Cafe la Flore

Richmond (District) Coffeehouses; #20

What could be better?
Today is Haiku Day, plus...
Peanut Butter Day![1]

http://cafelaflore.com/


Place: Cafe la Flore 
Location: 1032 Clement Street (between 11th and 12th Avenues)
Hours: open Monday through Friday at 7:15am, Saturday and Sunday at 7:45am
Meal:  Veggie Breakfast Sandwich ~ egg, spinach, Provolone cheese, English muffin; a (grand) Chocolate croissant; and a cuppa (aussi, grande) 
Mr. Espresso® Neapolitan Espresso

http://mrespresso.com/

(Today's EweToobular juxtaselection is twofold [everyone knows that if you try folding a video three times, you end up with real mess of sound]: 1) they were playing a bunch of Spanish/Mexican songs this morning on the (Coffee)house stereo; and 2) in French "(la) flore" means "flora", hence, some kinda floral song in Spanish.)


Continuing along with my Richmond (District) Coffeehouses series, next up heading back eastward along Clement Street is Cafe la Flore (see previous 'blog-entry from December 22nd, 2012). If my calculations are correct, there are only about two to three more coffeehouses left to visit on Clement Street. Of course, this is not including any of the Chinese bakeries/doughnut shops/dim sum joints along Clement Street (of which there are easily ten to fifteen within the next ten blocks); maybe some day I will do a separate series on those.

At the coffeehouse this morning, I happened to run into a fellow New England Patriots fan (I was wearing my old-school baseball cap; you know, the one with the Patriots guy in the three-point stance) and he happened to notice it and mentioned it to me. He was also wearing a Boston Bruins tuque. He said he was from Vermont, but he had a strong (Olde) English accent (and I saw him eating his breakfast sandwich with a knife and fork).

Cafe la Flore is also now offering what they are calling Special "Fin De Semana[2] Breakfast" with three different choices: French Toast (with fruit melange, nube [ sic ][3] and crusted walnuts); Frittata "egg-cake" (beaten eggs, spinach, roasted red pepper, Black Forest ham, bacon, salsa la flore, avocado, goat cheese and toasted bread); and Vegetarian Frittata (beaten eggs, spinach, zucchini, squash, roasted red pepper, salsa la flore, avocado, goat cheese and toasted bread; for those that don't partake of the dead, decaying porcine bits). Without a "real" kitchen, I wonder how these items are actually prepared; you would normally need at least a salamander to prepare frittatas correctly.

The Chocolate croissant was extra large, even so, I finished eating it much before they had brought out the sandwich.

This was a decent breakfast sandwich. It had lots of fresh baby spinach under the scrambled (well, like most coffeehouses, there is no real oven/stove with which to cook food, so these were actually "nuked") eggs. The Provolone cheese was a nice change of pace from most Eggamuffin™-style sandwiches where they use either Cheddar cheese or that fake 'merican cheese-stuff. (For the record, I was also given a knife and fork with which to eat this, but I just ate it like a normal person would with my bare hands.)

I am not sure if there has been a change in ownership since my last visit (the guy working the front counter/register was definitely mexicano and not la dame française that had been there in the past), but the Coffee today was mucho/beaucoup better than my past few visits there. This could be due to a few factors: they may have changed the brand of Coffee they now serve (I have found that Mr. Espresso® can be pretty good when prepared correctly, or not if not); and the single cuppas are now all made via Méthode de Presse Française (this could be the major reason the cuppa was very strong and exceptionally good this morning).

For condimentary supplements, Cafe la Flore had both Tapatío® Salsa Picante Hot Sauce and Montecito® Hot Sauce. I wanted to use another of my newest hot sauces and went with some 
Fan The Flames Sriracha Hot Sauce (Thanks, Mom!) on top of the sandwich. This just leaves me with four more of the new ones to try out ("out which to try"?) over the next few weekends.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Veggie Breakfast Sandwich ~ 6.0; Chocolate croissant ~ 6.5; 
Mr. Espresso® Neapolitan Espresso ~ 7.2

___________________

1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/national-peanut-butter-day/

I suppose I could have gotten a bagel with peanut butter for breakfast this morning, but even I can "cook" that at home on my own.

Once again, I am little upset that another Peanut Butter Day has come and gone and I did not receive a single holiday card (or a Butterfinger®, at least).

2. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, número uno/numéro un:

"Fin de (la) semana" is simply Spanish for "end of the week". En français this would be: "fin de la semaine". 

This is another indicator to me that the place may no longer be owned by un expatrié français, and now may be owned by una familia mexicana.

3. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, número dos/nombre deux:

Yeah. I have absolutely no idea what that might mean in a culinaristic sense, but en español "(la) nube" means "cloud". 

Just for the heck of it, en français the word for "cloud" is "(le) nuage".