Black Bear Diner

A(nother) breakfastary mini-roadtrip:
Colma, CA[1]

"It's great to be alive in Colma."

https://blackbeardiner.com/location/colma/


Place: Black Bear Diner

Location: 4927 Junipero Serra[2] Boulevard, Colma, CA

Hours: open bright (well, sometimes even before the Sun has bothered to wake up) and early every morning at 6:00am 

Meal: Shasta Scramble ~ avocado, spinach, tomato, onion, bell pepper & Jack cheese, served with your choice of strip-cut hash browns, country red potatoes OR fresh fruit and a housemade (well, diner-made) biscuit; and a cuppa (with two refillas) Java City™ Coffee (not sure which blend/roast they serve, though)

https://www.javacity.com/

(Today's EweToobular juxtaselections oughtta be pretty self-explanatory from the name of the restaurant and the town in which it is located.

And, yes, that is actually Jesus Christ singing in the first song; this was during his Hippie-era days in the early 70's when he was trying to get all the young folks more interested in his church-stuff. I think that is Keanu Reeves singing duet with him, too [and I always thought he was a Canadianlander and not a Christian.].)


At the suggestion of my brother Sean, who had dined at a Black Bear Diner (one of the original locations in Northern California/Mount Shasta[3] Area) a few months back, I decided to check out one of the newer locations in this California-based restaurant-chain. I am never averse to trying new places and I don't hate chain-restaurants; I just generally much prefer locally-owned smaller places. I have seen commercials for Black Bear Diner on TeeVee for several years now and this was the first time (as Colma's restaurant is pretty d*rn close for me) that I could check out anything from the diner-chain.

I think the original/first Black Bear Diner opened in 1995. This newer location just opened last month. It is in the same space in the parking lot of Serra Center that used to once house Fresh Choice, then California Fresh, and many other businesses over the past thirty years or so. I would think that a family-oriented, kitschy diner will probably do a much longer business there. (Something tells me that ol' Guy Fietti won't be checking into any of these places any time soon on his "Triple-D" show... which ain't necessarily a bad thing.)

I enjoyed that the house (well, diner) stereo was playing many old 50's and 60's kinda songs. When was the last time you heard "Classical Gas" along with "I've Been Everywhere(, Man)" (I'm talkin' the original 1962 'mericanized version by Hank Snow, too) and early Ray Charles?

(Adding to the kitsch-quality, their menus are in the form of newspapers.)


I am not sure if I will be getting back again any time soon, but they do offer many other good ideas for breakfast, suchas: 

California Omelette ~ avocado, mushroom & Jack cheese;

Vegetarian Omelette ~ mushroom, onion, tomato, bell pepper, spinach & Jack cheese (and I am so glad they do not call this a "Veggie Omelette"; see, even Black Bears have more sense than that);

Fiesta Scramble ~ scrambled eggs, tortilla strips, pickled jalapeño, Cheddar cheese, onion & cilantro, topped with black olive & avocado. Served with a warm flour tortilla, housemade salsa & your choice of potato OR fresh fruit (this sounds like it is their version of Chilaquiles);

Cinnamon Roll French Toast ~ 3 slices of thick-cut cinnamon roll dipped in French toast batter and grilled then topped with powdered sugar and drizzled with icing. Served with fresh fruit (okay, so maybe this just-disgusting-enough-to-pique-my-abnormal-tastes dish might deserve a return visit);

and two others that I can not try, but sounded interesting for the meatetarians out there:

The Scrambowl ~ a hearty all-in-one bowl of ham, bacon, link sausage, eggs, bell pepper, onion & pickled jalapeño, scrambled over country red potatoes, then topped with Cheddar cheese & country gravy. Served with a housemade biscuit;

or (for those of you that prefer your dead, decaying bovine meat fried-up poultry-style)

Country Benedict ~ No Hollandaise on this one! Split English muffin, chicken fried steak, two poached eggs and country gravy.

There really is not much to say about this dish. It was scrambled eggs with a mess o' junk in it. It was tasty and better than I could ever make. (Besides, I don't remember when the last time that I actually bought eggs... or had bell peppers and tomatoes in my refrigerator at the same time.)

I went with the country red potatoes as my side choice. These were very good homefries made with red potatoes, red and green bell peppers, and red onions. Their "strip-cut" hashbrowns looked pretty decent, too, but I just had hashbrowns yesterday and wanted to try the homefries.

I was asked if I wanted to substitute toast for the housemade (diner-made, whatever) biscuit ~ yeah, right! I can make my own d*mn toast at home. I will always go with the fresh-baked item, thank you! Plus, the biscuit was HUGE and very good.

This ended up being a whole lotta food. I will be honest, I could not quite finish it (and left maybe two or three bites). I did make sure to finish all of the biscuit and homefries, though.

The Coffee was really not that bad either. This was better than your Papa( Bear)'s average diner muddy-water drink. It was even better after I dumped the orange slice garnish into it.

I had come well-equipped with a few of my own hot sauces, fully expecting a chain-diner-type-joint to supply only Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce 
(Original Red Sauce) and maybe Cholula® Hot Sauce (Original). However, I was very pleasantly surprised to see that Black Bear Diner offers three of their own hot sauces on all the tables: Papa Burn ~ Hanañero[ sic ], Mama Burn ~ Chipotle, and Baby Burn ~ Original Pepper Sauce. Plus, there is a fourth hot sauce (which I didn't see on any of the tables ~ I actually got up and looked around for some) that you probably have to ask for, Crazy Cuz' Sriracha chili sauce. I used some Papa Burn on the scramble-mess, and Mama Burn and Baby Burn on separate halves of the potatoes. None of these hot sauces were extremely hot (well, for someone that has progressed beyond the "Man, those habanero peppers are painful!" stage), but they all had a bit of heat and nice flavour. Of the three that I tried, I would have to say that I liked Mama Burn the best (it's a chipotle-thing).

Even though it was all a bit of a walk on the kitschy-side (which I believe was going to be Lewis Allan Reed's original title for his 1972 hit song), sometimes a "beary" corny diner can still be a lot of fun, too.

At least the meal didn't kill me, but, even if it had, I wouldn't have had to be moved very far to be buried...


Glen Bacon Scale Rating:
Shasta Scramble ~ 6.5 (while not really being anything extremely fancy, the portions alone are worth this rating);
Java City™ Coffee ~ 6.4

___________________

1. Affectionalately known locally as "the City of the Dead" due to many cemeteries in the town. Colma was founded as a necropolis in 1924. 

Some notable names (well, people with these names) that are buried in Colma: 
Levi Strauss, Wyatt Earp (coincidentally, he is interned in the same Jewish cemetery as Levi Strauss), William Randolph Hearst, and some guy named Joseph Paul DiMaggio (I think he once played Baseball for some team in da Bronx).

https://www.colma.ca.gov/ 

2. You know, the guy who exploited and killed more Native Americans than George S. Custer ever dreamed of.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/us/to-some-indians-in-california-father-serra-is-far-from-a-saint.html

3. https://mtshastaca.gov/