More Breakfasts From Mrs. J's Restaurant

Having been perplexed by the strange biscuits during my last visit to Mrs. J's Restaurant in downtown Orrville, Ohio, I found myself again in need of sustenance on a Sunday morning. Preferring to give my business to a local mom and pop place rather than a national chain, I decided to give Mrs. J's another go. When I arrived at 9 AM on Sunday morning, while the place was definitely hopping, there were still three or four booths still open. As with my first visit, it wasn't apparent whether I was supposed to wait to be seated or simply seat myself. Fortunately, another couple walked into the restaurant at the same time as I did and immediately sat themselves. Trying to fit into the crowd, I did the same.

After a few minutes, my server stopped by with a glass of water and some much needed coffee:

Between the food I had eaten last time and what appeared on the breakfast portion of the menu, it surprised me a bit when I spied packets of Sugar In The Raw sitting in the sweetener holder:

Since I had tried (and not particularly cared for) the sausage gravy over biscuits the last time, I decided to try out something else on the menu today. I wasn't feeling the love for carbs this morning, so my menu choices were simplified down to one food group: eggs. Fine, an omelet it was! While there were only a couple of specific omelettes listed, you could essentially build one to order if you chose.

Not wanting to go the route of building my own, I decided on the Western Omelet:

With my omelet, I had my choice of breads for toast; I chose wheat bread. Overall, I'd say that my breakfast today was average. Nothing in particular was wrong with it, but neither did it endear me to Mrs. J's in such a way that I would swayed to return if I didn't already happen to be in the area. Everything was hot and tasted appropriate (crunchy for the toast, tender for the eggs). The filling of American cheese, ham, and onions was nicely heated through and weren't overly salty. The only oddity I noticed was that at one end of my omelet, it was seasoned. At the other, no seasoning whatsoever. My server was attentive without being obtrusive when it came to refilling my breakfast beverages as well as checking in on me.

On my second visit for this entry, I was bound and determined to try something a little more substantial and carb-laden. During my previous meal, I noticed something on the menu called the "Pancake Sandwich." Intrigued about this interesting sounding dish, I finally decided to order it for today's breakfast. After a bit of a delay (it was Sunday during peak breakfast hours), this finally arrived at my table with maple-flavored syrup:

This was a short stack of pancakes with two strips of crispy bacon between them and finally topped with a single egg cooked to my prefernce; I chose sunny side up. As somewhat expected, the egg had been served unseasoned. I added some salt and pepper and ate the egg first. It was cooked well and the yolk was nice and runny. After finishing the egg, I skipped the cup of margarine and went straight for the maple-flavored syrup instead. The bacon and pancakes were cooked thoroughly, and the syrup added a bit of sweetness to balance out the saltiness of the bacon.

Overall, today's dish was a decent breakfast. I think what I've come to terms with over my trio of visits is that Mrs. J's serves a basic, no frills breakfast menu. While the biscuits in my original review were a bit off-putting, everything since then has been good, but not great. That being said, the price has ALWAYS been right. My pancake sandwich today cost a mere $4.35 and it was quite filling. Looking around me, I noticed lots of families and friends who were out for Sunday breakfast and some great conversation. I have no qualms about continuing to recommend Mrs. J's if you live in the Orrville area. While the food might not be particularly inventive, every small community needs a place like Mrs. J's and Orrville is well served by this simple eatery.

Hollandaise With A Twist At Wally Waffle

I find it interesting that the proximity of a restaurant doesn't always dictate how often one visits. The last time I wrote about Wally Waffle was actually the last time I had eaten there. For some inexplicable reason when I got up this morning, I just accepted the fact that it was time to return for another meal. With the restaurant being only a mile or so from my house, I'm not sure why I don't return more often. I suppose it is a lot like the high school and college friends who we keep in touch with maybe twice a year. Most of the time you just don't think about them and then every six months or so, you scratch your head and think, "I wonder what John is up to?"

Having gotten up fairly late today, I decided to minimize the inevitable waiting and go for a late lunch. I arrived at the Tallmadge location to find the restaurant only half full. After taking a small table near the back of the restaurant, my server brought me the menu, a glass of water, and the cup of decaffeinated coffee for which I had asked:


While I wouldn't consider Wally Waffle's coffee exceptional, it did do its part to help fully wake me up. Normally I'd give you a couple of menu photos, but unfortunately, the lighting where I was sitting was rather dim and even with the help of the Picasa photo editor I use to make the photographs I take blog-worthy, I was afraid that the menu simply wouldn't be legible. In its place, however, I decided to return to the earlier days on my blog and give you a shot of the condiment station that appears on every table:


My order at Wally Waffle normally consists of the oat bran waffle and a side of bacon, extra crispy. However, just like last time, I decided to deviate from that path and try something else. In all of the times I've eaten at the restaurant, I've never tried any of their non-breakfast offerings. While the 1/3 pound Angus burger looked pretty darn good, I wasn't really in a burger kind of mood. Instead, as I perused the omelettes available, I noticed that Wally's has a signature omelet made with broccoli and swiss cheese that was covered in a hollandaise sauce. Eureka! I guess it was to be breakfast after all.

After a short wait, my server delivered my omelet platter, complete with a side of grits and buttered rye toast:


Here was a close-up of the broccoli and cheese omelet:


I tasted the hollandaise sauce first, by itself and I'll talk more about that in a moment. The omelet was studded with broccoli florets and the swiss cheese oozed around the little nuggets of green. The eggs were fluffy and tender and had just the right level of salt to them. While the broccoli was definitely cooked, it still retained a bit of firmness so that taking a proper bite gave me a variety of textures to experience. Overall, I'd say it was a very nicely cooked omelet. Returning to the hollandaise, when I first tasted it, I thought the cheese had been placed on top of the omelet, directly underneath the hollandaise. I was expecting that glorious combination of egg yolks and butter, but instead was greeted with something different. The depth of flavor I was getting from the sauce felt much more savory than a traditional sauce.

Now curious about what was happening with this hollandaise, I decided to investigate further. After taking another taste, I realized that the flavor I was experiencing wasn't from the cheese but instead from the addition of chicken base. I rolled the sauce over my entire tongue trying to hit as many of the different taste buds as I could. Honestly, the sauce tasted like a cross between chicken gravy and a more traditional hollandaise. The sauce was seasoned perfectly and I imagine that the salty chicken base probably went a long way to accomplishing that task. The problem, as I saw it was that for me, every time I took a bite of my omelet with sauce on top, I got nothing but the chicken flavor. The delicate flavors from the eggs, cheese and broccoli were somewhat lost.

When I finally asked my server about the hollandaise, she told me that the sauce was made every day from scratch and that she believed the cook was indeed adding chicken base to make it "her own." While I applaud the fact that they are making from-scratch hollandaise sauce and the fact that the cook was trying to put her spin on a classic, in this case, it just didn't work for me. As a sauce for a chicken breast, this would've been perfect.

Here was a close-up shot of the bowl of grits that came with the platter:


These were consistent with grits that I've found at other local Ohio eateries. The problem I have with grits around this part of Ohio is that they are never seasoned. At all. If these were cheesy grits, I would expect them to be seasoned. Part of my problem with unseasoned grits is that it is such a stark contrast to the rest of the meal. I'm not looking for them to be salty, per se, just seasoned enough so that the natural corn flavor stands out. If any of my gentle readers out there know how plain grits are properly prepared and served in the South, please leave me a comment and explain how they should be correctly served.

[Ed. Note: When I wrote the above paragraph, it was before I had consulted a number of friends who have eaten or cooked plain grits from the South. Apparently, plain grits are exactly that, ground corn meal cooked in water. However, in wanting to understand this epicurean phenomenon even better, I'd love to hear from my Southern (or displaced Southern) gentle readers out there who can shed some light on this. Why aren't plain grits seasoned, even just a little bit?]

Fortunately, with the help of the salt and peppers shakers and this bottle of Frank's Red Hot,


I managed to give the grits some character. Overall the texture was fine, although it was a tad bit lumpy in spots. When I first opened the bottle of Frank's, I was immediately transported back to my college days. The smell alone was enough to remind me of the hot wings at The Euclid Tavern. Good times, good times.

Finally, a shot of the rye toast:


This was decent enough but was nowhere as flavorful and tasty as the toast I had eaten at my last Big Egg experience. Paired with some of the Smucker's strawberry jam from the condiment caddy, this satisfied my need for something a little sweet and a little crunchy.

Overall, I'd say that this visit to Wally Waffle was as consistent as my others. For the most part, Wally Waffle continues to deliver interesting and tasty versions of classic diner fare for a modest price. Every now and then they will falter, but fortunately it isn't very often.

Shakespeare Said It Best, "What's in a name?"

"That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

Sometimes a name becomes so synonymous with an experience that merely mentioning it immediately evokes sense memories from the past. When I heard back in January that the Big Egg would be re-opening its doors under new management, I was both excited and leery. At the time, I had just experienced what the owners of the newly re-opened Euclid Tavern had done to both the interior of the bar and the menu itself. Suffice it to say, I was wholly unimpressed. Not so much because I expected the revamped "Euc" to be exactly like the one from my college days, but because the food was just, well, bad. In fact, my dining companions at the time who were both contemporaries of mine at Case Western also agreed that not only did the new "Euc" not succeed in capturing the essence of the old "Euc", but whomever was running the kitchen needed a serious lesson in how to make tasty food. But enough about the Euclid Tavern.

The Big Egg, located at the corner of West 52nd and Detroit near downtown Cleveland, had been a staple of late-night, post-drinking pit stops for a number of years while in college. We always managed to convince one of our friends to remain sober enough while out at the bars to drive us there afterward with the promise of a free meal. Considering how cheap the food was back in the early nineties, this wasn't exactly an expensive offer to make. Heck, even I volunteered to get a few free meals by sobering up in time for the bars to close.

The Big Egg was one of those places you went to at 3 am not because the food was excellent or the atmosphere was refined. Let's be honest with ourselves, gentle reader, and call a spade a spade. We were there because we were hungry, the food was cheap, and the coffee was neverending. It helped that there were a whole cast of characters who worked there that made a visit as much about being entertained as getting fed. The waitresses were a trip ... they'd serve you that initial cup 'o Joe and then disappear for what seemed like an eternity. In desperation, a guest would often get up and walk over to the coffee pot station to pick up a freshly brewed pot. Walking around various tables refreshing peoples' cups was a wonderful way to share a little love with fellow diners. Hopefully you returned the now empty pot to its roost before the waitress walked around the corner, lest you suffer the talkin'-to that it was her job and not yours to refill coffee cups. "Well," you'd hear them stammer, "you were gone and we needed a refill."

Sadly, or depending on how you look at it, not-so-sadly, the health board shut the Big Egg down after I graduated from Case. Hell, we all knew it was bound to happen. While I personally never saw any creepy-crawly critters during my visits, I wasn't exactly in the clearest of mindsets while gracing their doorstep. I think it may have reopened once after that initial shutdown, but eventually, the original owners sold it off. Several restaurants (one of them Vietnamese in fact) opened up in the same spot, but nothing ever seemed to catch on. Earlier this year, I got a whiff of the fact that someone was going to open up a diner-style restaurant in the old Big Egg space and actually call it the Big Egg (Big Egg Family Restaurant to be more specific). With hours that were more suitable to us older, respectable folk, I figured that the rag-tag cowboy days of old were long gone.

As I was driving home from Avon Lake tonight right around dinner time, I got the craving for brinner. Or deakfast. Or brupper. Hmmm. Anyway you slice it, I was in the mood for breakfast food at dinner time. As I was getting close to downtown Cleveland at that point, the thought of trying the Big Egg popped into my head. I consulted the Google Maps on my G1 phone and within minutes, I pulled into the nicely repaved parking lot behind the restaurant. While there is still a back entrance available directly from the parking lot, I walked around to the front of the building and took a shot of the marquee that is visible from Detroit Avenue:


I walked in the front door and was pleasantly surprised to find the same beat-up old screen door from days gone by. I pushed through and seated myself at a surprisingly empty restaurant (it was Saturday night at 6:30 PM when I arrived). My server arrived quickly at my table with a menu. Here is the front of the menu:


While obviously not the classic Big Egg menu, at least it paid homage to the old one in shape alone. I mentioned to my server that I had been a big fan of the old incarnation of the restaurant and asked if anything on the menu was a holdover from that time. Sadly, or not-so-sadly, she replied, "No." When I opened the menu, I was very surprised to find not only menu items that were reminiscent of the old Big Egg, but a lot of new items that convinced me that the new owner must have a certain Mediterranean worldliness about him. There were alot of Greek and Middle Eastern dishes that I definitely don't remember from the original menu. Kabobs, stuffed cabbage, gyros, dolmades, fatosh salde, hummus, and chicken paprikash to be exact. In addition, there were a number of other traditional diner foods like meatloaf and fried fish available. The menu isn't exactly small, but it isn't unmanageable either.

However, I had come to the Big Egg for what it was known for in its hayday, the breakfasts. On the back of the menu is a list of the breakfast items that are served all day:


I decided on a bacon and cheese omelet with hash browns and rye toast for my dinner for $4.79! Amazing! While waiting for my order to come out, I snapped a photograph of the daily special:


Ummm ... chicken paprikash. That sounded really good. So good, in fact, that I decided to get an order of it to go. I haven't tasted it yet as of this blog entry, but if it is as good as my omelet was, I am in for a real treat. After what seemed like only minutes (like I mentioned before, the place was surprisingly empty during a Saturday night dinner service), I received this beautiful plate of food:


And a slightly closer shot of the hash browns and the bacon and cheese omelet:


This was perfection on a plate. Both the eggs and the hash browns were seasoned perfectly. The omelet had a nice distribution of eggs, cooked bacon, and American cheese on top. Sometimes omelet cooks can get a little overzealous and smother the eggs with cheese. In this case, there was the perfect amount of cheese on top; enough to lend some salt and creaminess, but not so much that it took over the flavor. Needless to say, I ate the entire thing. The hash browns ... oh, my, those incredible hash browns. Cracking into the crispy top layer was similar to taking your spoon and cracking through the caramelized sugar layer of an expertly done creme brulee. They literally crackled when struck with my fork. Crispy on the outside and super creamy and potato-y on the underside, they were an exquisite example of textural contrasts. Dressed simply with a little bit of ketchup on top to add some sweet and tang, this was a real powerhouse of flavor. The only way these could've been better was if they had just a bit of cracked pepper on top of them. But I realize that even that is asking a little much from a simple diner.

Along with my omelet and hash browns, I received an order of toast. Here is a shot of my rye toast, liberally slathered from the kitchen with margarine:


The margarine is actually on the inside of those two stacks of marvelously toasted rye. So often when you order rye toast in diner joints, the result is a brittle, dessicated piece of bread more suited to Melba Toast than actual toast. The problem, as I've managed to ascertain over the years, is that rye bread just doesn't sell as fast as white or whole wheat. Thus when you start with stale bread and then toast it, what you end up with is simply unappetizing. This toast, however, was very well done. The outside was nice and crispy and the inside still had a wonderful bit of freshness and chew to it. While I wish it wasn't served slathered in margarine, that's one thing I can live with if I can get this kind of freshness. Topped with a little grape jam, this was a wonderful accompaniment to my omelet.

While I wasn't planning on having dessert, my "to go" order actually came with one as long as I was dining in the restaurant. In a strange bit of serendipity, my server approached me and said that if I wanted the free dessert (which comes with most entrees, including my chicken paprikash), I was more than welcome to it. My choices were the homemade rice pudding, a scoop of vanilla ice cream, or a scoop of chocolate ice cream. After seeing the various Mediterranean specialties on the menu, you can guess which one I picked:


When my server sat this down in front of me, the heady scent of cinnamon absolutely overwhelmed my olfactory senses. Generally speaking, this was a nice rice pudding. It was sweet without being overly so. The cinnamon was a nice supporting flavor. However, this wasn't my favorite version of this treat. It seemed more about the sweetened vanilla custard than rice itself. There was definitely rice in this, don't get me wrong, but it was more custard-y than rice-y. From the trio of desserts I was offered, I honestly think it was still the best choice. However, I was surprised that after the amazing dinner that I had just experienced, this wasn't a little better.

For all of the disappointment I had when revisiting the Euclid Tavern after so many years, I am happy to say that I had the complete opposite experience at the new incarnation of the Big Egg. They are open every day from 6 am until either 8 or 9 pm, depending on whether it is a Sunday or not. As an added incentive, I discovered when I stopped by that they are now trying out 24 hour service on both Fridays and Saturdays. I'm not sure if that's in response to the old Big Egg's reputation, but it does mean that you can get your fix after the bars close at least two nights of the week. I heartily recommend you give them another look for their wide variety of menu items as well as their killer omelettes and hash browns. I know that the next time I go back, I'm going to have to do a full Mediterranean tasting from the wonderfully diverse menu.