I met up with my good friend MFH for breakfast in the Normal Heights area (although Yelp lists the location as "University Heights")...
to a restaurant neither of us had tried before on a stretch of Adams Ave known as Antique Row...
Finding metered parking next to the restaurant was almost too easy. Sadly, it wasn't free unless we wanted to park several blocks away which we didn't. It was food crawl time again and Antique Row Cafe was our first stop.
As we got out of her car, we noticed this sidewalk chalk tribute to Prince in front of a dance studio...
The "love" symbol had a teardrop within.
As it was the first weekend since Prince's tragic death, 92.5 had been playing all Prince all day from the time the news broke of his death through this whole weekend.
Our breakfast destination was Antique Row Cafe (there is one other location in El Cajon; the Lemon Grove location is now another breakfast place, Lemon Grove Cafe, which Mary posted on a few months ago).
I'd looked up their menu offerings the night before and I already knew what I wanted and given my latest breakfast obsession, you can probably guess what I ordered.
Ooh, but Chicken Fried Chicken sounded kind of...interesting, but since it was made with the breast, I changed my mind.
We didn't have to wait at all to get seated. Once you enter, you are greeted with massive visual overload of all things nostalgic from the 50's, 60's and to some extent, the 70's. We were seated at a booth in the central part of the restaurant. Here is their menu:
I wonder who dusts all of these knick knacks? There's a ton of $H!+ galore!
Beatles!
Why is Frank Sinatra even on the cover of this menu? I don't consider him an icon of the 50's.
MFH does not like eggs (which much of the breakfast menu includes) so she got her default breakfast, the Belgian Waffle. As for me...I had to. Yes, I got the Chicken Fried Steak with two scrambled eggs for "research purposes" of course. My two sides were the homemade biscuit (look at that THING!) and the Monterey potato cake which had a really beautiful crust and a creamy herbed interior.
The breading wasn't crisp like the version I recently had at Old Town House Restaurant in OB. And the gravy...gosh, that was a bit much, but I liked that it had sausage bits and some color in it as wellas what could've been sprinkles of paprika.
The potato cake was so damn good; the eggs were just eggs. Eh. If you ever go here, get the potato cake. I mean it. It's full of cheesy and herby goodness.
Whoever fried that up in the pan knows how to make a damn good crust!
Back to that biscuit! I only had the top part (because it was nice and crisp). The biscuit was really good but I couldn't even fathom eating the whole thing, as fluffy as it was.
On the east side of the restaurant is a mural filled with icons of the 50's, 60's and 70's. We figured out who everone was except for the guy above the Supremes (next to the Beatles). If you can figure out who it is, please let me know.
I spy Jimi Hendrix, John Travolta, Rocky, C3P-O and R2-D2, JFK and his mistress Marilyn Monroe to name a few.
Ugh, Nixon is on there. But that's balanced out by the Fonz and Yoda!
Our next stop would be for coffee across the street.
We didn't have to walk too far.
"Delirious" by Prince, which was one of the songs we heard on the radio while on our way here:
This song is from his album, "1999" which was on heavy rotation at our household back in 1983. It was my sister's favorite. I was in 8th grade, she was in 5th. Man, that was an amazing album.
It was quite cool seeing this mini tribute to the Purple One on this fine Saturday morning
Antique Row Cafe
3002 Adams Ave
San Diego, CA 92116
(619) 282-9750
FB page + reviews from that four lettered site and tripadvisor
We had a few more stops this morning. The day was still young...
2 comments:
That potato pancake looks delicious. I like the crispy parts of a potato pancake (kinda like the top of a biscuit). I haven't seen a bottle of honey offered with biscuits lately so that was a nice option. We were going to try to visit Old Townhouse over the weekend to try out their CFS but didn't manage. Oh well.
OMG, yes, it was Faye. If I didn't have that CFS, I would have been happy with just that potato cake. The honey along with butter for the biscuits was a nice touch. I hope you do get to try Old Town House. I know that you like CFS also. My friend Astroboi went last weekend because of my post (which was cool) and had to try the CFS for himself.
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