La Boulangerie de San Francisco

Another Mr. XV Pay-It-Forward 
Memorial Weekend ~ a continué

http://www.laboulangeriesf.com/


Place: La Boulangerie de San Francisco
Location: 500 Hayes Street (on the corner of Octavia Street)
Hours: open daily at 7:00am (peut-être; there are no times listed on their "official" web-site, so I am forced to go with what information is available from the Intro-Net, and we all know how reliable that might be)
Meal: Arugula & Egg Sandwich ~ sunny side up egg, arugula pesto, aioli, on pain de mie, served with choice of Pommes Tots or (boring!) seasonal greens; a Lemon-Ginger Kouign-amann (for starters and also finished as a breakfast dessert); and a large bowla Equator Coffees & Teas™ Equator Blend 

https://www.equatorcoffees.com/


My original plan of breakfastary attack this morning was going to be to head back to Mama♥s on Washington Square (in North Beach), but it was raining pretty hard (again) when I went out to my car and I figured I really didn't feel like standing in a line for an half-hour (or, more likely, longer) in the rain until they opened. So I quickly came up with "Breakfastary Attack ~ Plan B (not necessarily from Outer Space, though)" and decided to finally check out a new/old French-style bakery/café-joint, 
La Boulangerie de San Francisco. There are currently six locations[1] throughout town and I figured the easiest one to get to (and to find close/accessible parking) was the one in Hayes Valley.

Of course, by the time I arrived in Hayes Valley, the rain had slowed down almost completely, but still...

While I was at the front-counter paying for my meal, I made sure to "Pay-It-Forward" to the next person in line behind me. As fate would have it, the next person in line behind me happened to be a homeless-looking guy and I got him both a large Coffee and a pastry. (Later on, I asked the counter-server guy person if he would have gotten the Coffee and pastry for free normally anyway [some local places do this for their "regular irregulars"], and he said that the guy always pays.)

There were several other good ideas from which to choose: 

Egg & Cheese Sandwich ~ scrambled eggs, Swiss cheese, tomato croissant(???), on honey whole wheat or pain de mie;

Marina Egg White Sandwich ~ scrambled egg whites, turkey (which I would have quatre-vingt six-ed, bien sûr), avocado, Provolone cheese, tomato, on honey whole wheat or whole wheat croissant;

Egg Scramble ~ w/ toasted organic peasant bread, Choose 1 ingredient from each category: 1. Swiss, Cheddar, Jack or Provolone, 2. spinach, tomato or mushroom, 3. bacon or turkey bacon, pork or chicken sausage, ham, turkey or avocado (I probably would have gone with: spinach, Swiss, and avocado);

Hummus Tartine ~ avocado, cucumber, tomato, sprouts, organic peasant bread;

or maybe even

Baby Kale Salad ~ red rice, farro, toasted almonds, carrots, purple cabbage, dried cranberries, lemon vinaigrette (which I probably would have ordered with a sunny-side up egg placed on top).

Because it is a French-style bakery-joint, they have many other great-looking pastries on display at the front counter. They also had a Pear-Almond Kouign-amann that looked very tempting, too.

Lately I would not usually be ordering any Coffee with breakfast because I have so much Coffee at home that I really need to drink-through, but I was soooooo happy that they no longer serve any of that St*rbucks cr*p, that I celebrated with what they did have to offer. It turned out to be a very large bowla Coffee, too. You can't really tell from the above photo, but it was easily 20-24 oz of Coffee.

After the first bite (attempt) while eating the sandwich, it proved to be a bit messy to pick up and eat hand-held, so I had to revert to the Pommy (not to be confused with the "pomme-y") tradition and eat the rest of it with a knife and fork (or a fork and knife, depending on how you like to hold your implements of eating-destruction).

Of course, I opted for the potato side-dish over the boring old rabbit-food. The "Early Apples"[2] were very good, too, but I would have liked a bit more of them.

In the way of hot sauce condimentary supplements, La Boulangerie de San Francisco 
only had Tabasco® Brand Hot Sauce (Original Red Sauce); however, they did have a large glass canister of nutella® that could be used on toast, which I found to be a very cool idea. I ended up using some of my own Dixie Crossroads Hot Habañero[ sic ] Pepper Sauce (Thanks, Brian!) on the sandwich and some Lucky Dog Medium Fire-Roasted Pepper Sauce (Thanks again, Brian!) on the potatoes.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: 
Arugula & Egg Sandwich ~ 6.5 (this is factoring in the "Early Apples");
Lemon-Ginger Kouign-amann ~ 7.1;
Equator Coffees & Teas™ Equator Blend ~ 6.8;
not having to patronise those smarmy, smug, greedy, corporate bastages at St*rbucks ~ priceless

___________________

1. The reason I say "new/old" is because the owner of these six locations had previously owned a bakery/café-business, under the name of La Boulange, at most of the same locations. However, back in 2012, the owner sold all of his bakery shops to the greedy corporate bastages of St*rbucks. Of course, like every other local business that those smarmy, smug, corporate bastages at St*rbucks get their greedy bastages hands on, they drained all they could from the business, took what they liked, and closed up all of the shops for good by 2015. (Yeah, they are such a great socially-conscious 
company!) Sometime last year, the old owner decided to re-open several shops that he used to run and bought back six of the locations from St*rbucks. 

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

(partie a)
In French, the word for "potato" is "(la) pomme de terre" (literally "apple of the earth"), and can be shortened to just "pommes" (in the plural).

(partie b)
In French, the word "tôt" means "early".

Even Napoleon Dynamite would be smart enough to know that a much better translation for "Tater Tots" should have been "Mme Petits Enfants"...