Let's be real: Breakfast is God's way of saying "You're Welcome" for creating the day. It's got huge range from savory (omelettes, sausage, ...) to sweet (pancakes, waffles, ...) and from hot (oatmeal) to cold (cereal), not to mention having drinks commonly associated with breakfast (COFFEE!!!!, orange juice, ...). When done right, it's the best. When done wrong... it makes you think about how good it could have been. If the average person only gets 27,375 mornings to partake in this excellent meal, let's be sure to make them count.
With many options (but probably less than you think) in the South Bay, it's possible to get above average breakfast at places that only people over the age of 65 are aware. Well, them, me, and soon to be you. However, before such a 'guide' can be given, you need to be aware of my personal preferences, so can decide how best to utilize the information below. To this end, I judge my breakfast experience by the following aspects of an ideal breakfast, roughly in order:
-) Hash Browns - Crispy and Seasoned
-) Coffee - Plentiful,Convenient, and Delicious
-) Meat - Bacon, Sausage, ... with various optimizations
-) Eggs - Over Medium and warm
-) Toast - Wheat, Buttered with Jam (Available)
-) Orange Juice - Slight Pulp, Cold, Fresh
-) Fruit - Cold and Assorted
I'm also a sucker for benedicts, and not a big pancake or waffle guy. Though I usually go with what (a) the specific restaurant reportedly does well and (b) my mode is. It's usually a 97-3 split in favor of savory. So without further ado, here are a few places that should be either avoided or tried. *I will continue to update this as my mornings go on*
Rick's Cafe - Los Altos
Rick's Cafe is one of the first hits you get when you search google maps for "breakfast" in the south bay, and it turns out for good reason. I've been there a few times, and it's been consistently above average each time. Here's Rick's breakdown of the essentials:
The Basic with Bacon
-) Hash Browns - Crispy, Slightly Seasoned with Salt and Parsley
-) Coffee - Not strong, below average flavor
-) Meat - Bacon: thick, slightly crunchy, nearly ideal
-) Eggs - Runny yolk, set white; nailed over medium
-) Toast - Buttered with 2 types of above average but very sweet jam on table
-) Orange Juice - Cold, not fresh, too acidic
-) Fruit - None
The good: This picture is from my 2nd time, so I already knew to ask for crispy hash browns and toast instead of a bagel. If you think you'd rather have a bagel, they aren't good enough to counter how much more full you'll feel if you get it (and they don't come with cream cheese). They sit a little heavy with everything else, but hey, it's your life. The hash browns will be just be shredded potato if you don't ask for them to be crispy. Speaking of crispy, the bacon is great. The eggs were cooked more or less perfectly, and the toast + jam combo was good. Both choices for the jam are sweeter than I prefer, but are good enough that it doesn't matter too much. Also, the coffer of coffee is left at the table, earning major marks for amount and supply.
The bad: If only the coffee tasted better... it's noticeably not very good. Usually you can push past it, but the lingering over-brewed yet watered down flavor is hard to shake. Also the OJ is sub-par. I had the misfortune of seeing the waitress pure $2.50 worth of OJ from a large plastic container that may as well have read "from frozen concentrate." The OJ is almost necessary to balance the salty deliciousness of the other good items because on fruit comes with the order normally... that will be my adjustment for next time.
Overall: 8.5/10
Bistro Maxine - Palo Alto
Ok, I'm going to prefix my comments on this place with the following: Bistro Maxine is known for French Crepes, both savory and sweet. I did not order a crepe when I ate there, simply because I didn't want a crepe. Someone next to me ordered a Brioche French Toast that looked good, but that's not my bag. At least it wasn't on the morning I went there... it definitely should have been.
2 eggs with bacon, toast
-) Hash Browns - NONE
-) Coffee - Bad, not very hot even
-) Meat - Bacon: thin but still bacon
-) Eggs - not over scrambled nor runny
-) Toast - barely placed on heat, awful
-) Orange Juice - fine, not special
-) Fruit - Ripe and good
The good:Not often is the fruit dish the star, but in this case it is (and not just because everything else was bad). What the fruit lacks in diversity and extravagance it makes up for in ripeness. Nothing is worse than a hard chunk of melon. The scrambled eggs were also exactly how I like them: not over cooked to crumbles nor running with under cooked whites. It's too bad I ordered over medium, I probably would have enjoyed these more. OJ was passable, not really good or bad, so I'm counting that as a win.
The bad: No option for hash browns?! Not even as a side? Oversight AT BEST. The coffee was objectively awful. So bad, in fact, I had to go to another cafe after breakfast to make sure I wouldn't succumb to the eventual caffeine headache. Bacon can basically never be all bad, but this stuff tested that assertion. And the "toast"... let's have a very real conversation about toast. Because what was placed on my plate was not toast, but nor was is just pieces of bread. If forced to place a weighted average on them, whatever you want to call what was on my plate was about 90/10 bread to toast, with what most people will considered "toasted" beard coming in at a solid 20/80. I don't want to say it was pathetic, cause that feels too strong... I'll let you know when I come up with the right one. Lastly, the service was awful. Not that I wanted it, but the waitress never came around for coffee refills and took my order after others why arrived after I did (and then got it wrong).
Overall: 2/10