North Street Grill/ 229 North St, Boston 02113/(617) 720-2010

Finding a good breakfast restaurant in Boston is actually a whole lot easier than finding a decent Italian restaurant in the North End.  What?, you say.  Yes, that's right, I contest that most of the restaurants in the North End are actually not that good and that the best Italian in Boston can be found outside of the North End.  Make it a little better than Olive Garden, put it in "Little Italy" and the Midwesterners will come in droves.  Just make sure that you charge a whole lot more than the OG so you can continue to pay the rent.

The North Street Grill is an exception to the rule in this part of town.  And for good reason.  They actually stand out by not being an Italian restaurant.  I have only been here for breakfast, and hadn't been here for years, but always tell people that this is one of my favorite breakfast places in the city.  They wait was long on a late Sunday morning, but they gave us an idea of about how long it would be and we were able to head to Caffe Dello Sport for a quick espresso and a decent walk.  It is easiest to sit at the bar, which I most certainly prefer anyway.  The morning drink menu is pretty extensive, and I got something that had a cute name, but more importantly had a lot of different flavored rums and orange juice. and lemonade.  Awesome.  Puts a Mimosa to shame.  Just look.  You'll find it, name and all.  For food I ordered the Crab Omelet with Boursin Cheese, Chives, and Avocado.

Crab, Boursin Cheese, Chive and Avocado Omelet

Holy my #!@>#! was it good.  I almost never order Omelets, but all these flavors together looked sinfully covetous.  And they were.  As close to perfection as a breakfast can be that doesn't include bacon.  And the homefries were perfectly seasoned and homefried, which was surprising because they looked burned and overly seasoned.  They could have put a few more on the plate, for sure, but I am on a roll of not complaining.  The person next to me ordered Eggs Oscar (a.k.a. Asparagus Eggs Benedict).

Eggs Oscar

I may have tried some of that and it may have been wonderful too, especially the asparagus, which was grilled perfectly.  Impressive stuff man.  Impressive stuff.  Years ago I tried the Lobster Benedict, which was freakin' beautiful.  If you are near the North End on the weekend and would like some ridiculously good breakfast, this is the place.  I may see you there.  Give a shout.

Pleasant Cafe/4515 Washington Street Roslindale, MA 02131/(617) 323-2111

I don't know why I believe people.  Especially when those people include The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, Phantom Gourmet, or TV Diner.  Almost without fail, if these outfits tell you that a place is worth going to or has the best such and so ever, you can pretty much guarantee that there is somewhere around the corner that is a lot better and probably cheaper.  But for some reason unbeknownst to me I still find my self reading what these people say and watching the unbearable idiocy of these TV shows just to find out names of places I have never heard of before and where they may be located.

The Boston Globe not too many weeks ago had an article, or whatever you call those slideshow things where they talk about food or "goings on" or "What are this year's Red Sox weaknesses?" or "Meet the new Celtics dancers", in which they had a list of the top 10 or 20 or 30 pizza places around, which included the Pleasant Cafe in Roslindale.  Now, this is a secret that I have never revealed to anyone and don't plan on revealing now or at anytime in the future, but the truth of the matter is that I am not much of a pizza eating individual.  However, I do enjoy a good dive bar and especially one that serves good cheap food.  I have written before about my affinity for places that you either did go to or would have gone to with your grandparents if you were or are lucky enough to have living grandparents.  If they were going to get out of the house, they were going somewhere that the food was good, cheap, and plentiful.  Just looking at the outside of Pleasant Cafe makes you think you have gone back in time a bit.

Blurry Neon on a Snowy April Fool's (Eve) Day Night 

They have an unconventional website with what looks like decent, reasonably priced food, so all signs pointed toward solidity (as is a solid choice).  Now I like some suspect places.  There are places I only go to alone because no one I know would be brave enough to eat the food.  I'll tell you this, if I had not decided that this was where I was eating and my friend had not agreed and almost coaxed me into it, I would have either turned around like I mistakenly walked into the wrong place or had a drink, paid the bartender, and bid farewell forever after without a second thought.  That wasn't exactly an option, however, so we got a menu and I hoped for the best.

The Pleasant Cafe isn't scary like "oh shit I hope I don't get stabbed" scary, but more like "wow, there sure are a lot of old drunks seemingly sleeping at the bar early on a Thursday night" and "do you think they wash the dishes here?" type scary.  If you will allow me to refer back to the Grandfolks theme again for a moment, The Pleasant Cafe stirs your memories of how great it was to hang out with the Grandparents when you were young but in reality is more like when you get older and go to your now only living Grandparent left's house and it smells bad and there are pee stains on your poor Grandparent person's pants.  May God rest their soul(s).  Ooohh, yuck, I'm sorry I had to put us through that.


The bartender was nice, as was the waitress.  For some reason we had to pay them separately for separate bar and food bills, but I have seen much stranger things at stranger bars.  The menu was sort of promising, and even in Boston I have never seen simply "Tonic" listed under "Beverages", but then, I'm also younger than 75 years old (and that is the only secret I will ever tell any of you) and I probably would have seen a menu or two in my day like that if I weren't.

So anyway, I ordered the BBQ Steak Tips with Fries and Coleslaw for $11.  Good deal, I say to myself, as long as it tastes good.  Bad deal, I say to myself, once I tried it.

Tasteless BBQ Steak Tips w/ Cole Slaw&Oil Marinated Potatoes (a.k.a. French Fries)

 The tips weren't BAD per se, they just were boring and pretty tasteless.  More oily than BBQy.  Not the worst quality, but they did nothing for me because they tasted like nothing.  The fries were like the fries you would get when you went to that one kid's house for dinner when you were young and didn't yet know what good food even was, but you somehow knew that taking that big honking bag of generic frozen french fries out of the freezer and dumping them in a pan of cold oil and waiting 35 minutes for the oil to get hot enough to bubble so you could wait another 25 minutes for them to get "cooked" was not the way french fries were supposed to be made.  The fries at PC taste like that.  The coleslaw was no better than the lower end of average and was the best part of the meal.  Service at the places I go to always takes a back seat to food.  You can treat me kind of badly as long as your food is good.  So I actually sort of feel bad telling the world how crappy the food is here, because the people that work there could have treated us any nicer, but this is not a blog about restaurant service, it is about food, and the food here is bad.  Needless to say, I can't see myself heading back here for a meal.  But if I am tired and locked out of my house some night soon, I'll know where to go to get a quick nap in.