BDK Restaurant & Bar

Breakfast on Geary (redux), Catcha-22

http://themarkersanfrancisco.com/dining/bdk-restaurant-bar


Place: BDK Restaurant & Bar
Location: 501 Geary Boulevard (on the corner of Taylor Street)
Hours: open Monday through Friday at 7:00am (for breakfast); open Saturday and Sunday at 8:00am (for "Brunch")
Meal: Spinach & Feta Scramble ~ served with home fries & choice of toast: wheat/white/cinnamon raisin/rye/English Muffin; and a mighty fine cuppa (and one refilla) Caffé [sic][1] Vita (per my friendly waitress-server lady person ~ whose name I never really got; sorry, Mrs. Honeycutt ~ this was) some kinda Colombian blend

http://www.caffevita.com/

(Because I have so deemed it that I can, I have proclaimed the third weekend in August as International Linda Ronstadt Weekend. Sadly, it was two years ago around this date that Linda Ronstadt revealed that she had Parkinson's Disease and "can no longer sing a note". Happily, there is still always EweToob, and we can hear her sing all the notes we want, whenever we want.

Best wishes, Ms. Ronstadt!)


I had previously eaten at this same location once before, back when it was under its former incarnation of Grand Cafe Brasserie & Bar (see previous 
'blog-entry from March 2012). Both the hotel and restaurant (& bar) have changed names since then. The hotel is now known as The Marker San Francisco, and the restaurant (& bar) in the corner location of the building is now called BDK Restaurant & Bar. It is only two blocks down Geary Street from Union Square (and only thirty-seven blocks down Geary Street/Boulevard from last Sunday's 'blog-entry).

The restaurant space is now in the front as soon as you walk into the joint. It used to be further back in an interior, high-ceilinged back room. I am pretty sure it is a smaller restaurant than it used to be, too. I think the space up front used to be just the hotel bar/lounge area. There is just seating of: thirteen tables for two (where most of those are along two walls and are half-booth jobbers), three tables for four, three booths along the back wall for up to six people, and two large tables for eight people.

You know a place is a typical "Brunch"-ified joint when they use "real" cloth napkins (which are always wasted on the likes of slobs like me). I did like the little bovine-creamers on each table (even if I never use the stuff in my Coffee).

Both the standard breakfast menu and the weekend "Brunch" menu don't really have an awful lot to offer (for either stupid vegetarian-types or dead, decaying animal-fleshivores). Some of the other possible ideas that I was looking at were: Deviled Eggs (white truffle oil, black trumpet mushrooms; if I had ordered this one, I would have had to get a side of homefries, too); Oven Roasted Beets (farro, radish, watercress, goat cheese, basil vinaigrette, smoked almond; again, this would have needed the addition of a side of homefries); or Garden Omelet (three egg whites, goat cheese, seasonal "veggies" [Ugh!], served with a side of fresh fruit). And possibly, as a breakfastary dessert, Sweet Corn Crème Brûlée (which really sounded pretty good).

The scramble was decent enough (heck, even I can scramble eggs with spinach in it). I was a little disappointed that the Feta was just thrown on top of the scramble after cooking it. Not that Feta is a very melty-type cheese, but it still would have been better mixed in with the eggs and spinach and cooked that way. At least there was a decent amount of Feta in the mess. 

The toast was very good. They don't specify it on their "Brunch" menu (but do so on their on-line breakfast menu), but this was actually walnut-cinnamon-raisin bread. It possibly was a homemade (well, restaurant-made) bread (I forgot to bug my friendly waitress-server lady person about that particular bit of information).

For condimentary supplementation, BDK only had Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (which I assume was just the Original Red Sauce type) and a Sriracha sauce (which I also assume was Huy Fung Foods, Inc. brand). I went with some of my own Fairhope Favorites, Inc. Moonshine Hot Sauce XXX (Thanks, Phyll!) on the potatoes and some Marie Sharp's 
Grapefruit Pulp Habanero Pepper Sauce (Thanks, Mom!) on parts of the scramble mess. 

I especially would like to point out that they serve their own homemade (well, restaurant-made) jams/jellies/preserves to use with the toast and such. Today's jam/jelly/preserve was a very good raspberry jam. At first I thought that it was a blueberry-raspberry jam, as I noticed that there was a whole blueberry in my serving. My friendly waitress-server lady person informed me that it was just raspberry jam today and maybe some of the last batch of blueberry jam got mixed in with it. I really didn't care, as it was very good, and blueberry-raspberry jam would have been a great combination, anyway.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Spinach & Feta Scramble ~ 6.3; "Caffé" Vita (even though we all know very well that it should be "Caffè Vita") some kinda Colombian blend ~ 6.8; homemade (well, restaurant-made) (blueberry-)raspberry jam ~ 7.3


________________

1. While I may have enjoyed their Coffee (o Caffè), once again, I really have to complain about the mizpelink of the Italiano word for "Coffee". It should be correctly spelled con l'accento grave, non con l'accento acuto. I don't know why so many places can't get that correct (or as they say in vero Italiano*: correctomundo).

Fortunately, Caffé Vita only references the "é" on their shipping packages. It just appears as "Caffe Vita" (which is also incorrect, but at least it's not using il maiale-cane accento francese) throughout most of their website.

*(Well, the specific Italian dialect of Fonzarelliano.)