BREAKFAST ACROSS AMERICA: OUR FAVORITES

FOOD

A lot of research went into where we chose to have breakfast. Yelp, Trip Adviser, local newspapers, and regional magazines all provided valuable information. I tried to stay away from the "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" establishments and I think I was successful in that I didn't see Guy Fieri's autographed picture on any walls. The upshot is that we ate really well. I gave five out of five stars for the food to 21 of the 48 restaurants. Most of the others received four stars. Here are the best:


1.  Absolute Bakery and Café;  Mancos, Colorado
 
 I had never had huevos rancheros before ordering them at this gem of a café, but I was so glad I went out on the Mexican limb. The portion was as tasty as it was humongous. The large-as-the-plate corn tortilla was just out of the oven. The eggs and vegetables tasted as fresh as the Southwestern Colorado air. But the beans were the star of the show, oh so savory and soul satisfying.

2. Otto’s Place;  Galena, Illinois

    This was the Healthy One’s favorite breakfast on our odyssey.  It started on a high note with a “Apple Sconut”.  Unfortunately, the restaurant only had one left so a bit of a fork war broke out between the Healthy One and I over this melt-in-your-mouth masterpiece. The Healthy One then had a bacon, onion, and Gorgonzola quiche which she pronounced as the best quiche she ever had. My “Pigs In A Blanket” weren’t bad either.

3. Home Kitchen Café;  Rockland, Maine

     Walking into this café, there were certain clues  I was going  to be eating well. The large dining room was full of customers. Half had smiles on their faces and the other half had their faces in their plates. I ordered a dish called “Home on the Range” which was corned beef hash topped with two over easy eggs. It also came with a couple of delectable polenta cakes.  The mix of chunky hash and fresh eggs provoked grunts of pleasure. After lifting my face from the plate, I joined with the people who had big smiles on their faces.

4. Avila’s Nipa Hut;  Hobbs, New Mexico

   Here was a simple, cash only place with 23 different types of breakfast burritos. I had a burrito stuffed with sausage, bacon, ham, egg, potato, and cheese and topped with salsa. Yes, that’s correct. It was all my favorite foods under one wrap.  I still dream about this burrito. The tortilla alone deserves a blue ribbon. If I lived in Hobbs, and I’m glad I don’t, I would be at Avila’s every morning.

5. Wagon Wheel Cafe;  Thayne, Wyoming

    The eggs and hash browns were solid fare if not remarkable, but it was the meat that put this place in the number five position. The sausage and bacon were a carnivore’s dream both in terms of taste and portion size. By far, the best pork products consumed on the entire Breakfast Tour.  My arteries were taxed, but it was worth it.



SERVICE

I was always impressed at how hard the breakfast waitresses and the few waiters we met worked. Studs Terkel in his book "Working" interviewed a waitress who said "When someone says, "How come your just a waitress?" I say "Don't you think you deserve being served by me?"". I would answer that question with a "Yes" in just about every place we ate. I gave out five stars for service to 22 breakfast places. Most of the others received four stars. These five had all-stars as servers:

1. Old European;  Post Falls, Idaho

   When the menu has enough pages to qualify as a novel, and the names of many of the dishes are unpronounceable, and you are faced with a myriad of combination choices you need a special kind of waitress. We had one. I believe she said her name was Courtney. She showed patience, kindness, and astute knowledge about the European dishes. She was a savior to us poor saps who were having a heck of a time navigating the menu. She spent a lot of time with us. She held our hands in a metaphorical sense. She was the perfect waitress.

2. Willy’s Kitchen;  Ferndale, Maryland

      This was the first stop on The Breakfast Tour and the service bar was set very high. This was truly a locals place but our waitress treated us no differently than the customers who came every week. She was an expert at her craft. You had the feeling that she had been serving customers for a long time but hadn’t lost the touch or the enthusiasm for her job.  Looking around the restaurant you couldn’t help but notice the other waitresses all had the same upbeat attitudes – a sisterhood of excellence.

3. Jerry’s Cafe;  Beloit, Wisconsin

      Have you ever noticed that in most Indian restaurants all the servers are male whereas in most Hispanic restaurants the servers are predominantly female?  The six or seven Hispanic waitresses at Jerry’s looked like they could have been all from one family - moms, daughters, sisters and cousins . They worked as a seamless coordinated team and were a wonder to behold.  Our primary waitress was a young teenager who topped the cuteness scale. Due to her accent and her braces we didn’t understand anything she said but her constant smile was as warm as our coffee.

4. Annie’s Cafe; Butte, Montana

     We were talking to a local in Bozeman MT and he asked us where we were headed next. Butte we told him and he looked at us with something akin to horror. “Be careful”, he said, “that’s a rough town with some mean-spirited characters”.  Nothing could have been further from the truth at Annie’s Cafe. Our waitress was a joy.  She was engaging and about as upbeat as any person could be at 7:30 in the morning. Additionally, an elderly gentleman would come by every so often to freshen up our coffee cups and spread his good cheer.

5. Hot Cakes Cafe and Lodging; Hankerson, North Dakota

     There is something to be said for small town congeniality and first day enthusiasm. Our waitress was on her maiden voyage as a server and couldn’t have been more friendly and helpful. Mistakes were made but were more than compensated for by an eagerness to please.

Special Mention:  Track Kitchen;  Lexington, Kentucky

      The Track Kitchen is a cafeteria. My experience with cafeterias, starting in high school, is that the workers in general are not a jovial lot. They always seemed to be playing the role of assembly line workers, doing their prescribed scooping or spooning  without much zeal. Not the four or five ladies behind the counter at the Track Kitchen. They greeted you like you were a favored nephew. Obviously, this was genuine hospitality and not an act to get a good tip because the only tips they possibly received was which horse was going to win the third race at Keeneland..


AMBIENCE

We avoided the cookie cutter chains like the plague. The restaurants and cafes we dined at all had their unique personalities. Decor ranged from tacky to tasteful, from arty to rustic, from homespun to contemporary, and from traditional to just plain crazy. These were my favorite:


1. Three Chicks Seed, Feed, and Cafe;  Greenwich Village, Arkansas

  Where else can you wander out the back of a cafe with your cup of coffee and be greeted by Trey, the friendliest turkey in Arkansas, if not in the entire United States?  The cafe itself, entered through a corrugated metal door, is colorful, cozy, and definitely down-home. The feed store ambience starts out front with a can’t miss large statute of a cracked in half egg with two large baby chickens sticking out the top engaged in mysterious activities. To add to the mystery, you wonder what happened to the third chick.

2.  Absolute Bakery and Cafe;  Mancos, Colorado

     This was a place where after finishing breakfast I could have lingered until they handed out the lunch menu.  A hippie vibe permeated the room creating a very mellow, almost sleepy environment. They baked all their goods in-house and the smell of fresh bread had a Pavlov effect.  The furniture was eclectic with no two tables and chairs alike. Locals had artwork hung on the walls. A wall of post-its held comments from customers.  My favorite – “Your breakfast quesadilla is such a great cure for hangovers that I’ve been getting drunk every night!”.

3.  Liz’s Where Y’at Diner;  Mandeville, Louisiana

     You break into a smile the minute you see this diner. Outside you are greeted  with colorful paintings on cinder block and banners with cute sayings while the inside is bathed in tropical colors. The checkerboard floor further awakens your senses. You are energized by the surroundings even before the first sip of coffee.

4. Wild Huckleberry;  Wenatchee, Washington

     This restaurant is in a 1919 Arts and Craft architecturally styled house. The exposed wood, built-in bookcases, muted lighting, wooden floors, and a fireplace all lent itself to a formality you didn’t find in a diner or small town cafe.  You could be either seated in the living room, dining room, or front porch.  No doubt, the rooms looked much as they had back in 1919. The tables and chairs melded well with the Arts and Craft style.  It was nice to eat in a place with a little class.

5. (tie)  Cathedral Cafe;  Fayetteville, West Virginia
              Block House Cafe;  Dayton, Oregon

     Both of these cafes were former churches. On the outside, the two cafes kept the steeples and the original foundations and walls, but on the inside, the two restorations went in different directions. The Cathedral Cafe kept a pair of 14 foot high stained glass windows which gave the room some semblance of a holy place but other than that the room had the appearance of a 1960s folk music/coffee house venue – colorful  table tops, mosaic designs on the wall and acoustical music playing the background. The Block House Cafe was more somber yet magnificent with its wide wooden floor boards, brickwork, and pristine furniture. A lot of money went into this conversion. The clientele of the respective cafes matched the environment. The laid back customers at the Cathedral Cafe sported flannel, Gortex, beards, and baseball caps whereas the Block House cafe’s customers were more dressed up. The Block House Cafe had people conducting business over food while the Cathedral Cafe had a couple of dogs eyeing my food.


COFFEE

Edward Abbey once said "our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second." On the breakfast tour I purchased a lot of gasoline and had a lot of coffee that tasted like gasoline. I don't feel like I'm a coffee snob but I think I know a satisfying cup of java when I meet one. Only a few establishments did themselves proud with their brew. A mere nine places received five stars. Here are the top five:


1. Absolute Bakery and Cafe;  Mancos, Colorado

     Coffee roasted by Desert Sun Coffee Roasters in Durango, Colorado. This coffee immediately got the heart pumping, yet was smooth and oh so satisfying. Three cups of their Black Velvet blend and I was ready to conquer the world.

2. On Orange;  Lancaster,  Pennsylvania

     Coffee roasted by Lancaster County Coffee Roasters.  In Amish country you better serve a good cup of coffee. This coffee was great. The Star Barn blend proved to be aromatic, bold, and as smooth as silk.

3.  Toymakers Cafe;  Falls Village, Connecticut

     If it's going to be 40 minutes before you get your breakfast, there should be some good coffee to help while away the minutes.  I drank both the “Toymakers House Joe” and the “Toymakers Commonwealth” blends out on the front porch and didn’t care how long it took for my breakfast to be done.

4.  Warehouse Bakery & Donuts;  Fairhope, Alabama

    The breakfast wasn’t that great but the coffee was terrific. It didn’t hurt that the operations of the source of my cup of coffee, the Fairport Coffee Roasters, were set up in an adjoining room.

5. Cathedral Cafe, Fayetteville, West Virginia

     Coffee roasted by the Equal Exchange, West Bridgewater, Massachusetts.  I think that coffee tastes best on cold, damp, miserable mornings. On this morning it was warm and pleasantly warm outside yet I had the urge to stay inside and keeping drinking the French Roast Bottomless Coffee.



BEST OVERALL

As you may have already guessed, of the 48 breakfast establishments we visited, if I could only go back to one, it would be the Absolute Bakery & Cafe in Mancos, Colorado.



SIX OBSERVATIONS AFTER DRIVING 15,000 MILES AND EATING BREAKFAST IN THE 48 CONTIGUOUS STATES.

1.  You can’t get a decent tasting cup of coffee in the Midwest.

2.  If a restaurant advertises as serving “breakfast all day” the breakfast will probably be excellent.

3.  There is a lot of corn in the middle of the country.

4.  Order pancakes, french toast, or a waffle and it will come with enough butter to make even Julia Child blush.

5. Approximately 75% of the breakfast customers I saw were elderly men. I was one of them.

6. There is no one I would rather do road trips with than the Healthy One.

#48 WASHINGTON -  And Then There Were None

I’ve been everywhere, man

I’ve been everywhere man

Crossed the deserts bare, man

I’ve breathed the mountain air, man

Travel, I’ve had my share, man

Travel, I’ve had my share, man

I’ve been everywhere.

               -  Johnny Cash

This was it. The last stop on the Breakfast Across America tour. We headed to a small city where you can't help but smile when you say its name.

  

WILD HUCKLEBERRY
Wenatchee, Washington

The Wild Huckleberry is located in a house near the downtown area of Wenatchee. The Arts and Crafts architecturally styled structure was built in 1919 and was the home of a well known local physician.   

We traipsed up to the front door like a couple of trick-or-treaters only to read a sign that said the entrance was around back.

AMBIENCE:  Upon entering the house you find yourself in what appears to be a waiting area. The restaurant owners seemed to know what they were doing by stocking the room with toys and books for the impatient, cranky little children who might be waiting with their parents for a table to open up. I wondered if the idea ever backfired when that table did open up but the child was so engaged with this fun stuff that he or she didn't want to move on to the dining area. We had no time to become cranky and impatient because the tables were only about 25% occupied when we arrived and we were immediately seated.

The restaurant owners kept true to the original inside style of the house. It appeared that the original interior walls were kept at the sacrifice of greater space. As is the case with Arts and Crafts interiors, there was plenty of exposed wooden structural elements, built-in bookshelves, a giant front porch, and a large prominent fireplace. Tables and chairs which flawlessly melded into the decor were set up in the parlor, dining room, and enclosed all-weather porch. We were seated in the parlor next to the fireplace. This was the view from our table:

Standing next to our table was an odd, four foot high, ceramic statue of  a nattily dressed gentleman holding a tray filled with an assortment of coins. I couldn't tell by the expression on his face whether he was offering up the money for the taking or asking for a contribution. In any case, he was a welcome addition to our breakfast and I referred to him as my huckleberry friend.

5 out of 5 stars 

FOOD:  I had only ordered a waffle once before in our breakfast visits in the previous 47 states, and it wasn't very good. I'm more of a pancake man but the waffle listed on the menu was no ordinary waffle. It was called a Huckleberry Waffle. Described as a waffle with wild huckleberry compote, sweet creamy mascarpone cheese, and whipped cream, I couldn't resist. 

They certainly didn't skimp on the whip cream. This outstanding piece of workmanship elicited an OMG from The Healthy One. I, on the other hand, didn't know what to say. Speechless but not stunned, I quickly grabbed my fork and dug in.

 

The tartness of the huckleberry compote was not neutralized by the sweetness of the mascarpone and whipped cream. Rather, the tartness and sweetness partnered into a delectable combination. The waffle was very good and gave the dish some crunch but it was kind of beside the point; more of a reliable vehicle carrying valuable cargo.

The Healthy One had a tough choice to make. The menu listed a veggie omelet, a veggie eggs benedict, oatmeal, and a fresh fruit plate. She threw me a curve ball by ordering the Cinnamon French Toast with bacon and egg. Perhaps it was because this was the last stop of the breakfast tour or perhaps she had finally come over to the other side.

According to her, the cinnamon bread, from the very popular Sure To Rise Bakery in neighboring Cashmere, WA and was top notch. The hefty slab of butter that had begun to melt on top was quickly dispensed with but the syrup was not ignored. The dish was pronounced delicious. I wasn't even given the opportunity to sample the bacon. No matter; I was absorbed in my whip cream high.

5 out of 5 stars
    

COFFEE:   They served Tony's coffee which is roasted in Bellingham, Washington and has been in operation since 1971. I assume the picture of an elephant on the mug is because the beans are from Kenyan plants and not because the beans were picked from elephant dung (see https://www.bloomberg.com/news/photo-essays/2017-01-27/world-s-priciest-coffee-is-hand-picked-from-elephant-dung).

The taste didn't bowl be over, but it was a solid cup of coffee.

4 out of 5 stars

SERVICE: Our server was professional and capable. She gave the impression of having veteran experience and the service was flawless. What was missing was that little extra dose of friendliness that we had found at other restaurants. 

 4 1/2 out of 5 stars

.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT WENATCHEE:

Wenatchee, a city of 33,000, sits at the confluence of the Columbia and Wenatchee rivers in central Washington. The city is known as the "Apple Capital of the World". Apples are Washington State's top crop, generating $2.4 billion in production value. That's about 60% of the country's apple production. Wenatchee lies in the center of the apple-producing region that runs through central Washington, from the Canada border to near the Oregon border.

Although geographically central to the apple growing region, Wenatchee itself has lately focused more on tourism and less on apple trees. Since 1987, Wennatchee has lost about half of its apple orchards. Where orchards once stood there are now housing developments, big box stores, restaurants, motels, and parking lots. Apple production has shifted from small growers to large operations that are located farther from town. Still, at its core, Wennatchee identifies itself with apples. For example, every April the city hosts a sizable Apple Blossom Festival which attracts over 100,000 people.


BURN THOSE BREAKFAST CALORIES OFF:

We hiked up the Icicle Ridge Trail where we were rewarded with a spectacular view of the town of Leavenworth, WA, the Wenatchee River, and the surrounding Cascade Mountains. The 4.8 mile, 1800 feet elevation hike did burn off a fair number of calories but it was the 90 degree heat that really did a job dissolving the Huckleberry Waffle.

       June 19, 2018

NEXT UP:  I did write in my introductory blog entry that I would include the District of Columbia in the breakfast tour and that is still the plan. At some point, after I recover from driving well over 15,000 miles, I will make the 2 mile drive from our house into DC, have breakfast, and post a report. As for Hawaii and Alaska, I just don't know when or even if we'll ever get to travel to those beautiful far flung states. Additionally, people are always asking about my favorite breakfast during the journey, so I also plan to write a little summary piece on the best of the best.

Friends have offered all sorts of ideas for a next adventure. For example, pizza in every state, bowling in every state, brew pub in every state, ice cream in every state, and my personal favorite, happy hour in every state. Someone even suggested visiting a gas station bathroom in every state. I would say that we already pretty much did that. I just didn't take any pictures. 

I think I'll just hold off on the next odyssey for awhile and ponder the future over a bowl of Cheerios.  

#47 IDAHO -  Foreign Feed Fest, No Passport Required

  
     
OLD EUROPEAN
Post Falls, Idaho

It made perfect sense that The Old European Restaurant was located on a road named Schneidmiller. As we approached the address we saw their marquee out front. 

This looks promising I thought to myself.

Being the Old European, I expected an older building, maybe even a castle or something with gargoyles. This was not the case. 

AMBIENCE:   Old European is a large, bright, and airy dining room. The combination of numerous windows and a large number of hanging ceiling lights almost required sunglasses on this sunny morning. The room could probably accommodate well over 100 customers in a mix of booths and tables. In the middle of the room was a good sized staging area with counter seating where the many servers poured fresh squeezed orange juice, prepared coffee, and received the food orders from the kitchen. Canned music played in the background. It wasn't Mozart or Liszt which you might expect from a restaurant called Old Europe but a soundtrack that included Yakety Sax by Boots Randolph.

We opted for a booth which had business class comfort. The place was also impeccably clean. I thought that if any food ended up on the floor I might give serious consideration to re-plating the item.

There wasn't anything in the room that imparted a sense of "Old" Europe except for maybe some of the customers. It was more like "Modern" Europe with a touch of Denny's. There was some wall art scattered throughout that did relate to cultures across the pond.

4 1/2 out of 5 stars 

FOOD:  Upon entering the restaurant we were provided with menus, or should I say weighty storybooks of European Union breakfast foods. There were six large pages of breakfast items with detailed descriptions and some family history pertaining to certain dishes. It looked like it might take until lunchtime before I finished reading this breakfast menu.

In addition to the usual hot cakes, french toast, and omelets there was a hodgepodge of dishes that would make most NATO soldiers happy: German potato pancakes, Swedish crepes, Danish aebelskivers, Dutch babies (that's what the menu said!), and Hungarian goulash. I hadn't realized people ate Hungarian goulash for breakfast, but it seemed that it was the Old European's signature dish. It was described as potatoes mixed with peppers, onions, ham, sausage, bacon, and four eggs topped with cheddar cheese and fresh tomatoes. I wanted to make it back to the car so I passed on the goulash. 

Then there was this: 

Talk about choices. I almost had to draw a flow chart on my napkin to figure out all the possibilities. What if you wanted your eggs and meat with french toast and a fruit bowl? Was that allowed? My brain was over addled with figuring out permutations and costs that I just decided it would be easier to order individual items from other parts of the menu.

I am a big fan of rye toast. I read with excitement that the Organic Black Russian Rye Bread was made in house and came with homemade raspberry jam. There was even a story in the menu about the owners' ancestors riding wagon trains from Virginia to Iowa. From there the owners' grandparents moved to Montana as homesteaders and because of that the restaurant only uses organic rye flour grown in Montana. The story choked me up a little. I ordered a couple of toasted slices.

  

I also ordered a couple of fried eggs which I placed atop one slice of rye while the other slice received all that could be scraped out of the little tub of raspberry jam. 

The eggs were perfectly cooked and nicely complemented the wholesome taste of the rye. The other slice, slathered in the raspberry jam was equally as delicious. I wasn't done yet. I was very intrigued by the Danish Aebelskivers. The menu stated that they were hard to describe but then went on to describe them as ball-like pancakes cooked in a special cast iron pan over medium fire. That didn't tell me much. The menu went on to state, and I'm quoting word for word, "These are not fluffy because we use artificial rising agents, they are fluffy because we only use real ingredients." I read that sentence three or four times but could not quite grasp it. Now I went from uninformed to totally confused. The menu also noted that you could get them stuffed with sausage and Havarti cheese. Never mind, I was all in.

I was on a roll so to speak, so I ordered an additional batch of Aebelskivers, this time stuffed with blueberries.

I couldn't tell if my Aebelskivers were fluffy or not fluffy but I could tell that they were delicious. I especially liked the ones stuffed with sausage and Havarti cheese. They were pretty rich but I was able to eat three of the six sausage/cheese and one of the blueberry. The Healthy One helped herself to one of each leaving three of these tasty orbs of perfection for a snack later in the day.

The Healthy One ordered oatmeal with bananas, raisins, and nuts. She asked that if she ordered a cinnamon roll would I help her eat it. "Of course!", I said, "do you think two slices of rye bread weighing about a half pound each, two eggs, and nine Aelbelskivers (Danish for "tightly packed calories")  are going to fill me up?"  I also knew deep down that asking me to help eat the cinnamon roll was just The Healthy One's way of assuaging the guilt of making the order and that I would probably only end up with one bite. 

She thought the oatmeal was as good as oatmeal could be and raved about the cinnamon roll, but could only eat half of it. I was too full to help.

It was a lot of food. This was the first and only time during the Breakfast Across America tour that we asked for a container to take away leftover food. Into the container went three sausage and cheese Aebelskivers, one blueberry Aebelskiver, and a half of a cinnamon roll to be devoured later in the day.

Five hours later we were winding up a six mile hike along the Spokane River in Washington State. Approaching the car, I was hungry and had beautiful visions of Aebelskivers in my head. I was salivating at the thought of sinking my teeth into all that doughy goodness. Upon opening the car, the container was not to be seen. We looked everywhere but it soon became apparent that we had left the container sitting on table of the restaurant, 30 miles away. As they say in Denmark, Lort!, Lort!, Lort! 

5 out of 5 stars
    

COFFEE:   This was not the kind of breakfast establishment where you just order coffee. You had to decide what kind of coffee you wanted. They offered Austrian coffee, organic french press coffee, and your conventional fresh ground coffee. Dissuaded by the prices of the Austrian and french press coffees I ordered the basic type which turned out to be excellent. As an added bonus they provided a whole thermos of the liquid goodness.

5 out of 5 stars

SERVICE:  I believe I heard our waitress say her name was Courtney and she was fabulous. She certainly understood that the menu was overwhelming, complicated, and time consuming to read and showed remarkable composure during our numerous questions and requests for more time. If patience is a virtue, Courtney was one of the most virtuous waitresses I have met. I wouldn't be surprised if Old European sends their staff off to a week long work retreat where they take classes in "How to Pronounce European Breakfast Items" or "How to Answer Stupid Questions Without Rolling Your Eyes" or "100 Different Ways to Construct a European Breakfast". Courtney knew the menu permutations inside and out and her pronunciation of Aebelskivers was fluid and flawless or at least she did a good job of fooling us. She guided me in a non-pushy but informative way through my selection process when I decided to go all ala carte. I expressed concern that the cost of my ala carte adventure was going to far exceed the price of the prepackaged European Breakfasts. "Don't worry, I'll make it work for you", said Courtney. And somehow she did.

To top things off Courtney presented us with a $5 gift card to be used at our next visit to the restaurant. I doubted that we would be returning to Post Falls in this lifetime so I gave the card to a grateful gentleman at a table across the way.

 5 out of 5 stars

.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT POST FALLS:

Post Falls is a rather unremarkable city of 30,000 that is both a suburb of Couer d'Alene and a bedroom community to Spokane. The city was named after Frederick Post who built a lumber mill at the "Little Falls" of the Spokane River. In 1871, Post negotiated with the local Couer d'Alene tribe for the possession of 200 acres in exchange for which he would provide processed lumber to the tribe. The agreement was painted onto a rock outcrop which still can be viewed today.

Post Fall has as seen rapid population growth during the past 50 years. In 1970 the population was only 3,000. Affordable housing has been one of the biggest reasons people have moved to the city.


BURN THOSE BREAKFAST CALORIES OFF:

We crossed the Idaho/Washington border and walked the Riverside State Park Loop trail in Spokane. It was a pretty 6 mile round trip along the Spokane River. The only blot on the beautiful day was the sound of automatic gun fire from across the river at the Spokane Rifle Club.

       June 18, 2018

NEXT UP: WASHINGTON

#46 MONTANA - An Actual Hole In The Wall 

  
     
ANNIE'S CAFE
Butte, Montana



We parked the car a little ways down the somewhat shoddy block from the address I had from Annie's Cafe's Facebook page - 815 E. Front St. - and then found the building. Uh-oh! Mile High Herbal Medicine didn't appear to serve the type of breakfast we were interested in. I immediately got on the phone and discovered that I had an old address and that Annie's had relocated. Fortunately, it seemed that we didn't have to get back in the car because the new address was 801 E. Front St.

We hurried down the rest of the block past a large vacant looking building with boarded up windows. Upon reaching the end of the 800 block there was no Annie's Cafe to be seen. I was getting a little irritated and hungry. We reversed course and took a closer look at the doorway to the big brick building we thought might have been an abandoned tenement building and noticed both an "Open" sign and a 801 over the doorway. And then we looked up.

There was the sign, not exactly at eye level. We entered the hole in the wall half expecting to meet a hulking goon asking us to give a secret password to gain entrance.


AMBIENCE:   Walking into Annie's is like coming down the stairs and seeing your friend's over the top basement remodeling project for the first time. It's not quite what you would expect. It was a fairly large room with booths and tables scattered throughout. There are no windows. There is plenty of artificial lighting to make up for the lack of natural lighting. Although the room is large, the combination of no windows and faux carpeting gave the room a cozy feel.

Then there is the plethora of paraphernalia on the walls, in the corners, and hanging from the ceiling. The owner is a coke addict. There are Coca Cola signs, Coca Cola plates, Coca Cola cups, Coca Cola clocks, Coca Cola bottles, and other Coca Cola objects placed, hung, shelved, and strewn throughout the room. There also was an occasional Pepsi and Royal Crown interloper artifact on the wall. If you can't look out the window you certainly can keep your eyes stimulated with the decor. It was fun.

5 out of 5 stars 

FOOD:  I ordered a ham, cheddar, and green pepper omelet with hash browns and toast. My go to toast is rye. Here I was given a choice of the type of rye bread! I chose the deli rye over the dark rye although I was not sure what difference it made in terms of taste.

Annie's slogan is "Just Good Food" and I would agree. It wasn't fantastic nor mediocre. It was just good.

The Healthy One put in a one and done type order - one egg, one pancake, and one piece of bacon. There is something pitifully sad about seeing a lone bacon slice trying to escape into the shadows. Its like opening a bag of Doritos and finding only one Dorito or ordering onion rings and getting just one ring. Its just a tease. Most disappointing, it is not conducive for sharing. 

4 out of 5 stars
    

COFFEE:  Annie's may be the home of good food but it just has okay coffee. The Healthy One reported that her decaf was "pretty awful". For some odd reason I had an urge to order a Coke to help caffeinate my system but I didn't. It just didn't seem appropriate at 7:30 in the morning. 

3 out of 5 stars

SERVICE:  Our waitress was terrific. She was friendly, buoyant, and helpful. She told us that she usually did the cooking but on this particular morning Annie was doing the cooking and she was doing the serving. I believe that having a break from kitchen duty may have contributed to her cheerful attitude. There was also a not so young gentleman who refilled our coffee cups a couple of times and who was just as convivial as our waitress. Perhaps Annie's father? He told us laughingly that "I forgot to put in my hearing aid and take my meds this morning". We just felt fortunate that he remembered to put on pants.

 5 out of 5 stars

.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT BUTTE:

I had read somewhere that Butte was the "armpit of Montana". A shopkeeper in Bozeman told us to be careful because it was a "rough town".   After a brief visit I came away thinking that Anthony Bourdain hit the nail on the head when he said this about Butte, "It's not pretty but its deeply beautiful".

This is one fascinating city of 33,525 people. The physical appearance of this once thriving mining town is startling. Fourteen headframes, ranging from 9 to 18 stories high, still remain over mine shafts. Some of these are lit in red LED lighting at night to commemorate Butte's copper mining heritage. Much of the city is a trove of architectural treasures. Butte still contains hundreds of commercial and residential buildings that were erected in the late 1800s. A significant number of these buildings are now empty but still in great shape. About 100 of the commercial buildings have alluring "ghost signs" painted on their sides advertising the merits of such products as Wrigley Spearmint Gum and Hoyer's Magic Liniment.

Known as "The Richest Hill On Earth", Butte was the largest city between Chicago and San Francisco at the turn of the twentieth century. Population peaked at 95,000 in 1917 when World War I accelerated the demand for copper. At that time there were 14,500 underground mine workers. Many of these miners were immigrants from various countries, but especially from Ireland. Today, Butte has the largest population of Irish Americans per capita of any city in the U.S.. You might think that St. Patrick's Day would be a big deal here and you would be correct, attracting 30,000 revelers to the festivities.

With its large miner population toiling in physically dangerous conditions, Butte has had an active labor union movement. It was not a company town. The unions often butted heads with Anaconda Copper Mining Company who had a virtual monopoly over the mines in the area. Sometimes things got violent. In 1920 company guards fired on striking miners killing one and injuring 16.

Copper mining went from being underground to open-pit in the mid-1950s and then it all pretty much ended in 1983. Over the course of Butte's history, mining operations generated an excess of $48 billion worth of ore but it came with a big price. The local environment suffered unimaginably. Butte has the largest EPA Superfund site in the U.S. The poster child of the environmental degradation is the Berkeley Pit. The Pit is a former open-pit copper mine within the Butte city limits, measuring an incredible one mile long by a half mile wide. It is 1,780 feet deep of which 1,000 feet is filled with highly toxic waste water. In 1995, 342 migratory snow geese stopped on the poisonous lake for a rest. They all ended up dead. Now The Pit has a 24 hour watch program to prevent birds landing in the water for more than a couple of hours.

 The Pit is a tourist attraction. It is about the only place in the world where you can pay to see toxic waste ($2). We went to see it but it was closed for the day. I did take a picture from outside the fence.

Perhaps Butte's most famous native son is Evel Kneivel (real name Robert Craig Kneivel). He was raised in Butte, lived in Butte after getting out of the army, and buried in Butte. For 16 years Butte hosted Evel Knievel Days in July. This year the 3 day event has been cancelled due to lack of funding.

I should also add that the night before breakfast I ate the best New York Strip steak I've ever had at Casagrande's Steakhouse, just around the block from Annie's Cafe.



BURN THOSE BREAKFAST CALORIES OFF:

After breakfast we drove to Couer d'Alene, Idaho where we walked around town and up and around Tubbs Hill which offered magnificent views of the 25 mile long Lake Couer d'Alene. After settling in to our Airbnb in Post Falls we walked to Falls Park where the Spokane River is damned up and then on to dinner at the White House Grill where I certainly gained more calories than I lost getting there.

       June 17, 2018

NEXT UP: IDAHO

#45 WYOMING - Not So Great Expectations 

  
"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh", said Piglet at last, "what’s the first thing you say to yourself?"

What’s for breakfast? said Pooh. "What do you say Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet

Pooh nodded thoughtfully, “It’s the same thing” he said.

  - A.A. Milne

After some extensive internet research, I had picked Tootsie's Take or Bake in Thayne as our Wyoming breakfast stop. I liked the name, it got some good reviews, and had some delicious sounding menu items. We arrived at our motel in Thayne in the early evening and set out for dinner. Thayne has exactly five restaurants, four of which were closed on this Tuesday evening. The only one that was open happened to be Tootsie's so that's where we headed to dinner.  As we approached Tootsie's door I noticed a sign that said, "Closed on Wednesdays". There went my carefully constructed breakfast plan. It probably didn't matter. I ended up jamming the button on their self-help soda machine and caused a flood of Dr. Pepper to pour all over Tootsie's floor so I probably would have been persona non grata anyways.

Yet now I was in a quandary. There were not a lot of options. I started to feel a little panicky. Directly across the street from our motel there was a cafe that opened at 6 AM on Wednesdays. On our walk back to the motel from Tootsie's (which went a little slowly because the bottom of my sneakers were sticky from the soda incident) we stopped and looked in the windows of this potential breakfast candidate. "Eh" I remarked. We looked at the menu and again I remarked "eh" but on the other hand it said breakfast was served all day which is usually a good sign. Not convinced that this cafe was the best place for us, I got on the internet back at our motel to see if any other possibilities existed. The next town up the road had a breakfast cafe but reading the comments on Yelp it appeared it also doubled as a shrine to our current president and his policies and I was in no mood for that. There was also a doughnut and coffee place that a few people raved about that might have a lot of potential.

"Are we going across the street or for doughnuts tomorrow?" asked the Healthy One. Both options had her worried.
"Let me sleep on it", I replied.
"So, what did you decide?" she asked the next morning.
"We're going to both", I replied.

  

      
WAGON WHEEL CAFE
Thayne, Wyoming

AMBIENCE:   The Wagon Wheel Cafe sits on Highway 89 just like every other commercial establishment in Thayne. It is a small restaurant with a decor leaning on the woodsy side. Of course, given its name, it has the obligatory wagon wheel light fixtures. The place was spotless and the shine off the tables almost required sunglasses. Notice the soda machine in the far corner of the room. I tried to sit as far away as possible from it.

There are about 8 seats at the counter, maybe 25 chairs at the varnished wooden tables in the middle of the room, and four and a half booths along the windowed front wall. That's correct, due to poor planning, inadequate space, or both, only half of a booth could be fitted along the wall. When we arrived no one was sitting at the counter, and no one was sitting at the tables but all four booths had occupants. We figured a half booth was better than none and settled in the corner. The picture is overexposed, but that's our romantic booth in the corner, where we sat side by side staring out the window at the front grill of a Chevy Silverado parked in the lot.

 4 out of 5 stars 

FOOD:  There was nothing real exotic on the menu. This was good old Western grub. I ordered eggs over easy, hash browns, English muffin and sausage. The eggs were beautifully cooked and fresh, the hash browns were very good, the English muffin was perfectly toasted, but it was the sausage that really shined. The patty must have weighed somewhere between a quarter and a third of a pound and was perfectly spiced, not-to-greasy, oh so satisfying pork. It was the best sausage I had tasted on the almost completed breakfast tour. 

  

 Then Healthy One received her eggs scrambled, her whole wheat toast un-buttered, and her bacon stacked high and mighty. Sitting side by side it would have been easy to swipe a bunch of bacon ("Hey, look at that cowboy getting out of the truck!") but she was very generous and allowed my pitiful countenance 5 strips. 

The bacon was jam packed with smoky flavor. It was incredibly delicious and almost brought tears of joy to my eyes. No doubt, it was the best bacon I can remember ever having and I once belonged to the Bacon of the Month Club. Wagon Wheel Cafe was meat heaven.

Having low expectations result in little disappointment. If I had the highest expectations about the food coming into breakfast at the Wagon Wheel, I would still be one satisfied customer. Having low expectations made the meal so much more special. I felt like a student who thought he had bombed the essay exam but when the test was returned it had a big "A" on top.

5 out of 5 stars



Twenty minutes later and fifteen miles up the road, we pulled into Delish Donuts & Coffee in Alpine Wyoming for our breakfast dessert. I ordered a half dozen plain mini-donuts. The woman behind the counter looked at me like I was crazy. "Is that all?", she asked increduously. I guess it is the rare person who goes in and only takes away six donuts of a size that you can easily ingest in two or three bites.

These miniature nuggets of goodness, crisp on the outside, moist and warm on the inside, were fantastic. I took a picture of four of them on the hood of our car. Two of the donuts were gobbled down somewhere between Delish's door and the car. These four never made it inside the car. Now I know why the counter woman thought I was crazy.    

COFFEE:  I was smitten with the coffee at the Wagon Wheel. It just went down real nicely. I commented to our waitress that I thought the coffee was excellent and asked who the roaster was. She sort of chuckled and said it was from Farmer Brothers. Sounded to me like a couple of brothers had set up an roasting operation in some old barn up a nearby dirt road. When I later googled Farmer Brothers to get more information I was in for a surprise. Farmer Brothers is a 1,800 employee wholesale coffee roasting operation based in Texas. This proves that I am not a coffee snob and that I can't tell the difference between a mass produced generic restaurant coffee and coffee brewed from high altitude coddled beans harvested one at a time by Guatemalan virgins.

I have a few theories on why I liked this coffee so much. One is that the coffee to water ratio was such that it resulted in an optimal strength and boldness that I could appreciate. A second theory is that Thayne has really good water. A third theory is that my taste buds were so titillated by the marvelous sausage and bacon that I could have drunk Sanka and been happy. Finally, maybe Farmer Brothers does have a good product.

4 1/2 out of 5 stars

SERVICE:  Our waitress who I am guessing was also the owner, was soft spoken and business like. She came to our half booth promptly, took our orders graciously, and delivered our food without fault. I have nothing to complain about nor nothing to rave about it in terms of our service.

 4 out of 5 stars

.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT THAYNE:

Thayne is tiny with only about 350 people. In sits in the southern part of the 50 mile long, 10 mile wide Star Valley near the Idaho border. The pulchritudinous valley is filled with meadows, lush green farm fields, and the Salt River and is hemmed in by two mountain ranges with peaks over 10,000 feet. Thayne itself has an elevation of 5,945. The sunny 70 degree June day we visited evoked my idea of the perfect summer climate. On the other hand, winter is said to be brutal. In December and January the average low is 4 degrees and the average high is 27 degrees. Thanye's record low is -38, recorded in 1979.

More than half of the population identifies themselves as members of the the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Star Valley was settled by Mormon apostles in the late 1800s. Many of these Mormons practiced polygamy and came to the Star Valley seeking refuge from prosecuting lawmen in Utah and Idaho who were enforcing the federal Edmonds Anti-Polygamy Act of 1882. It is unknown how many current residents in Star Valley still practice polygamy but I would recommend that they not use the half booth at the Wagon Wheel.



BURN THOSE BREAKFAST CALORIES OFF:

We took a beautiful hike on the Big Elk Creek Trail just over the border in Idaho. We then spent the next two days exploring the wonders of Yellowstone National Park.

       June 13, 2018

NEXT UP: MONTANA