Brenda’s Meat & Three

"Every silver lining has a cloud around it." ~ Leo Rosten

http://brendasmeatandthree.com/


Place: Brenda's Meat & Three
Location: 919 Divisadero Street (between McAllister Street and Golden Gate Avenue)
Hours: open everyday[1] except Tuesday at 8:00am (where they call the early morning meal "breakfast" for everyday[2] usage, but they insist on calling it "Brunch" on the weekends)
Meal: Corn Succotash[3] & White Cheddar Omelette ~ corn, zucchini, tomato, lima beans, onion & sweet pepper succotash, with grits or hash, & toast or biscuit; and a glass of orange juice

(There is absolutely no connection with today's EweToobular song and anyone named "Brenda" or "Billy", or succotash, or N'Arlins ~ at least none that I can see or none that were intended.)


I had breakfast at a relatively new place (open only since Hallowe'en 2014) called Brenda’s Meat & Three. They are owned/run by the same people that own/run Brenda's ~ French Soul Food (see last 'blog-entry from July 27th, 2014). This is located in the space that used to house BlueJay Cafe (which I last visited in June 2013, so I have no idea when they might have closed up shop). They did a bit of remodeling inside, but it's still a friendly neighborhoody spot; and, luckily, they kept the cool, small backyard patio space. If you ask me (and even if you don't ask me, I am telling you anyway), they open up early enough on the weekends that they really don't need to use the snooty-assed moniker "Brunch" for their first meal of the day.

The menu at this new place isn't exactly the same as that at the original Brenda's, but it is similar enough and some of the items are the same. I was thinking of ordering a few other items that looked good, too: Sweet Potato Pancakes (topped with butter pecan sauce; if I got that one, I would probably have also ordered a side of either grits or potatoes ~ you can never have enough carbohydrates) or Eggs Florentine with Creole Hollandaise (two poached eggs on our famous cream biscuit, served with grits or hash). They also have a Breakfast Specials board (on an actual black/chalkboard) and some of the specials this weekend were Bananas Foster French Toast (I have had this before at their other restaurant and it was very good), (and for any of you dead, decaying animal flesh eaters) Molasses Ham Benedict, or Creole Fried Chicken Benedict.

However, unlike the other Brenda's, they do not offer any N'Arlins-style Coffee (you know, the stuff made with roasted chicory added into it; when I asked my waitress-server lady about this, she said not everyone likes the chicory flavour in their Coffee; My opinion on that? Tough chicory! If you don't want N'Arlins-style Coffee at a N'Arlins joint, eat at a damn Chicago joint where they don't add any chicory to their crummy, watered-down Coffee) or the additional lagniappe[4] of their tasty beignets, which is a real shame as those are worth a trip themselves alone. At least they do still have jars of their really good, fresh strawberry jam on all tables (which I saw fit to use a good amount on my biscuit).

What's wrong with this picture, Ahnold? Wash-day, right?! If I were plating this, I would have placed the omelette in the centre of the plate and the potatoes on the left side of the plate. But that is just me. I know it all still eats the same… unless you are from Israel or one of those Arabian countries. 

This was a very good omelette. It had lots of good junk stuffed inside it. Lima beans in an omelette?! Who knew this would work? (That is if you aren't one of those chicory and lima bean hatin' anti-Cajun/Creole types.) This was somewhat similar to the Creole Veggie Omelette at the other Brenda's. I opted for the potatoes over grits; their grits are usually very good, but I wanted to try their potatoes for a change. And I chose the fresh-baked biscuit over plain ol' toast. (Who wouldn't? Probably the same idiots that don't like N'Arlins-style Coffee or lima beans. Don't you just hate those kinds of picky people?!)

For condimentary supplementation, Brenda's has just Crystal® Louisiana’s Pure Hot Sauce available on all tables. I figured that they would have about the same choice as their other place, so I brought some of my own stash and used some The Wiltshire Chilli Farm
Winter chilli sauce on the potatoes and some Hell Mouth (Thanks for both, Cindy & Greg!) on the omelette.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: CS&WC Omelette ~ 6.9


1. Just like yesterday's restaurant, they actually have this mistakenly spelled as one word. "Everyday" (one word) is normally an adjective and has the meaning "of or relating to every day; daily", but I am sure that they meant this to be two words: "every day". When used as a noun, "everyday" can mean "the routine or ordinary day or occasion". I really don't think it was their intention to say that they serve any mundane (or Monday) food here, though.

2. See? That is the "correctly usage" of this word.

3. Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-culinaristic pointer of the day, number one:

"Succotash" comes from the Narragansett word "msickquatash", meaning "broken kernels of corn".

4. Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-etymological pointer of the day, number two:

I purposefully (and purposely) used the word "lagniappe" here as it is chiefly a Southern Louisiana and Southeast Texas expression. It is an Americanism that comes from Louisiana French from American Spanish "la ñapa", which is a variant of the Quecha word "yápa", meaning "that which is added".