I had the pleasure of making it out for breakfast this morning by invitation of a friend. She suggested a newish restaurant at the 4th Street area in Berkeley. All she would say is, you just gotta have the tamales. Just gotta.
The building was a nice large industrial type with some neat angles to the walls. The tables and bar areas were all refinished recycled wood, so they had some patina left to them, quite nice. I perused the menu up on the wall a bit, but came back to the first item, chorizo with scrambled eggs. Oh and a tamale and a cup of blue bottle coffee and half and half and that would be plenty thank you.
The chorizo and eggs were right on the mark. Not too damn greasy, in fact they weren’t greasy at all. The heat came in to say hello, and the cilantro cleaned it all up fancy. I don’t like to admit it, but I’m not a fan of the black bean. I feel pintos are the way to be, but these were worth not leaving on the plate. Especially with the crumbly mexicanny cheese. Now take the chorizo egg love, a smoosh of beans and apply to the home made corn tortillas … and you have one of the best breakfasts of the year. But wait, it gets better. The Blue Bottle coffee compliments food. Their brew isn’t a dark roast such as what Peet’s spews (that stuff is a meal within itself). It was a complete joy to have with a meal.
Look, it’s a fresh shredded pork tamal with a sweetish red sauce. It was nice of the chef to set the tamal on a bed of husk. That way the sauce wouldn’t be disturbed by unwrapping the sucker, ah hell if the husk was on, the sauce wouldn’t have been there.
The scrambled eggs over tortilla chips slathered in red sauce with crema, crumbly cheese and white onions was … well really tasty as well. I had some of all.
Again, I can’t stress enough how nice it was to take a few minutes out of the day to sit and have a nice meal. There wasn’t anything I could have added to this meal, oh wait. Yes, actually there is something I could add. It would have been nice to have a smidge of fruity goodness. But other than that, total success.
So take me there already.
YEAH !! Let’s go now!
That tamale looks unbelievable.
Whattya mean ‘fruity goodness’?
What do I mean by fruity goodness?
Hmm, well what I had in mind is what I saw on TV. Rick Bayless was in Mexico City, I believe. And he was getting this Mango on a stick that was sliced open and had a chili pepper sprinkle on it. It seemed like a fresh, mouth awakening love fruit with chili. For breakfast it would be nice to have something to wake up your mowff.