(PlumpJack) Balboa Cafe

http://www.balboacafe.com/san-francisco/


Place: (PlumpJack) Balboa Cafe
Location: 3199 Fillmore Street (on the corner of Greenwich Street)
Hours: open Saturday - Sunday at 9:00am for "Brunch"
Meal: baby kale salad ~ shaved fennel, avocado, goat cheese, grapefruit & orange segments, pepitas (that is just roasted pumpkin seeds for you gringo-type), 
pomegranate vinaigrette, and I also had one poached egg "laid" on top; a side of roasted potatoes; and a cuppa (and 1-1/2 refillas) Peerless Coffee & Tea® (some kinda organic Coffee, but I didn't get the specific roast/blend)

http://www.peerlesscoffee.com/

(Do I really need to explain the EweToobular juxtaselection between this song and today's breakfastary destination? 

Well, fine. It is a little-known Cliff Clavinoid fact that Pete Townshend's real last name was "Balboa". I can not confirm whether Roger Daltrey's real last name was "Cafe" or not, though.)


Mainly because it had been almost five years since I last ate there, I went back to (PlumpJack) Balboa Cafe 
(see previous 'blog-entry from April 2nd, 2011) for breakfast this morning.

(PlumpJack) Balboa Cafe has been continuously 
operating in the same location (at least I believe it has been in the same spot) for over 100 years. They have a very spacious restaurant and bar area with seating of about 25-30 tables for four; plus, there is a really nice raised seating area by the front door, before the long bar area, as you enter. There is also a second restaurant of the same name now in downtown Mill Valley (but I have never been to that location). I particularly like that there is a small glassa crayons[1] on every table (whether you are there eating breakfast ["Brunch", whatever] with kids or not); I made sure to make good use of mine for a small graffito cartoon or two on the butcher-paper table covering. (Well, I just hope those were paper and not cloth table coverings that I coloured on.)

There really isn't an awful lot of choices that they offer on their "Brunch" menu for stupid vegetarians. There were still a couple of other ideas that I could have gone with ("... with which I could have gone.", whatever): omelette of the day (today's was spinach, cherry tomato, salami [which I would have skipped, of course], and Cheddar; served with roasted potatoes and mixed greens [you know, rabbit stuff]); balburrito (scrambled eggs, house-made chorizo [again, I would have nixed that junk], black beans, fresh pico de gallo, Jack [they didn't say if it was "plump" or not] cheese, and avocado salsa); or huevos rancheros (avocado, black beans, Jack cheese, eggs over easy, & salsa fresca; but I just had huevos rancheros last weekend and wanted to try something different).

the Wild Parrots of San Francisco Interlude

Once again, I had parked closer to the Presidio, and when returning to my car after breakfast, I heard several (but didn't really see any) of the noisy little chatter-birds.

I know what you are thinking: "Salad?! For breakfast?!" Well, it did have an egg on top and there were both grapefruit and orange segments in it, so that is good enough for me. Having the poached egg added on top turned out to be a great idea as the salad was pretty basic otherwise. Plusses: the shaved fennel was good, there was lots of goat cheese droppings (chunks, whatever), I liked the added crunch of the pepitas, and the pomegranate vinaigrette was pretty tasty. Minuses: Where the heck was the baby kale?! This turned out to mostly a mixed greens (you know the basic mesclun you can get pre-mixed in bags at the grocery store) with just a small amount of baby kale interspersed in it. I was really expecting (and would have much preferred) an entire bed of baby kale; this would have been a much better meal then.

(PlumpJack) Balboa Cafe offered for condimentary supplementation both Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (Original Red Sauce) and Tapatío® Salsa Picante Hot Sauce. I used some (well, a lot ~ about as much as you would use ketchup) of my own 
Palo Alto Firefighters Pepper Sauce (Thanks agains, Amys and Brian!) on the potatoes and just three drops of Fat Cat Chairman Meow's Revenge (Scorpion Pepper Sauce) (Thanks, Greg & Cindy!) on top of the poached egg.

Not that I would normally ruin a perfectly good cuppa by adding any cream or sugar, but it was interesting to see that they had both lumps of turbinado-style sugar and packets of "White Death", as well as the yellow and pink[2] packets of pseudo-sugar crapola. (Could these be labeled "Yellow Death" or "Pink Death"?)


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: baby kale salad (with the poached egg on top) ~ 6.3 (this would probably have been at least 0.2 GBS points higher if there were considerably more baby kale or only baby kale in it); 
the Wild Parrots of San Francisco ~ 8.5

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1. I think that it is pretty cool that Crayola® now lists the colours on their crayons in English, Español, and Français.

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

red = rojo, rouge
yellow = amarillo, jaune
green = verde, vert
blue = azul, bleu

2. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, número/numéro dos/deux:

"Pink" in Spanish is "rosado" or "rojillo", and "rose" in French.