more pictures of Byways

First, let's look at breakfast, which runs til 11am on weekdays and all day on the weekends. The coffee is good, and hot. The menu looks like the usual greasy spoon fare: eggs & protein, omelettes, pancakes, hash. In fact they serve four different types of hash which look beautiful and taste even better. Griddle fare includes buttermilk pancakes, but also amaretto french toast, and super fabulous blue corn hotcakes with pecan butter. Eggs are treated respectfully and are always tasty. Potatoes are well-cooked home fries—not my fav, but hey. And, I don't know that this is the best bacon in town, but it's sure the best bacon I've had in town for quite a while.

Lunch is more of the same, stuff that sounds unassuming and unexciting until it's in front of you. They have malts, brown cows (coke with vanilla ice cream), rootbeer floats, stewarts sodas and arnold palmers (lemonade & iced tea). The lunch menu is the three Ss: soup, salads, sandwiches. The prices range from $3-$9, and the salads range from tuna salad, chef, cobb, greek, back to chicken salad. French fries accompany all the sandwiches, and they're thick on one side, thin on the other!

The counter makes great seating if you're there by yourself, and the booths, by the display case of vintage travel souvenirs are great if it's quiet or you're in a small group.

This is a small place and popular, so on the weekends, bring the paper and plan on a wait.

more photos of Fuller's

Fuller's is an old school coffee shop, with a double horseshoe shaped counter. It's all counter. Everybody, except the folks that sit outside in good weather, sits at the counter.

The breakfast menu is short, with the general breakfast stuff: eggs and meat, omelets, pancakes, french toast. Prices range from $5.25 to $8.50.

But there are a couple interesting things. Heuvos rancheros at Fuller's is the most interesting and not even vaguely authentic interpretation of the dish. It's so wrong! A disk of egg is topped with cheese, then a mixture of stewed tomato, onion, mushrooms, and bell pepper. Refried beans with cheese, and salsa are served on the side. No tortilla! Georgia's Potatoes Deluxe takes hash browns and covers them with the stewed tomato mixture, plus spinach and cheese. And, german pancakes are an eggier version of the American ones.

How was the food? Good, simple, delicious. The coffee sucks, though they do have espresso. We had the pig in a blanket, which is a german pancake surrounding link sausage, and the aforementioned heuvos rancheros. Both were great.

The hash browns are absolute standard-bearers. Shredded potatoes (seemingly freshly cut, could that be?), are perfectly cooked, crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside.

Egg dishes have toast on the side, from bread I believe they make themselves.

As good as the food is, the people watching is also superb. It's easy to pick out the tourists with their Powells walking maps and Pearl shopping guides, as well as hungover locals.

• Road Food

A friend refers to the food here as unedible. Go for the beer, and remember that they have to serve food to serve alcohol.

We heard really good things about a Kobe beef burger served at both the Newport and Portland brewpubs, and so we went. Everything went wrong. The dining room was closed for a private party, which is usually the non-smoking space (so, there was no non-smoking space). The beer wasn't as good as other times. And, we went to order our Kobe beef burger ($10 without cheese, $12 with blue) and learned that you can only get blue cheese on the burger. Mind you, their normal burgers offer cheddar, swiss or blue, but order Kobe and you have any cheese as long as it's blue. (that has changed, btw)

So, we got the burgers. They came, perfectly round and flat, as if they had been frozen. They were cooked to order, and on an okay bun. Me, as a fan of blue cheese burgers, loved mine. My sweetheart, who had been denied his cheese of choice, was less happy.

Fries were good. Serving was hearty. But we both like Cafe Castagna's burger better, with its choice of cheese and incredible fries.

photo by Warren Gamley

photo by Annie & John Schmidt
some more photos

It is in the Pearl, kinda, and suddenly, it looks like it's in the Pearl. And I know there were reasons that they had to change, but I miss the old place. And I'm not crazy about the food. It's okay, but not worth the pretension you see here.

I took an out of town friend on a tiny beer crawl a few days ago, and it was really helpful to hear what she had to say. First of all, we walk in the entrance, which has a step. I think the step was added.

I remembered meeting friends at Bridgeport recently, and seeing a woman in a wheelchair outside seething because the main entrance wasn't accessible, and the wheelchair entrance was locked. It was drizzling, and she had had to send someone in from her party to get them to unlock the door.

We walk in and walk up to the iced cobras to get a beer. They aren't quite iced yet (too early in the day), but they are gorgeous—all stainless steel shinyness, and the multiple taps on each. I was looking forward to showing her the glass rinsing mechanism which chills the glass, and makes the carbonation less likely to stick to the glass, thus improving the beer's nose. She's a beer geek, she'll love this.

It's 2 in the afternoon and about 3/4 of the tables in the bakery/pub area are full. A waiter barks at us to find a seat, and someone will wait on us. Sigh. My friend would like tastes, as she's never had Bridgeport's beer, but now we'll have to ask the waiter—another obstacle.

The waiter brings a large bottle of water and glasses—nice touch! He's there immediately after we've sat, so my friend is furiously searching the menu for the beers. I try to draw this out by making some small talk so she can read the menu, but in the end, she ends up with a beer that she finds too sweet.

We look around the room. It's full of ordinary people with a little cash to throw around. They're all nicer dressed than us, and I'm in my dress clothes.

Later, we're in Henry's and I mention that it's very see-and-be-seen, and she says that Henry's is a lot more comfortable and less audacious and conspicious. She mentions too that there didn't seem to be any bike parking (there isn't) and that there wasn't any outdoor seating (there isn't) at Bridgeport. But it is right there on the Streetcar line, though there's no door on the Streetcar side (why?).

They do have pub/bar/bakery and restaurant menus, and for the neighborhood, the prices are quite reasonable.

Beerwise, they have their beers, and as far as I'm aware, no guests. They also appear to no longer be doing seasonals other than Ebenezer. Here's what they have on:

• India Pale Ale
• ESB
• Black Strap Stout
• Ropewalk Amber
• Blue Heron
• Suerpris!
• Porter
• Old Knucklehead barleywine