David's Delicatessen/Deli & Bistro

Breakfast on Geary (redux), Part 4C

"There'll be none o' yer shenanigans in here again this morning, boyo!"[1]

(ooops! It seems as though someone forgot to pack a camera again this morning. So this is just a "stock photo" from the last time that I ate there.)

(No official web-site.)


Place: David's Delicatessen/Deli & Bistro

Location:  474 Geary Street (between Mason and Taylor Streets); phonicular contact: (415) 276-5950

Hours: (supposably) open for breakfast Monday - Saturday at 7:30am (however, with no official web-site thing to state their hours of operation [and no times listed on either their door-signage or menus], I can neither confirm nor deny when they may actually start serving breakfast for the day)

Meal: Matzo and Eggs ~ pancake style (that was succinctly how it was listed on the menu); and a glassa orange juice


I pass by David's Delicatessen/Deli & Bistro 
(see last 'blog-entry from Saturday, April 30th, 2016) just about every day on my way home from work. So I figured it was about time to stop in once more.

Once again, I sat at the oval Formica® diner-counter smack dab (when was the last time you heard of anyone ever really "smacking a dab" [or even "dabbing a smack"], though?) in the middle of the front-room. This seemed to be the spot where all the "cool people" (well, all the "off-the-street-tourista-types") were eating breakfast, anyhow.

Having only eaten breakfast there three times now, there are still a few other ideas that I may want to go back and check out (however, if my past frequency of visits is any indication, that might not be until 2020 or later):

Mediterranean Breakfast  ~ sliced tomatoes, cucumber, olives, 1 scrambled egg, cottage cheese, and bread (I have no idea how that is all prepared or served, but it sounded simple enough for me; I probably would order this with a side of hashbrowns); 

Potato Pancakes ~ served with applesauce & sour cream (I probably would also order two eggs over-medium to go with these);

and

Cheese Blintzes ~ with sour cream and jam;

or for those dead, decaying animal-flesh consumers out there, there is also the rather-interesting-sounding:

Pastrami Omelette or Corn Beef Omelette.


(Unfortunately, there is no corresponding photo of this morning's breakfast plate. For which, the cameraman has been duly and unduly chastised.)


I liked this simple meal well-enough, but it was not quite as good as I remember the similar dish that I had during my last visit to saul's Restaurant & Delicatessen (see last 'blog-entry from Saturday, December 26th, 2015). Either way, I still love this idea/concept of scrambled eggs and matzo cracker-bits made into a large pancake. This was basically a Jewish deli version of chilaquiles. This also came with a small gravy-boat-thing filled with blueberry compote/preserves. "B-b-but... blueberries on scrambled eggs, Brian?! Are you meshugge or somethin'?" First off, somehow, it sorta worked for me; and, secondly, are we not all a little meshugge, sugar, in our own ways?

For condimentary supplementation, David's Delicatessen/Deli & Bistro offered Tapatío® Salsa Picante Hot Sauce, Frank's® RedHot® 
(Original), and Cholula® Hot Sauce (Original). In a long-going (and somewhat futile) attempt (Locutus) to finally use up some of my own bottles of hot sauces, I once again used some of my own Palo Alto Fire Fighters XXX Ghost Pepper Sauce (Thanks, Brian!) on half of the "pancake" and I used up most of the provided blueberry compote/preserves on the other half. I did find it rather odd that they had two different types of yellow mustard plastic squeeze-bottles (one was French's® and the other was a generic bottle simply labelled "Yellow Mustard" ~ see, here is where a camera-photo-thing would have come in handy as a visual aid) all along the diner-counter condimentary stations; I even gave a brief thought to using a little of each as a taste-test comparison on a smaller portion of my Matzo and Eggs, but (wisely) decided against it.

the Wild Parrots of San Francisco Interlude

Once again, upon exiting the deli, I heard several of the noisy little chatter-heads, but did not see any flying around. I can only assume that they have a small pandemonium roosting atop one of the taller buildings in that area of Geary Street/Taylor Street.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating:
Matzo and Eggs ~ 6.1;
the Wild Parrots of San Francisco ~ 8.5 
(well, when visible)

___________________

1. This was not really said as I walked in the door, nor is there any connection to the word "shenanigans" and this morning's meal...

The other day the word "shenanigan/shenanigans" popped into my head and I got to wondering exactly what the word origin of it might be. I initially assumed that it might be either of Irish (think "shillelagh", et shetera) or Hebrew/Yiddish (as there are many words beginning with "sh" in both languages; please do not be a shlemeil, shlimazl, shmuck, or a shnook and make me type any examples... ).

Which brings us to a kinda-sorta stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-etymological pointer of the day (file under: "À Propos o' Nuthin' category", perhaps?):

(from Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper)
Word Origin and History for shenanigan
n.
1855, of uncertain origin. Earliest records of it are in San Francisco and Sacramento, California, U.S. Suggestions include Spanish chanada, a shortened form of charranada "trick, deceit;" or, less likely, German Schenigelei, peddler's argot for "work, craft," or the related German slang verb schinäglen. Another guess centers on Irish sionnach "fox."

(from the Dictionary of American Slang, Fourth Edition by Barbara Ann Kipfer, PhD. and Robert L. Chapman, Ph.D.
Copyright (C) 2007 by HarperCollins Publishers.)
noun

A trick or bit of foolery; a mild cheat or deception

[1855+; origin unknown; perhaps fr Irish sionnachuighim, ''play tricks, be foxy'']

And ol' Marianne-Webster herself just has it listed as "origin unknown".