#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

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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