the Blue Danube Coffee House

Richmond (District) Coffeehouses ~ 
Teil Zweiunddreißig/Rész Harminckét

(No official web-site thing.)


Place: the Blue Danube[1] Coffee House
Location: 306 Clement Street (just about at the corner of 4th Avenue); phonicular contact: (415) 221-9041
Hours: open at 7:00am every day of the week
Meal: Greek (Breakfast) Wrap ~ grilled flour tortilla w/ steamed eggs, spinach, portabello, artichoke hearts, sundried tomatoes, Feta, pesto & side of fruit cup; and a very large cuppa House Coffee ~ which, coincidentally enough, happens to be Mr. Espresso® Viennese Blend Medium-Dark Roast

http://mrespresso.com/

(I will leave it to you to figure out just what today's EweToobular juxtaselections might be.)


Continuing along with my Richmond (District) Coffeehouses Series (and there may be just one more coffeehouse to check out now), I backtracked over to Clement Street to fill in a blank with the Blue Danube Coffee House. They had recently reopened (after about a year of being closed due to a "plumbing problem" ~ I am sure that could have been rectified with a hot Coffee high colonic ~ hold the cream and sugar, of course) in May this year. This place is one of the oldest coffeehouses on Clement Street (and, in my opinion, one of the best along Clement Street and in the Richmond); they have been open since at least 1987 that I know about.

the Blue Danube Coffee House is a medium-sized neighborhood coffeehouse with seating of twelve to thirteen tables for two; plus, two large couches where two to three people can sit and enjoy their Coffee. Additionally, there are four tables for two outside on the sidewalk. I had thought about sitting outside at one of those tables, but I was the only customer there when they had first opened and didn't want to look like a crazy person sitting outside all by myself; they later opened up the large windows at the front of the coffeehouse, anyway, and I got plenty of fresh air then.

One pretty cool thing about this coffeehouse is that most of the coffee(house)tables have artwork or designs of some sort on them. My table this morning was reminiscent of Monet or Van Gogh or some other Impressionist/Post-impressionist artist.

That a coffeehouse even offers cooked egg dishes (in the form of wraps, bagels, and sandwiches) is very cool; and that they offer several (well, four ~ but still) different wrap versions is even cooler. The other options were American Wrap (ham or bacon, Cheddar, salsa); California Wrap (lox, cream cheese, capers, avocado; I suppose that I could have ordered this one without any of the dead, decaying piscine junk); or Western Wrap (bacon, grilled onions, Cheddar, bell peppers). They also offer French Toast ~ brioche, cream cheese, caramelized apples, almonds, berries; I have absolutely no idea how they might cook that dish, though.

I also overheard one of the workers state to another customer that anything on the menu can be ordered all day long. I could see getting for breakfast either Arugula & Fig (Salad) ~ roast beef or beets, onion, Feta, vinaigrette (now they don't actually state it in the ingredients listed on the menu, but I can only assume that this salad also includes some arugula and figs in it), or Danube (Salad) ~ spinach, Bleu cheese, almond chips, dried cranberries, pears, sesame dressing (a sesame dressing sounds a bit strange to go with the rest of those ingredients, but it might just work).

This was an all-around decent wrap. (Get it, "all-around wrap"? Whatever!) They call these "steamed eggs", but, as best as I can tell, they were just the nuked-microwave-preparation scrambled variety. This had lots of spinach and sundried tomatoes (I mean A LOT) in it. I would have liked more Feta, but that is generally my complaint, anyway. And how many coffeehouse joints do you know that would use portobello (or portabello) mushrooms as an ingredient?

This cuppa (bowla?) had to be at least 16-20oz worth. They have packaged bags of Coffee from Mr. Espresso® (of this specific Viennese Blend and a few other blends/roasts) for sale. They also offer a few other blends/roasts that can be made as a single-cuppa "pour-over" style; I asked what they were, but when I heard that they offered a Viennese Blend as their House Coffee, I knew right away that I was going to go with that Coffee juxtaselection.

The small fruit cup side included: cantaloupe, honeydew melon, and grapes[2].

the Blue Danube Coffee House has both Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (Original Red Sauce) and Tapatío® Salsa Picante Hot Sauce for use as condimentary supplements. I had even brought a few of my own hot sauces with me; however, I didn't feel it necessary to use any this morning.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: 
Greek (Breakfast) Wrap ~ 6.4;
Mr. Espresso® Viennese Blend ~ 6.8

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1. The Danube is Europe's second-longest river. It stretches from Germany (Deutschland), through Austria (Österreich) ~ right through the middle of Vienna (Wien), through Hungary (Magyarország) ~ splitting the old twin cities of Buda and Pest, and ending at the Ukraine (Україна) into the Black Sea (Черное Mоре/Чорне Mоре).

Of course, the Danube is known by various names in other languages for the countries through which it passes. Hence, stupid, useless cunning linguist (well, mostly geographical) pointer of the day, number one:

German (for both Germany and Austria): Donau 
Slovak: Dunaj
Hungarian: Duna
Croatian: Dunav
Serbian: Дунав (Dunav)
Romanian (for both Romania and Moldova): Dunărea 
Bulgarian: Дунав (Dunav)
Ukrainian: Дунай (Dunay)

I have walked across several bridges spanning the Danube (Donau/Duna) both in Vienna (Wien) and in Budapest (Budapest). The resort hotel that we stayed at in Hungary was actually on an island (Margaret Island/Margit-sziget) right in the middle of the Danube (Duna) with the old cities of Buda on one side and Pest on the other side.

2. Stupid, useless cunning linguist (two-fer) pointer of the day, Nummer Zwei/második:

a) Auf Deutsch:

Cantaloupe, Honigmelone, und Trauben

b) magyar nyelven:

kantalup dinnye, sárgadinnye, szőlő