Saturday morning. I woke up and there’s no bread for breakfast. What can I do? Do I go to Walgreens (a big pharmacy where you can buy a lot of stuff, and medicines) to buy bread? But I’m afraid if I eat too much of it, I will have a gluten intolerance. There’s one solution (a lazy one): going out to have breakfast. The only thing, first, is to wake up Manu. An hour after, we are outside, on our bikes, and want to go to Cambridge. Sun shining, blue sky, nothing can prevent me to eat a delicious pancake.
Surprise, surprise, there’s a farmer maket close to our place. Big deal for us so used to go to the market every Saturdays in Paris. I’ve noticed that here markets are seasonal, and take place only from May until the end of October (same thing for the fruits and vegetables baskets – I’ve learned there are called CSA, for Community Supported Agriculture). Alas, in this market there’s not a lot of stands. Even one to fix bikes.
We keep going on the breakfast road, but only for 30 seconds: I stop in front of a garage with a big funny sign for Mother’s Day (strangely not the same day in France), ‘5 car wash cost only 4 for your mother’. But I can’t take a nice picture, so I give up… And then, revelation, we’ve stopped in front of a nice diner… Why riding until Cambridge if there’s a cool spot close to us? (that’s always the dilemma: grass is greener, blablabla).
We woke up so early (will I miss my noisy neighbors after moving out, next Tuesday?) – I’m surprised by all this efficiency, we don’t have to wait for a table, and double supreme miracle, we have a booth. I love booth, so comfy “as if you were at grandma’s” as we say in French.
Fascinated by a Mitt Romney’s speech…
We take a long time to read this huge menu. While waiting, a waitress – arms covered with tatoos, tiny shorts pants and torn tights (typical Allston style) – come and pour some black coffee. Bottomless coffee: that’s a great invention, guys!
Careful, and don’t forget to read both sides…
What can we choose? Breakfast here looks for me as a ‘normal’ meal. The main dish is composed with eggs (scrambled, Benedict – my favorite- or sunny side up – I love saying it in English, that’s a cute word). There are a lot of good sandwiches. Strange fact for me: everything which is written on the menu for one sandwich will be IN the sandwich, no matter how big it is, or how it looks. I get used to this convenient way of having food in my plate. The main side is most of the time fries Too hard for me before noon!
For the sweet treats, pancakes (fruits and chocolate chips are optional) and French toasts (do you know that we call them “lost bread” in French, because it was a way to use old and stale bread).
Too bad we’ve discovered this place only now, we are moving from Allston very soon. We’ll have to build a new book of addresses.
Other coffee shops and diners we’ve recently been…
Twin Donuts. I love this retro sign. And I assume the food would have been as great. It might be the cheapest breakfast we had here (about 20 $ for us two, tip included), but that was really so-so (‘bof’ in French). I know I know, I don’t have to assume that if the sign is nice, the food will be great too.
Friendly Toast. Friends love this place, so we went once with them, but I didn’t bring my camera. Too bad, because, they didn’t take any of the food we would have chosen on the menu (cultural gap, I love it). We’ve got to go back. But there’s always 1 hour waiting and no way to book…
While going to the movies in Kendall Square, Cambridge
Thinking Cup. This coffee shop is way too far from our place to go there for breakfast. But I go there very often before yoga, to grab a sandwich (I ate there for the first time fiddle heads!) or a coffee. I NEVER ate alone when I lived in Paris, I was afraid of this. And now, I find it kind of nice to sit there, eating while reading or watching at people…
And you, what the next trend in your city? Are you pancakes or French toast team?
