phoenix bar & Irish Gathering House

http://www.phoenixirishbar.com/


Place: phoenix bar & Irish Gathering House

Location: 811 Valencia Street 
(between 19th and 20th Streets)

Hours: open at 10:00am Saturday & Sunday for "Brunch"

Meal: Huevos Valencianos ~ roasted chiles, avocado, black beans, eggs any style, corn tortillas, choice of grilled Irish bacon or spicy sausage (both of which I ochtó-a-sé-ed, of course); and a large glassa grapefruit juice

(Today's EweToobular juxtaselections? Simples! Sir George Ivan just loves him some Irish soda bread.)


In an attempt to revisit some places that I remembered really liking (and because I am running out of "new" places to try), I returned to phoenix bar & Irish Gathering House (see previous 'blog-entry from Saturday, November 22nd, 2014). Probably one of the reasons that it has taken me this long to make a return trip is that they open at 10:00am and they call the first meal of the day on Saturday and Sunday mornings "Brunch". (Okay, that's two reasons, but they kinda go hand-in-hand.) I find that when I have to "wait that 'late' to eat breakfast" (especially when it is called "Brunch"), it appears as if half the day has been wasted on just one meal.

This morning, they seemed to ostensively be playing one-hit wonder songs from the 80's on the (Irish Gathering) House-stereo. (Seriously. Can anyone really name another hit that the Outfield ever had?!)

There really isn't a lot of things from which to choose on their "Brunch" menu (and even less-so for stupid vegetarian-types); I counted nine entries only. Here are a few selected items:

Irish Bacon Benedict ~ grilled soda bread, Irish bacon, poached eggs, Hollandaise sauce (I liked this idea of substituting the d*mn *nglish muffin with Irish soda bread; I suppose I could always order this gan an flesh ainmhí marbh lobhadh);

Bacon Boxty ~ potato cake, Irish bacon, poached eggs, Hollandaise sauce (again, I would have had to order this gan bagún);

and they did have an off-menu Special this morning:
Fried Chicken & Eggs (I am not sure what that may also have included, but I almost felt like ordering it just to see which of the two they would bring out first...).

Once again, the meal started with them bringing out a small basket with some slices of their very good homemade (well, Irish Gathering House-made) Irish soda bread. I had finished most of the slices before the meal was even brought out. Last time I ate there, they brought out more when asked, but I figured I wouldn't need any extra this morning.

I was expecting this dish to come out as a prototypical Huevos Rancheros dish, with the eggs on top of corn tortillas, on top of the beans, and all smothered with a salsa. Actually, this came out more as a deconstructed Huevos Rancheros where everything was separated. I ended up adding their tasty Salsa Valenciana to the eggs once I had cut them up a bit. I had ordered my eggs "over-medium"; however, they came out "just barely over-medium". They were still edible (just barely); I am not a big fan of runny, under-cooked eggs.

phoenix bar had Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (three ways: Original Red Sauce, Green Jalapeño Sauce, and Chipotle Pepper Sauce) and Tapatío® Salsa Picante Hot Sauce for use as condimentary supplements... and (because it is also an Irish Gathering House) bottles of HP™ Sauce[1]. I had even brought some of my own hot sauces, but ended up not needing to use any supplemental hot sauces this morning because of their own above-mentioned tasty Salsa Valenciana.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating:
Huevos Valencianos ~ 6.5 (this is factoring in their excellent homemade [well, Irish Gathering House-made] Irish soda bread freebie-starter)

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1. How many people are aware that the "HP™" stands for "Houses of Parliament"?

I was not aware of that myself until I looked it up this morning. I just assumed that it was the initials of the inventor of this most iconic British brown sauce. (Of course, now it makes sense why there is a picture of Big Ben and some other building on the labels.)