual.)
For condimentary supplementation, pomelo has a pretty decent selection. In addition to the Standard San Francisco Triumvirate of Hot Sauces (tSSFToHS): Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (three types even: the standard red, green jalapeño, and Chipotle), Tapatío®, and Cholula® Hot Sauce; they also have two different kinds of El Yucateco® (Salsa Picante Roja de Chile Habanero and XXXtra Hot Sauce Salsa Kutbil-ik® de Chile Habanero [which I also have currently in my collection of hot sauces]). Even so, I still went with just a little of my own Florida Gold Premium Habanero Hot Sauce (Thanks, Kerry!) on top of the pile of junk (I really didn't want to overpower their own fresh salsa). As I was leaving, I think that I overheard one of the waitress/server-ladies say to another waitress/server-lady that I had taken some of their bottles of hot sauces, but the other waitress/server-lady let her know that those were just some bottles that I had brought with me… Ha! Just wait until they look for that mini-pumpkin table-garnishment.
Glen Bacon Scale Rating: motul (yucatàn) ~ 6.5 (don't worry, this GBS Rating only reflects the actual meal; I never take off any points for any omissions… however, this may have been a .1 or .2 higher with the inclusion of their fresh, warm, and tasty mini-muffin and some potatoes; we will never know now, will we?)
1. Who? (or Кто?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Blavatsky
2. Oh, my (Pig-)Dog! Verdammt Billy-boy Gates and his group of Nazi Spell-checkering Schweinehunde at Microsoft do not even recognise this common English word!!! I wonder if they even know the difference between a "shaddock" (of which, I see, they have absolutely no problem with the spelling) and a "grapefruit".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomelo
3. Where? (or ¿Dónde?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motul,_Yucat%C3%A1n
4. And sometimes even when you are whale- and porpoise-watching off the coast on a large tourista catamaran.
Back in 2002, I went to Tenerife (which should always be pronounced "Tenner-EEF-ay", not "Tenner-REEF") with my North Yorkshire hosts (Thanks, Greg & Cindy!) over Christmas week. We had gotten there on Christmas Eve day and it was a sweltering 95° (that would be Fahrenheit, not Celsius/Centigrade, Baron William Thomson). Luckily it cooled off big time for Christmas Day and was only 85° all day. The strangest part of all was that we did a day-trip during the week up to the highest point on Tenerife to Mount Teide (kinda pronounced as "Mount Teddy") and there was still plenty of snow on the top peaks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teide
Here's a little-known Cliff Clavin factoid:
The next closest island in Islas Canarias archipelago is now called "La Gomera", but it was once known as "Elevenerife". The story goes that the entire island voted for the name-change in the late 1960's as they were all huge fans of Jim Nabors.*
*(Please tell me that no one actually bought any of that idiotic joke.)
Because of these un-winter-like temperatures, I really expected that I would have bragging rights that year over all of my family that were stuck in snowy Massachusetts still. However, my brother Kerry saw it fit to trump my good weather with a Christmas
vacation trip of his own to the Bahamas that same year. Some people just hate to see you gloat over them!
5. Stupid, useless cunning linguist/(mostly) etymological pointer of the day:
Per the definition taken directly from my edition of A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language by the Reverend Walter W. Skeat:
Rigmarole. (Scandinavian; and French - Latin)
Well known to be a corruption of ragmanroll, originally a deed with many signatures, a long list of names; hence, a long stupid story. Literally 'coward's roll' - Icelandic ragmenni, a coward, from ragr, a coward, and maður ( = mannr), a man; with the addition of roll, for which see Roll. The Icelandic ragr seems to be allied to Icelandic argr, a coward, Anglo-Saxon earg.
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