The Virtues of Ignoring Seattle Hipsters

13 Coins
130 Boren Ave.
Seattle, WA





I have to admit, I was hesitant about checking out 13 Coins.

The on-line reviews just aren’t very good.

But then I thought, “What do people in Seattle know anyway?”

After all, this is the city that actually erected a statue just two miles from here to Communist Dictator Vladimir Lenin, the man who introduced to the world the most destructive and violent ideology of the 20th Century.

And of course Seattle is the city that replaced the testosterone-fueled rock n roll of my youth with Grunge.

Instead of Bon Scott and David Lee Roth singing about kicking butt and banging chicks, we get scruffy effeminate dudes staring at their shoes mumbling about suicide and their low self-esteem.

I’m taking advice on where to eat from these people?

Not a chance.

Good move.

My breakfast at 13 Coins was an example of what makes suffering the indignities of modern travel all worthwhile.

First of all the place is just cool.

Of course all the Seattle hipster Yelp reviews come to the exact opposite conclusion.

But I assure you, if you are seeking a discrete spot to rendezvous with that busty new blonde receptionist -- or to plot the overthrow of the federal government -- 13 Coins is the perfect spot.

As you walk in and your eyes adjust to the dim old school lighting, you notice a row of snug booths on the left that envelope their patrons in ten foot walls of black leather.

On the right is more black leather, this time in the form of enormous swivel bar stools wrapping each patron in a cocoon of privacy.

That is where I chose to ensconce myself with a perfect view of the flaming grill in front of me.

The primary reason I chose to ignore the lackluster reviews and give 13 Coins a try is because I heard they served a mean “Hangtown Fry” for breakfast, an elusive culinary delicacy I’ve been meaning to try for years.

A Hangtown Fry is an omelet of onions, bacon and oysters.

What’s not to like, right?

It is a West Coast specialty that originated in Placerville, California during the height of the Gold Rush in a town so rough and tumble locals just called it “Hangtown.”

As in “Hang him by the neck until he dies.”

Legend has it that some cocky miner flush from a big score walked into a Placerville saloon, threw his winnings on the bar top and demanded the most expensive entrée the cook could assemble.

In those days before refrigeration, eggs, bacon and oysters were rare luxuries.

I sat there mesmerized as the cook sautéed and flipped the onions, eggs, oysters and bacon over an open flame right in front of me.

The result is a decedent breakfast for the gods.

While I can always wish for a few more oysters, you could taste the briny crustaceans in almost every bite, as the salty oyster liquor permeated the entire omelet.

The bacon lended a smoky essence while the onions spiced up the well-seasoned fluffy eggs.

Omelets don’t get much better than this.

On the side, I requested 13 Coins famous hash browns.

Crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, these hash browns benefited from a liberal dousing of oily, greasy goodness.

Clearly, the old school atmosphere gives this place its claim to fame, but the food doesn’t lack for attention either.

No doubt about it, hip isn’t an adjective you would use for 13 Coins or its throwback Hangtown Fry.

But I’ll take oysters and bacon, AC/DC and Van Halen over hip most days of the week.

Even in Seattle.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!

O’Rourke’s Diner Cures Irish Discrimination

O’Rourke’s Diner
728 Main St.
Middletown, CT




Look, I’ll be the first to admit, the Irish aren’t exactly known for creative, delicious cuisine.

At my Catholic Church pot luck, I’m headed straight for the dishes brought by the Italians.

Or the Cubans.

Or the Polish. Or the Hungarians. Or the Germans, Mexicans or Czechs.

Heck, I’ll even eat French food before Irish.

We Irish have a good way with Smithwicks, whiskey and words, but put us in the kitchen and we’re worthless.

Irish need not apply.

Like all our other misfortunes, I’m pretty sure the British are to blame for this one too.

Boiled potatoes anyone?

So I can understand why you might be bit hesitant about chowing down at an “Irish” Diner.

But you’d be wrong to be skeptical about O’Rourke’s Diner in Middletown, Connecticut. The joint is famous the world over for over-the-top delicious food.

This 71 year old institution is so famous and so beloved that when it was gutted by a kitchen fire six years ago, the local community went out and raised over $300,000 to help Brian O’Rourke, the diner’s owner, rebuild.

General Motors and Chrysler destroy themselves by appeasing the UAW bosses and building crappy cars and then demand a multi-billion dollar Bush/Obama taxpayer bailout.

A fire destroys O’Rourke’s and it is the hungry loyal customers who voluntarily help raise their beloved diner from the ashes.

Now THAT’S how it is supposed to work!

Brian O’Rourke repays that loyalty every day in his kitchen churning out a mind-boggling variety of unique creative culinary creations, many with an Irish twist.

The breakfast menu is eight pages. Eight!

Thirty crazy combination omelets. A dozen varieties of eggs Benedict. Half a dozen versions of French toast. I could spend all morning perusing the menu.

And miss my important Suit757 meeting. And get fired.

That would be bad. I needed to narrow the decision-making process before my head exploded.

Normally under these circumstances, I just go with whatever is the most unique, crazy over-the-top dish I can find. Which includes meat. Of course.

But that still doesn’t narrow things down much at O’Rourke’s.

Unfortunately, my waitress wasn’t much help either.

She said she just likes simple breakfasts – like the oatmeal.

Lady, I know the unemployment rate in this Obama bailout economy is high around here, but you really should think about another line of work.

Then I thought about it. How many times in my life will I find myself in an “Irish” diner?

I’ve got to go with one of the Irish breakfast items.

But which one? There were at least half a dozen by my count.

Now, I know what you are thinking.

You’re thinking, “Suit757, you just got done explaining in such eloquent terms that Irish food sucks.”

Well, my dear Suits in Strange Places reader, you are right.

But there is one very important exception.

Irish breakfast.

Ah yes. The most important meal of the day is the only meal you ever want to eat if you find yourself on the Emerald Isle.

Eggs. Tomato. Blood sausage. Brown soda bread. Baked beans. And Irish bacon as thick and succulent as good country ham.

Mmmm. I could eat an Irish breakfast for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Forget Molly Malone’s cockles and mussels, just give me some more of that sturdy Irish bacon!

Now granted, real Irishmen probably don’t eat a full Irish breakfast any more frequently than Southerners like me eat sugar cane syrup-drizzled pecan waffles and sausage gravy-smothered chicken fried steak.

Delicious, but even Suit757’s stout arteries can’t handle that EVERY morning.

So even for a true Irishman, an Irish breakfast is for special occasions.

And I think a visit to O’Rourke’s Irish Diner is just such an occasion.

The Dubliner Omelet I finally settled on was chock full of corned beef hash and melty aged white cheddar cheese.

This is heavenly hash!

Tender and flavorful, the corned beef hash was enveloped in a perfect accompaniment of melted cheese and egg.

The fingerling potato home fries were a wonderful comingling of potato, onion and spice.

But the homemade Irish soda bread topped with a spread of jam may have been the best thing on my plate, hard as that is to admit.

Suit757 isn’t normally a big carb guy. But Brian O’Rourke made me a convert.

First he made a personal appearance boothside to offer some complimentary fresh baked spice muffins.

But the sweet raisin-studded soda bread made me swear off the Atkins Diet for a lifetime. Grilled to a delightful toasty crisp on the outside, yet still moist as your grandmother’s pound cake on the inside, the Irish soda bread was breakfast dessert.

The only mild disappointment was the Irish bacon laid atop my omelet. Not anywhere near as thick, hearty and succulent as the real Irish bacon I’ve enjoyed in the motherland, this more closely resembled a poor man’s version of Canadian bacon.

The prices here are a bit steep too.

But nobody comes to a gourmet Irish diner like O’Rourke’s for a cheap meal. You come for a taste bud extravaganza.

And I’m happy to say, Brian O’Rourke delivers.

Not bad. For an Irishman.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.

Egg-cellent

Beth's Café
7311 Aurora Avenue North
Seattle, WA

Hours: 24 hours
Alcohol: None
Cuisine: Diner Food, Especially Omelets

Suit603 is a charter member of the Clean Plate Club.

Leftovers just aren't as good, and it's another thing to carry through security.

And it’s just a waste of money to leave it on the plate.

But I thought I might need a doggy bag when I found out that omelets at Beth’s Café were as big as they are.

You see, the *small* ones are made with six eggs and come with a huge heap of hash browns that are all you can eat (meaning, you can get more) -- the large ones are made with a full twelve eggs and are served on a metal plate that would usually hold a medium pizza.

Some groups split them three ways, though some brave souls were trying to eat ‘em alone even though, as the menu says, there's no prize for finishing the twelve egg omelet aside from pride at a job well done.

Apparently Man v. Food couldn’t finish one, though that’s not really surprising, since that guy’s kind of the Derek Jeter of the big-eating world: all fame, no performance.

I felt pretty lucky to run into the place when all I’d searched for was a 24-hour diner that wasn’t Denny’s to grab a late dinner at after a long day of meetings.

The menu’s really simple, and it seems like the main things people order are the omelets and then milkshakes.

I thought about getting eggs over easy for a moment, but at the end of the day, a Suit orders the specialty of the house, unless that involves green vegetables.

So I ordered the six egg “full house” omelet with ham, American cheese and mushrooms.

As I waited for my meal, I looked at the walls, which were absolutely covered with crayon drawings left by patrons. Evidently at year’s end, the staff votes on its ten favorite, which get put in a place of honor for the next year.

And it was a wait for food, and I found out why on the way out: this place suffers from a serious lack of grill space, given what they do.

A 12-egg omelet takes up literally half of their grill, while the hash browns take up the other half, meaning that if you get behind a few of those, you’re automatically going to have to wait 15-20 minutes for breakfast food, which is just way too long.

If I were the owner, I’d at least double the size of the grill -- their hung-over clientele probably isn’t moving all that fast anyway (the place was voted the best place in Seattle to cure a hangover), but a diner still needs to turn out food reasonably fast for the occasional late-night road warrior looking for a quick bite.

But when my food came, it was worth the wait. The chunks of ham in there are clearly from a real ham that they make themselves, and the egg’s fluffy enough that you know that they beat the eggs themselves (well, if you don’t see ‘em doing it on your way in).

But a problem with the sheer size of these omelets is that large parts of them don’t have any filling in them at all. I don’t know if there’s something they could do with sprinkling the fillings out more instead of dumping them in the middle on the grill (this would probably mess up putting the omelet together), but the reason you order an omelet is to get fillings + eggs in every bite, and this omelet didn’t deliver.

But that wasn’t such a problem that I didn’t finish the omelet -- no, this was far too tasty to let it slip, and I even finished my hash browns too: kind of hard not to have at least most of them, since they’re right under the omelet.

Somehow, I managed to get through the whole omelet and didn’t even feel that full at the end, so I decided to order a piece of their friendship bread that I saw a couple other patrons eating.

It was definitely worth it: still warm, with the cinnamon sugar on top tasting just about perfect.

By this time, the bar crowd was starting to file in, and service was much, much slower. I had to flag down a waiter to get a refill on a drink (it took a solid five minutes), and I was disappointed that they didn’t even offer me seconds on hash browns.

Not that I would have taken ‘em, but given that they're allegedly “all you can eat,” I was a little disappointed.

So I sat for a little bit and then went to pay -- again a belabored process because the people in front of me were trying to figure out split tickets, but I left happy, even if my 9 AM the next morning was half an hour closer than I really wanted it to be.

Summing it up, this is definitely a place I’m happy to have gone to, and one I’d go back to again if I’m famished and have time on my hands in Seattle.

But only under those two conditions.

Rating: Would Wear a Free Shirt

Breakfast of the Gods in Breaux Bridge

Café des Amis

140 E. Bridge St.
Breaux Bridge, LA
Visited August 22, 2010

Beer selection: Good variety.

Food: Really, really good Cajun dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The Best Breakfast in the History of the Planet!

Yeah. Go there now.

Hop a plane to Lafayette, Louisiana and take a cab to Café des Amis in nearby Breaux Bridge.

What are you doing still sitting there reading this?

I said go. Now!

Yeah, this place is THAT good.

Café des Amis serves up atmosphere and out-of-this world Creole cuisine in an old historic 19th Century downtown building in the heart of Cajun Country. They even converted an old Otis elevator from the building’s hey-day as a casket manufacturing plant into a hostess stand.

When I think of classic Louisiana Creole food, I think deliciousness and flavor.

Café des Amis takes what are already once-in-a-life-time delicacies and elevates them to the sublime.

My appetizer of Oreille de Couchon was a perfect example.

Everyone knows about New Orleans' famous Café du Monde beignets.

Once you’ve had one, you never forget the delicate texture and the warm sweetness of a fresh from the fryer beignet.

So what can a place like Café des Amis do to improve on such a perfect concept as warm fried dough covered in powdered sugar?

How about roll it up into the shape of a pig’s ear and stuff the darn thing with Cajun boudin!

Oh, yeah!

Boudin is Cajun sausage mixed with spices and rice.

It’s Cajun snack food. Breakfast, lunch or dinner.

You won’t find boudin on restaurant menus. But you will find it in every butcher shop, meat market, convenience store and truck stop from Beaumont to Baton Rogue.

Cajuns pop in, grab a link fresh from the steamer for about a buck, and enjoy the best mobile meat snack since the invention of the Slim Jim. (Ok, you’re right. The lowly Slim Jim doesn’t have anything on this delicacy).

So the concept of taking a powdered sugar, delicate ball of dough and stuffing it up with spicy Cajun sausage is beyond absurd.

And one of the top food items I have ever placed in mouth!

So while Café des Amis’ “pig’s ear” won my Greatest Food Item Ever Championship, the title was short-lived.

Try 15 minutes.

Because that is how long it took for the waitress to bring out my main dish, “Don’t Mess With My Tas-so Omelet”.

Picture this: melted Swiss cheese, spicy Cajun Tasso ham and onions sautéed in Cajun spices, all stuffed into a fluffy omelet.

Yeah, we have a new champion of the world.

The Single Greatest Breakfast of My Life was accompanied by a fresh-from-the-oven buttermilk biscuit and grits.

But not just any grits. No. Of course not.

No ordinary grits here.

How about cheesy grits studded with zesty Cajun Andouille sausage?

It was a breakfast I hoped would never end.

So I ordered desert.

Yeah, desert for breakfast. Why not?

While I’m always partial to chocolate and the chocolate pecan pie was mighty tempting, I went with a more indigenous selection, Gateau Sirop, which my excellent waitress helpfully translated for me: Syrup Cake.

As you drive across the Southwest Louisiana plains, you see one crop stretching from horizon to horizon – sugar cane. The stuff that once was used to sweeten everything from RC Cola to the Moon Pie.

Of course thanks to the infinite wisdom of the prostitutes who run our federal government, virtually nothing in America is sweetened with natural good ‘ol sugar cane any more. Not RC Cola. Not Moon Pies. Nothing.

Thanks to tariffs on imported sugar cane and taxpayer subsidies for corn, it is vastly cheaper to mass produce soft drinks, cereal, ice cream, everything, with corn syrup.

Never mind that the stuff is probably killing us. And we’re paying for the privilege through taxes and higher food costs.

But out here in this corner of fly-over country, sugar cane syrup isn’t just available, it’s a tradition. A tradition honored in no greater form than Syrup Cake, a sugar cane sweetened spice cake topped with pecans and drizzled with more pure sugar cane syrup.

Oh yeah, and Café des Amis serves it warm with a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream.

It was a perfect way to cap off one of the greatest culinary experiences of my life.

So I’m going on record right now. If Obama ever sends me off to a FEMA camp, this is what I want for my last meal. I’ll happily spend the rest of my life pushing boulders up hill as long as I have one final memory of this little spot in the heart of Cajun Country.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!

Curing Chicago Hang-overs One Gourmet Omelet at a Time

Tempo Café
6 East Chestnut St.
Chicago, IL
Visited August 19, 2010

Beer selection: None

Food: Gourmet 24 Hour Diner Food

Every city needs a place like the Tempo Café.

What Denny’s and the Waffle House are to small town America, the Tempo Café is to the big, bustling, sophisticated city of Chicago.

A place you can get an over-stuffed omelet and an endless cup of coffee 24 hours a day to cure whatever ails you.

But much as the Windy City is one of a kind (my favorite of America’s big cities), the Tempo Café is no Denny’s or Waffle House.

No. As a true reflection of the exciting city it serves, the Tempo is, dare I say, gourmet hangover food.

Each orange juice is hand squeezed.

The omelets come with such exotic ingredient combinations as broccoli-ham-mushroom-tomato or banana-walnut-honey.

You can also get piled-high skillets of hash browns, ham, onions, green peppers and multiple types of cheese that would put your neighborhood Denny’s to shame.

I wasn’t hung-over. But I was hungry.

My choice was “The Omni”, a delicious omelet with ham, green peppers, onions, Swiss cheese and American cheese served in a huge skillet over a mound of thick sliced home fried potatoes. I couldn’t even contemplate finishing it all.

I think just to make sure no one – no matter how much fun they had the night before – confuses this place with Denny’s, each breakfast comes with an orange slice, a prune and a couple wide slices of sesame seed Greek toast with fresh butter and home-made marmalade. And a tall hand-squeezed orange juice.

All for about $12, including tax.

Heck, I’ve had pints of beer in this city that cost more than that.

A bargain meal in a city that otherwise is no bargain (bring your ATM card when you come to Chicago), is what packs them in here 24 hours a day.

Cops and crooks. Preachers and pimps. Teetotalers and drunks. Suits and sandals. Bright cheery early-morning people and Rush-Street-haven’t-gone-home-yeters.

They all have one thing in common – they appreciate a good hearty breakfast to greet the rising sun. And you can find every one of them at the Tempo.

That’s why every trip to Chicago must have the Tempo Café on the itinerary. Your stomach and wallet deserve no less.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt