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
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
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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:
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
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