(Yeah, so there is no cover photo of the restaurant this morning. There was a construction scaffolding blocking the entire front of the building.) Place: Joe's Coffee Shop Location: 6134 Geary Blvd (between 25th and 26th Avenues); phonicular contact: (415) 668-9382 Hours: open 7:00am Sunday to Saturday Meal: Vegetable and Cheese Omelet~ tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, bell pepper, and spinach, served with hash browns and toast (where I went with sourdough again today); and a large glassa orange juice to drink
(Now I kinda wish I had ordered a side o' beans with my breakfast... [actually they do not offer these as a side on their menu, but still...]) I went back to Joe's Coffee Shop (see last 'blog-entry from just Saturday, February 2nd, 2019) this morning. This was actually my back-up "Plan B from Outer Space", Mr. Wood. I originally was planning on going back to Lincoln Park (Golf Course) Restaurant; however, they were not open at 8:15am when I had walked "all-the-way-over-there" (it is a full two blocks away, after all). They are supposably open on Saturdays and Sundays at 8:00am for breakfast now. Just-in-case they were not open, I had it in mind to simply head down to Joe's Coffee Shop (which was a whole 'nother nine blocks away, fercryin'outloud!). Once again, I sat at their diner-counter, and, once again, there was Premier League Football (which looked a lot like Soccer, if you ask me) on the telly: M(anchester)UN(ited) v. CHE(lsea). I did not stay until the end of the match, but ManU was the first to draw blood (Goooooal!) with a Penalty Kick-thing while I was eating breakfast.
There was nuthin' fancy-shmancy about this meal. It was just your basic, good ol' diner-fare kinda omelette. I am not sure which type of cheese was in it, but it was a decent, melty kind ~ probably Monterey Jack (it was definitely not any tasteless, useless 'merican "cheese", which was what I was fully expecting). The hashbrowns were very good ~ crispy-crunchy ~ just the way I like 'em. For condimentary supplementation, Joe's Coffee Shop offers Tabasco®Brand Pepper Sauce (Original Red Sauce), Crystal®Louisiana's Pure Hot Sauce, and Huy Fong Foods Inc.Sriracha HOT Chili Sauce on the counter top and tables. I used a little of my own Old St. AugustineDatil Pepper Sauce (Thanks,Greg & Cindy!) on the omelette and H*ll's KitchenSmoky Bourbon Hot Sauce (Thanks, Mom!) on the hashbrowns. I also made sure to use a good amount of my new The Spice & Tea Exchange® Florida Sunshine Spice Blend (Thanks, Cindy!) all over both the omelette and potatoes. https://www.spiceandtea.com/seasonings-blends-rubs/grinder-blends/florida-sunshine-spice-blend.html Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Vegetable and Cheese Omelet ~ 6.0
(No official web-site, and I am pretty sure that they will never bother themselves to get one, anyway.) Place: Joe's Coffee Shop Location: 6134 Geary Blvd (between 25th and 26th Avenues); phonicular contact: (415) 668-9382 Hours: open 7:00am Sunday to Saturday Meal: Avocado and Cheese Omelet (with fresh salsa) ~ served with hash browns and toast; and a large glassa orange juice to drink
(Ol' Deckie MacManus must be a d*mn ManU fan!) After what ended up being one h*ckova long hiatus, I finally made a return visit to Joe's Coffee Shop (see last 'blog-entry from Monday, May 7th, 2012[1]). It is not as if this place were so very close (it is well over six blocks away from my apartment building... well, seven to be exact) that I could just stop by whenever I felt like it. Actually, I had been planning on checking them out again for breakfast (I only ride past the d*rn place twice a day, to and from work) again soon, anyway. The "again soon" just happened to be "again today" because my first plan-of-breakfastary-attack was to go back to Royal Ground Coffee (see 'blog-entry from Saturday, August 18th, 2018). However, when I had arrived there just after 8:00am, I was informed that the kitchen help (I think it is just one guy) had not arrived yet this morning (they open at 6:30am and, normally, are supposed to start serving meals by 7:00am). So, luckily, I did have a back-up option (and only a few blocks away to boot [... or not to boot? Is that really a question, Wild Bill?]). I sat at their diner-counter once again because I felt like it. Plus, there are really only a few tables in this small place and I wanted to keep those available for "real" customers. One cool thing was that I got to watch a little Football (of the Britishlander-type; better know to all youse as "Le Soccér") ~ CHE(lsea) v. HUD(dersfield) ~ on the telly behind the counter (which was directly in front of me, anyway). Because they are an olde-timey family-owned diner-type kinda joint, they offer a pretty decent and varied breakfast menu, off which, I suppose, I could have also ordered: Vegetable and Cheese Omelet(tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, bell pepper, and spinach); Mushroom and Cheese Omelet(they did not list the ingredients for this one on their menu for some reason); Three blueberry pancakes with whipped cream;
or Waffle with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. Additionally, there is also Joe's Scramble(ground beef, mushrooms, onions, and spinach). However, I got in trouble the last time that I had ordered this dish (which was on my very first visit there for breakfast way back in 2011), because someone (whose name shall remain "Brian") forgot to ask the waitress/server-lady/(probably owner-lady, too) person to omit the dead, decaying grinded-up bovine flesh and they had to remake it all over again from scratch (scratch always tastes much better than dead, decaying grinded-up bovine flesh, anyway). Ooops!
Now here is where if I had known ahead of time that I was going to return to Joe's Coffee Shop, I woulda checked to see what I had ordered on my previous visit and probably have ordered something different this time. Saul Goode! It was almost seven years since I had this omelette and an exact repeat every seven years would not even bother Tom Ewell, I bet. There was really nothing special about this meal. It was just your typical good ol' diner-style omelette made with lots of fresh avocado dices throughout. I am not exactly sure what kinda "cheese" was used in the dish this morning. I think it must have been some queso fresco (it was white and in chunks and did not taste like Feta to me). The last time that I had ordered this omelette, it came with that plain ol' yellow-orange (faux Cheddar-stuff) cheese in it. I think I prefer the u/i white cheesy comestible from today a bit more. For condimentary supplementation, Joe's Coffee Shop had just Crystal®Louisiana's Pure Hot Sauce and Huy Fong Foods Inc.Sriracha HOT Chili Sauce on the counter top and tables. I used some (a goodly amount, 'cause this one is only about as hot as your standard Tabasco®Brand Pepper Sauce - Original Red Sauce) of my own Dragon BreathGarlic Hot Sauce (Thanks, Mom!) mixed in with the hashbrowns and some (a lot less, 'cause'n this one has both Cayenne Chillies and Habanero Chillies in its ingredients) Pepper PalaceGator Bite Hot Sauce (Thanks, Greg & Cindy!) on top of the omelette. Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Avocado and Cheese Omelet~ 5.9 Chelsea v. Hungerdunger, Hungerdunger, Hungerdunger, Hungerdunger & McCormick ~ (a crushing) 5-Nil[2] ___________________
1. Hmmm??? I am not quite sure why I "took" a sick-day off on a Monday at the beginning of May that year. I think it might have been because I had some friends in town (Hey, Wayne-o and Donna!) and did not feel like "wasting" a day of vacation on the likes of them. (Pffft! It is not like they are really "good friends" of mine; I mean, I had only known them both as a couple for twenty years or so at that time [well, okay, maybe I had also known Wayne-o all on his ownsome for possibly another fourteen-and-a-half years prior, but still... ]). 2. This is not really that surprising. Poor ol' Huddersfield Town are currently the doormat of the Premier League with only two Wins in twenty-five Games thus far. They are kinda like that MLB Team that plays in da Bronx and everyone always seems to steamroll. https://www.premierleague.com/home
(There is no correlation between today's EweToob link and either Balompié[1a], Fútbol[1b], or Soccer[1c]. I just couldn't think of any good songs that were either Soccer-related ~ Really? You wanted to listen to another rendition of Gerry and the Pacemakers "You'll Never Walk Alone"? ~ or had anything to do with El Salvador.)
I had desayuno this morning at Balompié Cafe; they are located on the corner of 18th and Capp Streets over in the Mission. Balompié Cafe has been in business since 1987, and they will be celebrating their 25th Anniversary this year on Día de los Muertos(while that is actually a Mexican holiday, I don't know what they call Hallowe'en locally in El Salvador). There are three locations: two in San Francisco (both in the Mission) and one in El Salvador (in the city of Metapan).
Balompié Cafe is mainly a Salvadoran pupusas[2] joint and Balompié/Fútbol/Soccer fan hang-out. This is probably one of the best places in San Francisco to get pupusas. They offer several varieties of pupusas, including seven (siete, 7!) different vegetarian versions even. Balompié Cafe has several large flat-screen TeeVees with Balompié/Fútbol/Soccer games always going. Most everyone sits at the long table in the middle of the restaurant which has seating for twenty or more (which is really just five tables of four lined up) and have good views of two of the TeeVees. There was a match on this morning at 8:30am when I got there; however, I am not quite sure which teams were playing ~ with all of the ads and crap on players' jerseys now-a-days, it may very well have been the Barcelona Fiats vs. the London Fuller's Prides, for all I could tell. Who was winning? It looked like the blokes in the bright yellow jerseys were winning to me…
The rafters are covered with Balompié/Fútbol/Soccer scarves; from many countries, different teams, and even both types of "Football".
I had thought about ordering some pupusas with breakfast, but knew that they have a minimum order of two pupusas ~ you can mix and match any type you like, but it has to be two total ~ and that would have been way too much food to eat for me with an egg dish. I suppose I probably could have paired those with a simple breakfast of Plátanos, frijoles, queso, crema (fried plantains, beans, cheese, and sour cream). I ended up ordering Huevos con loroco[3] ~ eggs with loroco, a native Salvadoran vegetable, rice, and beans; served with two homemade corn tortillas. I also had a cuppa house coffee. (I made this into café el mexicano ~ with two sugars and lots of cream/leche. I have never been to El Salvador, so I don't know how they drink their coffee.)
This was a decent enough scrambled egg dish; I liked the unique flavour of the loroco in the dish. I do like nopalitos in a scramble/omelette better, though. The corn tortillas were excellent: very thick and hot off the griddle (which is to be expected, as a place that specializes in pupusas will usually have fresh corn tortillas, too). The coffee ended up being no charge with the meal. I tried pointing out to my server that they didn't charge me for the coffee; I am not sure if something was lost in the translation, as she kept pointing to the "Tax" part of the bill. Maybe it was just easier to comp me the coffee than to ring it up again. So, what is the flavour of loroco? It's kinda similar to spinach, but not quite; something is also lost in translation with the flavours.
Like most Mexican restaurants in the Mission, Balompié Cafe has for condimentary supplementation the ubiquitous Tapatío® and their own homemade salsa. I skipped the bottled stuff and generously used a lot of the homemade salsa all over the eggs and rice and beans; it was pretty tasty, but really only Gringo[4] hot.
Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Huevos con loroco ~ 6.0; Papusas (which I have had a few times in the past and am rating from memory) ~ 7.5
[1] Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer del día, número uno:
a. "Balompié" in Spanish is another name for what 'mericans refer to as "Soccer".
b. "Fútbol" in Spanish is also another name for what 'mericans refer to as "Soccer". This one is easy enough to translate, as it comes from two English word roots "Fu" (meaning "Don't even think o' steppin' on me shoes, ya fargin' bastage!") and "Tbol" (meaning "That ball on a pole that no one ever knew how to play with in the schoolyard.").
c. The 'merican term "Soccer" (this really isn't a "stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer", more of a "stupid, useless cultural differentiation") comes from a shortened form of "(As)soc(iation Football)" plus "-er". This was originally 19th Century British university slang and was called "socca", and later "socker".
[2] Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-culinaristic pointer del día, número dos:
"Pupusas" are a traditional Salvadoran dish made of a thick, handmade corn tortilla. The name comes from the Spanish word for the Pipil word "pupusaw".
By the way, the correct term for a place that specializes in pupusas is called a "pupuseria", much like a place that mainly serves tacos is called a "taqueria", and a place that mainly serves diet foods is called a "dieria"*.
*(Okay, I made that last one up, but it may even be true for all I know. I was just seeing who *cough-Cassy-cough* really reads these stupid, useless pointers of mine.)
[3] Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-horticultural pointer del día, número tres:
"Loroco" is an herbaceous vine with edible green flowers, which is indigenous to El Salvador. Unfortunately, I really can't find any word origin of "loroco" on any on-line searches. Perhaps, it was just an old Spanish word meaning "herbaceous vine with edible green flowers".
[4] Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer del día, número cuatro:
Most people know that the word "Gringo" is a Spanish and Portuguese slang word used to denote foreigners (big secret there). However, not many people know that it is probably an alteration of the Spanish word "griego" meaning "Greek". Much like we have the expression "It's all Greek to me."**, the Spanish have an expression "Hablar en gringo." which means much the same. **(Also a common phrase heard throughout the Y*nkees locker-room.)
From México with Love (o El Restaurante Sin Nombre)
One of my favourite Mexican breakfast spots is SanJalísco Restaurant in the Mission. They were formerly called Los J*rritos Restaurant, but due to some stupid large corporation sticking it to el pequeño, they were recently forced to change their name from the original name that they have had since they opened in 1988. The original name meant "little jugs" (juglettes?) en español, and they still use the theme throughout the restaurant as decorations.
Long story, short: J*rritos is a popular brand of Mexican sodas from a corporation called N*vamex (think Coca Cola de México). They sued the owners of this friendly, little, local, neighborhood place and the family had to change it to a less "well-known" name. Because of which, I will not be patronizing this company's beverages any longer; están muertos para mí (and hence the "J*rritos" and "N*vamex" bowdlerized sobriquets ~ à la St*rbucks, B*rnes & Ignoble, and W*lmart). The restaurants new name stands for San (Francisco y) Jalísco (which is the State in Mexico where the family is from ~ better known as the birthplace of Tequila). Let's just hope neither of these places decides to sue them for use of this name.
Their breakfast menu has many things from which to choose for una estúpida vegetariana like me. Today I went with the Huevos con amor ~ two large eggs scrambled with potatoes, onions, tomatoes, and chile peppers (three types of bell peppers, actually: green, yellow, and red ~ if there were a white bell pepper, instead of the yellow, it could have represented la bandera Mexicana, Antonio). Potatoes mixed right in the egg dish is always muy bueno. I have had their Chilaquiles and Nopales con juevos in the past and they are also both very good; but I think this is my favourite dish.
Their breakfasts come with homemade corn tortillas on the weekends and large portions of arroz y frijoles refritos. The warm tortillas are fresh off the grille and really make the meal.
When dining at a Mexican restaurant I usually like to drink my coffee like the locals, i.e. mixed with lots of cream and sugar (mucha leche y azúcar).
They only have Tapatío on the tables, but their homemade salsa is much better, anyway. It is made with fire-roasted tomatoes and chilis. Not too picante, but muy sabrosa.
Desayuno and World Cup Soccer (which was being broadcast on the large screen TeeVee at the end of the counter), what better way to spend a Saturday morning? ~ ¡Viva México y Los Estados Unidos!
