higher grounds coffee house

(No official [or unofficial] web-site available.)


Place: higher grounds coffee house ~ a nice little place to eat (or higher grounds coffeehouse or higher ground ~ a coffeehouse; take your pick)
Location: 691 Chenery Street (on the corner of Diamond Street); phonicular contact: (415) 587-2933
Hours: open daily at 8:00am
Meal: Cannelloni[1] (crêpe) ~ cheese (they don't specify it on the chalkboard menu, but I am guessing that this was Cheddar; I really forgot to check), onion, mushroom, spinach, cottage cheese (which may have actually been Ricotta cheese, as they offer that on a different style crêpe and that would be the standard filling in the pasta dish "Cannelloni"), Marinara (savory crêpes served with potatoes [of the homefries variety] & salad [of the rabbit-food variety]); and a cuppa their own very good (Coffee)house blend/roast

(For today's EweToobular juxtaselection, you will just need to read on a bit further to the end where I make another Strange Interlude, Eugene.)


I went back to higher grounds coffee house ~ a nice little place to eat (or higher grounds
coffeehouse or higher ground ~ a coffeehouse; they have it stylized a few different ways on their signage) (see previous 'blog-entry from November 9th, 2014) this morning to have a nice little bit to eat.

There was the same guy (the owner, I assume) working the counter-register/Espresso machine/grill all by himself again this morning. (Another guy did come in around 8:45am to help out behind the counter; however, by then, everyone had already ordered and had been mostly served, and the owner-guy still finished up all the rest of the cooking that was needed.) The place really filled up pretty quickly on a Sunday morning and all of the tables (inside and outside) were occupied by 8:30am (these people really need to get lives). There was also the same little white poodle in the corner with his group of human friends.

They offer several other interesting-sounding ideas: 

• Puttanesca (tomato, olives, onion, mushroom, garlic, capers, red pepper [I am pretty sure that means of the chilli-er kind and not the bell type], parsley, olive oil, sour cream; I will probably get this one the next time I go back there; and there will definitely be a next time; if this place were a little closer, it would totally be Breakfastary Starting Rotation-worthy); 
• Florentine (cheese, spinach, cottage cheese, onion);
• Alla Milanese (tomato, eggplant, Mozzarella, onion, black pepper, olive oil, spices); 
• Curry (bell pepper, cheese, onion, sour cream, potato; they don't state it on the menu, but I am sure there are some kinda curry-spices involved there, too); 
• Simply Italian (Mozzarella, Parmesan, basil, spices, salt, pepper, olive oil, zucchini); or 
• Apple Cheese (cheese, apple, brown sugar, cinnamon). 

All of these can be made as either crêpes or omelettes. Of course, the last one would make a rather strange omelette, even for my bizarre tastes (but I am not ruling it out entirely for a future visit).

This crêpe was another big hit with me, and just one more good reason to return again (one of these days). The Marinara sauce was very tasty, too. I think the owner-guy is actually of Arab descent, but he seems to have a very good take on la cucina di Bella Italia.

If I had one little complaint (I didn't, but if i did), it would have been that the homefries weren't cripsy (read: burned) enough for my liking. This can be more than explained by the fact that the lone owner-guy had to prepare three to four servings of homefries from scratch all at the same time (to be honest, I would really rather have had homefries prepared from potatoes instead).

Not that it really matters, but they no longer charge $2.07 for a cuppa Coffee as they did last year. They have raised the price to an even $2.50 (which is more than worth the price here, anyway, as it is a great cuppa and an extra large cuppa, too) now. I noticed that they also offer a Borgia on their Espresso drinks menu.

higher grounds coffee house (or higher grounds coffeehouse or higher ground ~ a coffeehouse) only offers Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce as a condimentary supplement, but they do have Tellicherry[2] Black Pepper Grinders on most of the tables (which I made sure to put to good use all over the crêpe, potatoes, and rabbit-food stuff). I just used some of my own Fat Cat Chairman Meow's Revenge (Scorpion Pepper Sauce) (Thanks, Greg & Cindy!) on only half of the crêpe and some Hot Licks® Serrano Hot Sauce (Thanks, Brian!) on the homefries.

A Strange Operatic Interlude

Just because I thought of it recently (and this is really 
à propos of nuthin' else), have you ever noticed that the word for "opera"[3] is a cognate in almost all languages? They all come from the same Italian word "opera". Ferinstance:

Afrikaans/Croatian/Czech/Danish/Dutch/English/
Filipino/Hungarian/Latvian/Lithuanian/Maori/
Norwegian/Polish/Slovak/Slovenian/Somali/Swedish/Turkish/Uzbek/Welsh/Zulu ~ "opera" (in case you didn't notice it, that would be "opera" from "A" to "Z")
Albanian ~ "operë"
Bulgarian/Macedonian/Russkij/Serbian/Tajik/
Ukrainian ~ "опера"
Catalan ~ "òpera"
Esperanto ~ "opero" (them damn Esperantonians just have to be different from the rest of the Europeans)
Estonian ~ "ooper"
Finnish ~ "ooppera"
French ~ "opéra" (and the damn Frenchies aren't any better than the damn Esperantonians)
German ~ "Oper"
Greek ~ "όπερα"
Icelandic/Portuguese/Spanish ~ "ópera"
Maltese ~ "opra"
Romanian ~ "operă"
Winfrey ~ "Oprah"

Just never get lost in Pest (or Buda, even) and try to find out where their "Opera" is located.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Cannelloni (crêpe) ~ 6.9; higher grounds coffee house (or higher grounds coffeehouse or higher ground ~ a coffeehouse) house Coffee ~ 6.9


___________________

1. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, numero uno:

"Canneloni" is simply Italian for "large reeds".

2. Apparently, the town of Thalassery (formerly Tellicherry), on the Malabar Coast of India, was well-known for its black pepper trade.

3. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, dualitas:

The Italian word "opera" comes from the plural of the Latin word "opus", which means "service, work".