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website - at the corner of Market and Church. It's a pleasantly open restaurant, with a big bar along the back wall. Though this was a brunch outing, so we didn't start with a drink.
One of the first things out of the waiter's mouth was that they have a make-your-own Bloody Mary bar for $3. I must admit, that's a pretty good deal (it gets you a glass with a shot of vodka; the rest is up to you), and I was sorely tempted, except that it'd been too long since I'd made one, and had a nasty feeling my $3 would get me a nasty tasting tomato & vodka concoction. So I skipped it and went for a big OJ, which was very thick, rich, and made from nicely ripe oranges, which was a welcome change from the last fresh-squeezed OJ I'd gotten at a breakfast place which came from clearly overripe fruit which had that nasty sour tang.
Anyway, their brunch menu (available Saturday & Sunday from 10-2) consists of a number of common brunchy type items for an average price of about $9.

The Food!
Wild mushroom scramble, feta cheese, breakfast potatoes - Tasty! The mushrooms were fresh and very flavorful (unfortunately my mushroom knowledge is insufficient to recognize what they were), the eggs perfectly scrambled to my taste (not runny! I can't abide gooey, runny eggs. They weren't dry, though.), and the feta was an intense counterpoint. High marks. The potatoes were described as quite good, in that my girlfriend kept eating them even though she doesn't usually like plain potatoes.
Banana pecan pancakes, maple syrup (with a side of bacon) - Enormous. 3 truly massive pancakes. I could only finish about 1/2 of them, which was too bad, because they were quite tasty - proper texture and density. The flavor combination of the pancake, banana, and pecan was very nice, but they could have used more of both pecan and banana within the cakes. One pancake only had 2 chunks of banana, which strikes me as a bit skimpy when the thing is 8" in diameter and 1/2" thick. Maple syrup was tasty. The bacon was the highlight - rich & flavorful with a good smoky/salty mix, and the fat was just cooked to the point that it literally melted in my mouth. Yum!
Equator Estate coffee - described by my girlfriend as "good but expensive" at $2.50 (though with unlimited refills, if you're a big coffee drinker it's probably not that expensive).

Overall impression? Pretty good food (though the pancakes would have been much better if there were 1 fewer of them, and maybe $2 cheaper. $8 for pancakes? really...), and while it's a bit on the expensive side, there are a lot of other brunch joints serving up poorer fare for not much cheaper. And the service was very friendly, and definately didn't make us feel rushed at all.
- posted by Hoff @ 1:01 PM