Riverside Cafe

Wareham, MA 
(Sunday, 09/04/16)

(No official web-site.)


Place: Riverside Cafe
Location: 189 Main Street, Wareham, MA; 
phonicular contact: (508) 295-2050
Hours: open daily 6:00am
Meal: (Me) Monkey Bread[1] French Toast and a side of home fries (noted as two words); (Sean) Hawaiian Melt ~ ham, pineapple, egg, & Mozzarella cheese on Texas toast, served with your choice of homfries (now here they had it as oneword), fruit, or baked beans; (Kerry) Florentine (Omelet Style) ~ spinach, tomatoes (or mushrooms), and Mozzarella cheese, served with homefries or fruit and toast; (Mom) just an English muffin and a slice or two of Sean's bacon; and (Me) a cuppa (and one refilla) New England Coffee® Blueberry Cobbler (I kid you not) (I don't really remember what everyone else had to drink; it's hard enough for me to remember what they all had to eat)

http://www.newenglandcoffee.com/product/blueberry-cobbler/


My first breakfastary stop while I was on vacation last week was to Riverside Cafe in Wareham[2], Massachusetts. There aren't that many breakfast-style restaurants in town, but the few that they do have are all pretty good (or so I have found). Wareham is known as "the Gateway to Cape Cod" (and hence the Cape Cod Baseball League[3] Wareham Gatemen[4]) because it is one of the last towns before you head over to Cape Cod (via either the Bourne Bridge or the Sagamore Bridge). One of the notable people to have been born (not Bourne nor Sagamored, though) in Wareham is Hollywoodland actress and international archer Geena Davis[5]. 

(And just to prove that it truly is "riverside", here is a photo from behind the restaurant of the Wareham River.)


I was very impressed with the amount of interesting items that Riverside Cafe has on its menu (for both stupid vegetarians and dead, decaying animal-fleshetarians). Some other good ideas were:

Irish Style (Benedict) ~ with hash (which I am pretty sure meant "corned beef" and not plain ol' "potatoes")

River Rat ~ (which can be made as either a "Scrambler" or "Omelet Style") ground beef, onions, American cheese, & topped with ketchup, mustard, & pickles (I tried talking Sean into getting this one; this was disgusting sounding enough that if I ate meat, this would definitely have been my choice)

Garden (which can also be made either as a "Scrambler" or "Omelet Style") ~ tomatoes, peppers, onions, and mixed cheeses

Santa Fe (another "Scrambler" or "Omelet Style") ~ avocado, tomato, onion, black beans, pepper [ sic, in the singular ], & cheese with salsa

Green Pig (another "Scrambler" or "Omelet Style") ~ spinach, sausage, and mixed cheese (I wonder what Theodor Seuss Geisel would have to say about this)

Irish Breakfast Melt ~ hash, egg, and cheese on marble rye (ya ol' bag!)

or (simple enough, but still interesting sounding to me)

Beanie Breakfast ~ baked beans, 1 egg, & corn bread or a biscuit (I wonder if this was a regular meal at the Sussman household when little Herbie was growing up[6]).

I was happy to find that my Monkey Bread French Toast was shockingly good, Mr. Gabriel. This was a different and interesting take (and taste) on your standard (or not-so-standard) French toast. The only thing that I could have done without was the jimmies/sprinkles on top of the whipped cream; not that I don't normally like jimmies/sprinkles, I just didn't find them necessary on my French toast.

Sean's Hawaiian Melt turned out to be a sorta Hawai'ianese Monte Cristo, bra'. Pineapple in anything is always a good thing.

Kerry went with the "or mushrooms" option in his Florentine (Omelet Style), but they offered to have both the tomatoes and mushrooms in it (which is what I would have gone with personally). I don't remember if the omelette had any Hollandaise sauce on top of it, but that would have been the way I would have liked it.

As for my Blueberry Cobbler (or Cobblah in New Englandese) Coffee, there was no need to add any sugar (and I normally don't add any, anyway) to it as the blueberry flavour was sweet enough already. However, after taking a few sips, I did go with Sean's suggestion to add some half-and-half to it; this was a good idea and it greatly improved the experience.

I asked (but have forgotten now over a week later) what Riverside Cafe had in the way of condimentary supplementation; I think they had Frank's RedHot® 
Original Cayenne Pepper Sauce and possibly one more. It really didn't matter as I had come well-prepared with three new (well, for me) hot sauces that Kerry had provided (actually, one was brought all the way back from Isla de Vieques, Puerto Rico[7] by my sister Sharon earlier this year): Maine Man Flavahs Blueberry Habanero; Chelsea Fire Wicked. Hot. Sauce.; and Coqui[8] Fire Flaming Frog Sauce. I used some of the Blueberry Habanero on half of my potatoes (mainly because I wanted to try to complement the blueberry in my Coffee) and some Wicked. Hot. Sauce. on the other half of my potatoes. (Curiously enough, I left my Monkey Bread French Toast un-supplemented, George). Of the two, I much preferred the Wicked. Hot. Sauce.; it didn't contain any chipotle peppers, but was very reminiscent of that style hot sauce (with just a little more heat perhaps). The Blueberry Habanero was sweet, but not really that hot and I can't imagine using it on many other breakfastary items (I bet it would go nicely on top of some Ice Cream, though).

http://www.mainemanflavahs.com/

http://www.chelseafirehotsauce.com/

http://coquifire.com/


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: 
Monkey Bread French Toast ~ 6.9;
New England Coffee® Blueberry Cobblah ~ 6.6

(Sorry, I didn't bother asking anyone else at the table for their GBS input. I know that Sean is well-versed in the intricacies of the GBS, but I would have had to explain the whole kitten-and-poodle[9] to Kerry and Mom... besides, my mother would probably have rated her English muffin as an 8.5.)

___________________

1. Yeah, I had no idea what the heck this was either.

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

2. http://www.wareham.ma.us/

3. http://www.capecodbaseball.org/

4. http://gatemen.org/

5. Did you know that Geena Davis is probably smarter than you or me? Well, probably smarter than you.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000133/

6. Maybe one person reading this from the Red Sox Fan Forum Message Board will get that stupid joke.

7. ¿Dónde?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vieques,_Puerto_Rico

8. ¿Qué?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coqu%C3%AD

9. Like any of you really know what the heck a caboodle/kaboodle is.