San Diego Reader April 6, 2017 45
Benedict’s hangover
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It starts with biscuits and ends with gravy Janet’s Montana Café, 2506 Alpine Boulevard, Alpine. I enjoy eating oxymoronic foods, so when I was looking for a place to eat breakfast in Alpine I zeroed in on a place called Janet’s Montana Café so I could try the country-style Eggs Benedict. There is no certain origin to Eggs Benedict.
Stories range from it being a French invention to being a hangover breakfast custom ordered by a man named Benedict at New York’s famed Waldorf Astoria hotel. In any event, pairing
poached eggs and hol- landaise sauce doesn’t sound much like a country-style meal. I’ve seen California Benedicts (with avo- cado) and eggs Flo- rentine (which subs spinach for the usual ham), and I was curi- ous to see what a coun- try take would entail. Well, it starts with
biscuits and finishes with gravy, which kind of makes sense. Janet’s Montana
bakes its own pies, cookies, muffins, and cinnamon rolls and conjures up huge square buttermilk biscuits smothered with sau- sage gravy. Which fits the rustic-cabin-in-Montana vibe
Janet’s is going for. The wooded dining room features a stone fireplace and is decorated with
The woody dining room features a stone fire- place and deer-antler chandeliers.
taxidermy and deer-antler chandeliers. The woodsy back patio would fit in anywhere in big sky country. Really, the main thing distinguishing the $13.95
FEAST!
country-style Benedict from Janet’s $12.25 order of biscuits and gravy with sausage patties and egg is that the eggs are poached. But I do suppose poaching is the fanciest way to cook eggs. These were more a chewy style
of biscuit than flaky, and both bis- cuit and eggs were a holding vessel
for the rich, creamy gravy and sausage. It’s somewhere on the spectrum between
satisfying and heavy, a dish made winning by the charming atmosphere. Were I feeling like a sweet dish, I could have opted for cinna- mon roll french toast, which would seem a worthy sugary coun- terpart to the Benedict’s sodium punch. Eating breakfast
The $13.95 country-style Benedict
with my mother en route to Anza-Bor- rego, she declared that this a place she’d like to bring the grandkids. I bet that french toast would do a fine job of spinning them up for a long mountain or des- ert hike.
by Ian Anderson
The Old South in the Old West New Orleans Creole Cafe, 2476 San Diego
Avenue (in the Whaley House gardens), Old Town. Between the quality shows at Cygnet Theatre and the lighthearted comedy of Old Town Improv, I’ve been finding more reasons to spend time in Old Town, an area that, along with the Gaslamp, I once
dismissed as a destina- tion more for tourists than locals. On a recent Friday
night, my husband David and I were look- ing for a place to grab dinner before catching an improv show, but we weren’t interested in any of the myriad Mexi- can joints. David called up a
map of the area and announced that there was a restaurant called New Orleans Creole Cafe right in the heart of Old Town. We raised our brows at each other in surprise, but I can’t say why — it’s not like Old Town has only Mexican restaurants. Right around the cor- ner was Harney Sushi, and across the street was O’Hungry’s, which fea- tures standard American fare. I think perhaps we
A silky, creamy cheese sauce made this mac-n-cheese the eve- ning’s champ.
were baffled at how there could be a New Orleans- themed restaurant in town that David didn’t already know about. For many years in a row, visit- ing New Orleans was how we celebrated David’s birthday, as he is quite fond of the cuisine there. New Orleans Creole Cafe is tucked behind and
The intimacy of the cabin encourages inter-table conversation.
to the right of the Whaley House Museum. Unlike the storefronts lining the sidewalk (reminiscent of the stark dusty roads lined with no-frills facades), outside the restaurant feels more Old South than Old West — there’s a brick patio that overlooks the Whaley House’s yard, with lush grass and looming pepper trees that were planted in the 1870s. All around, little white lights dangle like blossoms. It was a chilly evening, so we opted to sit inside.
The dining room is a small wood cabin with seats for just over 20 guests (David suggested it would
be a cool venue for a private party). The room has three solid walls and the one containing the doorway, which is the only way in or out, and it’s how the servers come and go to and from the kitchen in the adjacent building. Against the wall opposite the doorway was a wooden cabinet filled with dishes and bedecked in Mardis Gras–colored tinsel and themed masks. On the walls to our right and left were historical photographs of Old Town. When we walked in, there were no employ-
ees, just a friendly couple seated at one of five tables who insisted that we grab our own seat. The intimacy of the cabin encourages inter-table conversation, and while we waited for someone official to appear we learned the couple was visit-
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