Bistro Restaurant at Cliff House

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." 
~ Wild Bill Shakespeare, Touchstone in
As You Like It, Act V, Scene I

http://cliffhouse.com/bistro/


Place: Bistro Restaurant at Cliff House
Location: 1090 Point Lobos (at the end of the Earth/Ocean Beach)
Hours: open for breakfast Monday - Saturday at 9:00am; open Sunday at 8:30am
Meal: Classic Eggs Benedict[1] ~ poached eggs, Canadian bacon, toasted English muffin, Hollandaise[2] sauce, served with fresh fruit and roasted potatoes; a glass of orange juice; and (World) Famous Cliff House Popovers(!)

(There really is no EweToobular juxtaselection for today's songs, I just recently discovered Bap Kennedy ~ Thanks, Mr. Way! ~ and felt like linking a few songs of him singing. The second video is a cover of a George Ivan Morrison song and I suppose it could have a bit of a juxtaselection with the whole Dutch/the Netherlands-Nederland/Holland[3] explanation below, as it was filmed there.)


It was back to Bistro Restaurant at Cliff House
(see last 'blog-entry from January 24th, 2015) for breakfast… and some (World) Famous Cliff House Popovers(!). Having eaten many times already at this restaurant, I have had all of their available vegetarian-option items from the menu several times over. There are just four or five from which to choose, but it really doesn't matter as I will always go back again for the (World) Famous Cliff House Popovers(!). (Have I ever mentioned the (World) Famous Cliff House Popovers(!)?)

There were a lot of surfers (at least twenty or more) out on Ocean Beach (well, technically, out in the Pacific Ocean just off Ocean Beach) this morning even though it was pretty overcast and chilly. There really isn't a Term of Venery for a group of surfers (mainly because they were not hunted by the English… but if English sharks could talk, there might have been), so I have come up with the overly-simplistic term of my own "a Board of Surfers". I didn't see any dolphins (the correct Term of Venery for this big fish is "a Pod/School/Team of Dolphins") or porpoises ("a School of Porpoises" is the term for them, too) this morning, though. However, there were many pelicans (the Term of Venery for this bird is a "Pod of Pelicans" [Why ever the British were hunting pelicans, I have no idea ~ maybe they are the real "chicken of the sea", Jessica]) flying around and landing on Seal Rocks (I asked my friendly waiter-server guy, Justin, if he could tell me what a group of pelicans was called and he replied: "Like hellican!").

This was a decent enough version of Eggs Benedict; however, I am not so sure how "Classic" it is when I order it without the dead, decaying Canadianlander pork product. They were nice enough to substitute some avocado in place of the awful offending porcine offal. 

I received a full basket of four (World) Famous Cliff House Popovers(!) this morning and made sure to eat all of them.

Today's side of fruits[4] was: grapes, strawberry, watermelon, honeydew melon, and cantaloupe.

Bistro Restaurant at Cliff House only has Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (Original Red Sauce) for condimentary supplementation. I went with some of my own The Wiltshire Chilli Farm Hell Mouth on top of one of the Benedictined eggs and some Mango hot chilli sauce (Thanks for both, Cindy & Greg!) on the potatoes. Once again, my waiter-server guy, Justin, asked me as soon as I sat down what kind of hot sauces that I had brought with me this morning; pretty decent memory on him.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Classic Eggs Benedict ~ 6.2; (World) Famous Cliff House Popovers(!) ~ 8.2


1. Here is some information on Eggs Benedict (whether "Classic" or not) compliments of our friendly friends at WikipediA:

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

Apparently the Waldorf Hotel wasn't content enough to have just invented a salad and named that after itself, even if it did perplex and vex the likes of Basil Fawlty.

2. Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-culinaristic (and a bit historical and geographical) pointer of the day, numéro un:

"Hollandaise" is a French adjective meaning "Dutch". It is so named because it was believed to have mimicked a Dutch sauce made for a state visit by the King of the Netherlands to France once.

3. Did you ever wonder why we have different names for the northern European country between Belgium and Germany? 

The Dutch (who actually call themselves "Nederlanders", and the language they speak is "Nederlands", by the way) call their homeland "Nederland". Holland is only one small province of Nederland. 

You can blame all this confusion on the British. As for the word "Dutch", it was a misconstruing of the German word "Deutsch" again by the British. This is one of those times when the Brits really need to learn them some correct English. 

Silly me. And I always thought that the Netherlands was just where Peter Pan and his band of Lost Boys lived…

4. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, nummer twee:

The word for "fruit/fruits" in Dutch (Nederlands) is also "fruit" (both singular and plural), but pronounced something like "frowt".

Here are the specific "fruit (frowt)" for today in Dutch/Nederlands:

Grape/grapes = druif/druiven (pronounced "drowf/drowfen")
Strawberry/strawberries = aardbei/aardbeien (pronounced "ardbay/ardbayen")
Watermelon = watermeloen (pronounced "vatermelloon")
Honeydew melon = honingmeloen (pronounced "honingmelloon")
Cantaloupe = kantaloepa (pronounced "kantaloopa")