date: 7/8/06
location: minneapolis
grade: c+

dude, this is so messed up.

this is what is says on their web site under the subheading "saturday breakfast": "our full menu is available starting at eleven o'clock."

so if it is after 11 am, should i not expect to be able to go in and order anything off their menu?

well, apparently not. i wanted the grilled cheese sandwich, really i did. this is the description for it: toasted with garlic butter and topped with tomato confit, cheddar, pepperjack and arugula pesto. now, doesn't that sound good?

but when i tried to order it, i was told i could get a cold cheese sandwich, but not a grilled cheese as the hot foods that are not breakfast foods are not served until noon. i could get cold non-breakfast foods before then.

so then i thought... hey, the mango champagne cream cheese roll sounds good, i wonder if it has champagne in it. that sounded weird enough to be promising. no go on the champagne, so i didn't get it.

by this time i was just in 'whatever' mode (bad restaurant karma), and chose to get the saturday scramble, different every saturday. this time it was two eggs with brie (guess that's why i went for it), arugula, kalamata olives, and possibly something else i forgot (zucchini?). it came with a bit of fruit, a slice of toast, and sliced oven-roasted potatoes.

apparently no one thought to taste or view this before deciding it was the special. anytime you use a dark olive in light colored food, such as eggs, it make the light colored food a very unappealing shade of grey. meanwhile, no one though to parcook the arugula in stock or anything to make it less bitter. there's a reason that this flavor combo usually goes with baby spinch instead of arugula.

so i have bitter, grey food with precious few bits of brie. i felt a bit bitter and grey myself about it, really.

the potatoes were fine, the toast decent, but still... not worth the price, especially as the amount of everything but potatoes seemed skimpy.

another off dish was the quiche someone ordered. though light-textured and decent and such, supposedly had roasted red pepper in it. we were able to spot one piece. it also lacked cheese.

the granola wasn't the overly sweet kind you find in many places. the waffles were the best of the lot. for whole grain ones, they weren't the leaded lumps they had the potential of being, they were light and fluffy.

during brunch, we were dicussing the food misses, and as it happens... moose and sadie's has much better food than it used to, it seems, as they have the old birchwood chef. that could explain the meal. i'd say go to moose and sadie's instead. or at least i would. i think i would be less disappointed. the prices here sometimes seemed a bit high, but that's because of the admirable emphasis on organic things.

this is one of those times where the grade is more about my experience than the collective. i think everyone else would have rated it much higher than i. i thought i would put that in there in case people were wondering.