http://www.zaziesf.com/
Place: Zazie
Location: 941 Cole Street (between Carl Street and Parnassus Avenue)
Hours: open for "Brunch" seven days a week at 8:00am
Meal: French Toast de Noel[1] ~ Pinkie's challah French toast soaked in brandied eggnog, served w/whipped vanilla cream; a side of home-fries; and a cuppa (and one-and-a half refillas) Zazie's Organic Specialty Coffee
(There really is no reason for today's EweToobular link other than it's a "morning" song and I am a big George Ivan Morrison fan, man.)
To once again end the year being able to say, "I had breakfast from A (Angel Cafe & Deli, Art's Cafe, etc.) to Z", I finished the year at Zazie (see last 'blog-entry from November 16th, 2013). It was still too chilly once again this morning to sit outside in their backyard "Garden Patio" area, which is a shame as it is a very cool area in which to dine. They do have those tall, portable gas heaters (you know, the ones that look like miniature streetlamp escapees from a Dickensian era), but that really defeats the whole purpose of eating outdoors, doesn't it? After the front dining area had filled up quickly this morning, the later-arriving customers had no choice but to sit out there, though.
Zazie offers a pretty diverse "Brunch" menu (and because they open up much earlier for the stupid "Brunch" crowd, they can be forgiven that snooty term). Some other good ideas (for stupid vegetarians, but they do have many items for stupid dead, decaying animal fleshitarians, too): Fontainbleau (scrambled eggs with portabellas, shiitake, porcinis, spinach, Fontina; I won't comment on the mispeling of "Fontainebleau" as I had already done so in my previous 'blog-entry there, but, again, you really should expect correct Frenchy place names from a French-owned joint); Italie (scrambled eggs with tomatoes provençales, cream cheese, and basil); or (from the "Brunch" Specials menu) Miracle Pancakes (sour cream poppyseed pancakes w/Meyer lemon curd and strawberries).
One of my contributing editors inferred that I don't use enough superlatives[2] in my 'blog-entries and that this makes it rather difficult to discern whether I actually enjoyed my meal or not (I suppose that would make the entire Glen Bacon Scale thing actually superfluous[3] ~ which is not really another "superlative", by the way). So…
I really liked this meal… a lot. (If that's not superlative enough, Mrs. Nichols, I don't know what "superlative" means.)
The French Toast de Noel was also a seasonal dish off the "Brunch" Specials menu, and I ordered two slices. I like that they give the option with both French toast and pancakes to order one, two, or three pieces, which is always a great (but not superlative) choice. The brandied eggnog could really be superlatively tasted in this one. I liked each bite better than the last (of course, the last bite was my favourite of all).
The only thing that I might have done differently if I were making this meal (HA!) would be to make the whipped cream a cinnamon- or nutmeg-based one (instead of vanilla) to keep with the whole eggnog-ish theme. At least they provide the whipped cream in a separate (and pretty good-sized) bowl so that you can put as much or as little as you like on the French toast.
The home-fries were very good, too, and included a superlative amount of four (quatre) roasted garlic cloves.
I forgot to ask who produces their Organic Specialty Coffee (which I would also liked to have seen called: "Le Café Organique Spécialité de Zazie", or something close enough to that). They used to offer LaCoppa Coffee Organic French Roast, but I am not sure they are still in business. There was actually so much of the whipped vanilla cream provided that I added a large spoonful of it to my Coffee (and it really freaked-out my waiter/server-guy when he went to refill it; he thought there was something wrong with the Coffee and was going to offer to get me a new cuppa).
Zazie only has Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (the standard red) as pre-bottled condimentary supplements. I used some of my own recently replenished (as in yesterday) Palo Alto Firefighters Pepper Sauce (Thanks agains, Amys & Brian!) on the homefries. However, I found out long after I had already used my own hot sauce that they do offer a home-made salsa of their own, as another customer asked for some; I didn't taste it, but it looked like some kind of tomatillo salsa. I will need to remember that for my next visit.
http://www.paloaltofirefighters.com/
So, all in all, I would say today's breakfastary repast was pretty Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious[4]…
Glen Bacon Scale Rating: French Toast de Noel ~ 7.5; Palo Alto Firefighters Pepper Sauce ~ 7.6
1. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer du jour:
No GBS Rating points are ever taken off for mispelded words, but, seeing as this is supposed to be un café français, I would really have liked to have seen "Noel" spelled as "Noël" (with the correct Frenchified umlauted "e"), Sir Coward.
This doesn't even take into consideration that they call it "French Toast" and not "Pain Perdu"; maybe I need to shame these owners into calling it correctly (like I may have possibly done for Baker Street Bistro).
2. This word doesn't have anything to do with Clark Kent's long-lost Kryptonian uncles and cousins.
3. This word doesn't have anything to do with tidal changes on the lost world of Krypton either.
4. I can NOT believe that this word ~ superlative or not ~ actually gets a by from Billy-boy Gates and his Spell-checkering Nazis at Microsoft, but a valid culinaristic word like "challah" is getting the red underlined treatment.
And, for the record, I spelled it correctly at my first go, Ms. Poppins*!
*(Now "Poppins", it seems, the Brown Shirts at Microsoft don't recognize. Really?!)
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