Baker Street Bistro

http://www.bakerstreetbistro.com/


Place: Baker Street Bistro
Location: 2953 Baker Street (between Lombard and Greenwich Streets)
Hours: open for "Brunch"[1] Saturday & Sunday at 9:00am
Meal: Pain Perdu A brunch favorite! ~ two slices of cinnamon French Toast, fresh fruit, strawberry coulis & crème fraîche; a side order of homefries; and a cuppa (and one refilla) the house (restaurant, whatever) Coffee

Je suis retourné à Baker Street Bistro (see last 'blog entry from September 5th, 2015) pour mon petit déjeuner. As soon as I entered, I made sure to greet Mademoiselle Chantal with a hardy "Bonne année!" (which is a saying that I actually remembered and didn't even have to look up on Google Translate).

Mais bien sûr, for my first breakfastary visit of 2016 at Baker Street Bistro, I had to get le nec plus ultra Pain Perdu. C'est tout. (If you really feel the need to read more encomia, you are free to re-read all of my other past 'blog-entries [of which there has to be at least twenty] extolling the virtues of this great[est?] take on French toast.)

As usual, when Mlle Chantal presented my meal she stated with a flourish: "Et voila!". After many, many, many visits there, I think I have finally figured out what that means. I think it is just the French way of saying "Bon appetit!"...

Once again, when one of the poor, unsuspecting Mexican buspersons went to refill my cuppa, he was a little startled at the sprig of mint[2] that was floating in there. I tried to explain to him that it was a la moda turca. I am sure he just figured it was more like a la moda gringo loco. 

Les fruits d'aujourd'hui: raisins, melon, pastèque, ananas, les pommes, et les oranges.

For condimentary supplements, Baker Street Bistro only has Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (Original Red Sauce) on the tables. I used some of my own Marie Sharp's Grapefruit Pulp Habanero Pepper Sauce (Thanks, Mom!) on the potatoes (but there was no way I was going to mess with the Pain Perdu... okay, the thought did cross my mind). I always feel a bit of a drongo[3] whenever I break out my own hot sauces at restaurants (but never for very long).

the Wild Parrots of San Francisco Interlude

I parked over by the Lombard Street gate at the Presidio again this morning, and as soon as I had turned off my car stereo, I heard a cacophony of cackling overhead. I looked up and saw (and heard) that there was a small portion (anywhere from a dozen to twenty) of the larger pandemonium of Wild Parrots that roost in the tall eucalyptus trees in the dog-park there.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Pain Perdu ~ 8.2; the Wild Parrots of San Francisco ~ 8.5

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1. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, numéro un:

I asked Mlle Chantal what the word for "Brunch" is en français, and, apparently, they just use the cognate "le Brunch" from the English/'merican word.

2. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, nombre deux (número dos):

The word for "mint" in French is "menthe" and in Spanish is "menta". 

3. (Somewhat of a) stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day (if Australian could be considered a ferren language, that is), numba t'ree, mate:

Sorry, I have been reading a new novel (Fortune Cookie) by one of my favourite authors, Bryce Courtenay (who happened to have been South African who held/adopted Australian citizenship), and I came across this word and wanted to try and drop it into this 'blog-thing. Drongos are actually a subfamily of small passerine birds (think Australian Blackbird or such), but the word in Australian slang means "a stupid or slow-witted person; simpleton; fool" (which is alleged to have originated from the name of an unsuccessful racehorse of the 1920's).

Just for le enfer of it, the French word for "fool" or "simpleton" is "le supporteur du Le Donald"*.

*(Hopefully, in five to ten years, people will not still get that stupid joke, what-so-ever.)