Cafe Mason

http://www.cafemasonsf.com/


Place: Cafe Mason
Location: 320 Mason Street (between Geary and O'Farrell Streets)
Hours: open 24 hours, every day of the week (well, that is what I am going with; their "official" web-site does not state any hours of operation anywhere)
Meal: Spinach & Feta Cheese Omelette ~ all omelette [sic, singular] and frittata [sic, again, singular) come with a choice of home fries, fresh fruit, roasted tomato with basil and herbs, or slices of fresh tomato (for anyone not named "Greg Kipe"), and a choice of toast (nine grain, white, rye); and a cuppa (and one refilla) whatever the house Coffee might have been (I forgot to ask, but I think I may have asked on one of my previous visits)


I made another return visit to Cafe Mason[1] (see last 'blog-entry from June 27th, 2015). I really like this place and it is easily Breakfastary Starting Rotation-worthy if ever need be (the food is always great and they open up very early [that is, if they ever close at all] for my liking), and I can't believe that it has been almost a full year since my last visit already. I got to sit in the really cool mini-booth (which is just about large enough for two people ~ if those two people like each other and don't mind bumping knees) again that I had on my first two visits there.

There are still several items on their menu that I want to check out ("out which I want to check"?), ferinstance: Spinach Crépes [sic] (homemade cream spinach 
soué [sic][2] topped with cheese and Mornay[3] sauce - served with fruit); Portobella Benedict (poached eggs and portobella mushroom, topped with Hollandaise sauce; served on grilled English muffin with a choice of home fries, fresh fruit, roasted tomato with basil and herbs, or fresh slices of tomato); California Omelette (Deluxe [with Avocado]) (tomato, Jack cheese, cilantro & fresh herbs); or Vegetable Omelette (Deluxe [with Avocado]) (zucchini, mushroom, tomato, onion, bell pepper, and a touch of Parmesan cheese; and, thankfully, unlike their Vegetable Frittata, this does not include any of the vile weed).

Additionally, for any of you that partake of the dead, decaying poultry or bovine flesh, they also have some other interesting-sounding crêpes (or crépes): Crépes Veronica (homemade crepes stuffed with steamed chicken breast, mushroom, onion, and with Jack and Cheddar cheese, topped with light Mornay sauce); or Boeuf Crépes St. Jack (which they have as St. Jack Boeuf Crépes on their printed menu) (homemade crepes stuffed with beef, onion, mushroom, bell pepper, and cheese, topped with light Mornay sauce).

This omelette included lots of spinach (always a good thing with me) ~ both stuffed inside the folded omelette and in the egg-batter mixture itself. I also liked that there was a good amount of Feta chunks (and not any of those skimpy Feta crumbles stuff) inside. If Popeye were Greek (Ποπμάτι?), I am sure that he would highly approve. Of course, I went with the homefries as my side choice (however, next time I might want to check out that "roasted tomato with basil and herbs"), and for my toast choice I had nine grain.

For condimentary supplementation, Cafe Mason offers both Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (Original Red Sauce) and Cholula® Hot Sauce Original. I used some (well, it came out pretty fast and I ended up using a lot more than I had intended) of my own Fat Cat Chairman Meow's Revenge (Scorpion Pepper Sauce) (Thanks, Greg & Cindy!) on the potatoes and some 
(and this one poured much slower) Lucky Dog 
Hot Sauce Medium Fire-Roasted Pepper Sauce (Thanks, Brian!) on just a small portion of the omelette.

the Wild Parrots of San Francisco Interlude

Once again, after breakfast, while I was walking along Geary Street (just around the corner from the restaurant), I heard several of the Wild Parrots at the top of one of the buildings in the neighborhood. I can only assume there is a small pandemonium roosting there (possibly someone has been feeding them and they have decided to stick around).


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: 
Spinach & Feta Omelette ~ 6.7; 
homefries ~ 7.3;
the Wild Parrots of San Francisco ~ 8.5

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1. Just so that there is no confusion here, the name of the restaurant is pronounced as "MAY-son", not the Frenchified "MAY-zon". It is named after the actual street that it is on; it is not meant to be a translation of "House Café".

2. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day:

"Soué"* is how they have it (mis)spelled on their on-line menu, but their printed menu has it correctly as "soufflé". I am pretty sure they wanted to go with "soufflé", as the closest word in French that I could find to "soué" is "soue", which means "pigpen/pigsty".

However, I could not locate anything on-line that would link the French word "soue" with the English interjection "Sooey!" (a call to get the attention of pigs). That word may just be an alteration of the word "sow".

*(Actually, from looking at some other entries on their on-line menu, it appears there were several other words where "f"s had been deleted/dropped. Must have been a Mormon copy-editor.)

3. Contrary to popular belief, this sauce is not made from creamed eels:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mornay_sauce