grindz

"All sorrows are less with bread." 
~ Mikey de Cervantes Saavedra

(And they are even much less so when combined with da kine eggy-batter mixture, piña berry compote, and vanilla [crème] Chantilly[1], bruddah.)

http://www.grindzrestaurant.com/


Place: grindz
Location: 832 Clement Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues)
Hours: open for "Brunch" Saturday and Sunday at 9:00am (well, their official-type web-site states "9:30am", but I know that they were already open and serving when I arrived there this morning at 9:05am)
Meal: Puka[2] French Toast ~ brioche, piña berry compote, vanilla (crème) Chantilly; a side of Plantation Potatoes; and a cuppa (and, because I could, two full refillas) Bicycle Coffee co Dark Roast (Guatemala)

http://bicyclecoffeeco.com/

(Believe me, I tried finding Ukulele Jake[3] doing a EweToobular version of "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" [the other Bruce Springfield hit after "Jessie's Girl"]. This will have to suffice.

"If it's jake with Jake, it's jake with me!")


Luckily for me, the last few days of torrential rainfall had stopped a few hours before I was going to head out this morning for breakfast at grindz (see last 'blog-entry from Sunday, May 22nd, 2016). Even though I no longer have grindz in my Breakfastary Starting Rotation, I am giving them a Spring Training try-out. 

There are still a few items left on their "Brunch" menu that I want to try one of these days: Li Hing[4] Pineapples (ripe pineapples dusted with Li Hing powder [ground dried plum skin]; which I would have had to have supplemented with an order of Plantation Potatoes, too) and Breakfast Sandwich (furikake[5] brioche, sage breakfast sausage, egg, Cheddar, mixed greens; but no matter how intelligent those dead, decaying porky products might be, I would have had to have them substituted for avocado). If ever needed, I can always re-order my (past) favourite dish of theirs, Kalua Benedict (kalua pig, luau[6], Kings sweet bread, piña de gallo, tarragon Hollandaise, potatoes; which I always order without the shredded piggy-stuff).

(I only wish that I knew how to say "Yowzah!" in Hawai'ianese.) Not only was this dish very good, it is now my favourite dish of theirs (overtaking my old favourite Kalua Benedict). Plus, I am claiming this as my Best "New" French Toast Find of 2017! This was made with two very thick (easily an inch-and-a-half to two inches thick) slices of homemade (well, restaurant-made) brioche bread (the owner/manager lady-person informed me of this when I was raving about how much I liked it; not that this piece of information would ever influence my Glen Bacon Scale Rating, but it is always good to know). This dish was very similar to their dish, grindz Waffle (which I have had in the past, and they do not seem to offer on the "Brunch" menu any longer), but just way much better, due to the fact that it was made with homemade (well, restaurant-made) brioche bread. How have I missed this great dish all of these years?!? I have been going to grindz for the past five years now ever since they opened (two months after they opened, actually) and have never ordered this before. If I were getting paid for this silly little 'blog-thing, I would fire myself for this major omission. Now this may not be quite as good as le Pain Perdu ultime at Baker Street Bistro, but I am highly recommending this to anyone that likes French toast or sweet breakfast dishes. If I did have one little complaint, it would be that I would liked to have had more of the extra-tasty piña berry compote; I am sure that if I asked for some more, they would have provided it to me, anyway.

Also of (high) note, they are now making their potato side dish again like they did in the past as Plantation Potatoes (not that there is anything wrong with hashbrowns, these are just so much better). These are made with lots of chopped celery bits, (white) onions, and red bell peppers (in addition to lots of cubed roasted potatoes, of course).

Smart*ss Coffee-snob comeuppance interlude ("D'oh!")

I normally like to know which specific roast/blend of Coffee that I am drinking from the local roasteries. So, I asked the waitress/server lady-person.

Me: Which Bicycle Coffee co do you serve?
Waitress/server lady-person: I think it's a Medium Roast.
Me: Okay, thanks! 

(Then, thinking to myself, "Why do I even bother?!", because I just figured she had no clue.)

Well, it turns out that Bicycle Coffee co does not use any fancy-schmancy names for their blends/roasts and that they do have one simply called "Medium Roast".

However (because I didn't want to settle for the simplistic answer "Medium Roast"), a little later on, I asked the owner/manager lady-person the same question and she told me that it is a "Dark Roast", and this time I did ask a little further and she told me that is just what Bicycle Coffee co calls it.

So, my Coffee-snobbery may have been wrong in not believing the "Medium Roast" moniker, but it also turned out that the waitress/server lady-person was wrong in her answer.

So there!

(Now back to our regularly scheduled unsnobbish 'blog-program.)

grindz offers two very nice homemade (well, restaurant-made) condimentary supplementations: 
The Original Chili Pepper Water and 
The Original Hawaiian Ketchup (as pictured above in the opening photo). Knowing this, I did not bother bringing any of my own hot sauces with me this morning. I used a little of each on differing halves of the potatoes. I even ended up buying a bottle of the The Original Hawaiian Ketchup  to bring home with. Right now I still have wayyyyyy too many (near-enough to thirty bottles) of my own hot sauces, or I might have bought a bottle of the The Original Chili Pepper Water, too.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: 
Puka French Toast ~ 7.6;
Plantation Potatoes ~ 7.3

___________________

1. Now, I could not tell you the difference between a good crème Chantilly and regular ol' whipped-up cream, but here is some information and a recipe for anyone wanting to "cook" some up themd*mnselves: 

http://www.thegoodlifefrance.com/chantilly-cream/

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

"Puka" (as in "puka shells", apparently) is the Hawai'ianese word for "hole" and refers to the naturally occurring hole in the middle of small seashells.

(Now, why they have named a bready-breakfast dish after a sea-snail's home, I dunno, brah. Maybe that is the secret ingredient in their crème Chantilly.) 

3. Jiminy Cricket! Let's see how many people get that silly little pun.

4. Yeah, I could do another whole "stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day" thing here, but I figured it's just easier to link the information that was already gathered by the friendly folks at WikipediA (even if their information can be suspect at times):

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

5. Once again, I am just going with the much simpler WikipediA link than doing a whole 'nuther* verkakte** (not to be confused with furikake***) "stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day":

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

It seems that this product is not vegetarian-friendly. If I ever order this dish, I would have to ask for it without any of the grounded-up dried fish-stuff.

*(Is there such a thing as a "half 'nuther"?)

**(Subsetted stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day:

"Verkakte", with the adverbial meaning of "sh*tty or cr*ppy", comes from the Yiddish word "פֿאַרקאַקטע" ["farkakte"] which means "sh*tted upon". Its word root is from the verb "קאַקן" ["kakn"] [meaning "to sh*t, def*cate"]. I kakn you not.

It is interesting to note that this rather vulgar word does not appear in my usual go-to lexicon of Yiddishisms, The Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten.)

***( And I always thought that "furikake" meant "Kitty Bung-holes" in German.)

6. (Now here I will settle for my own) stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day, number two:

"Lūʻau" (and if I need to tell you how to pronounce this word, you will have to deal with Danno) is the Hawai'ianese word for "taro leaves", literally "young taro tops".