24th Street Cafe Breakfast

A few days ago Keith was on his way home from Barstow and called me right before I was going to bed to let me know that they were stuck up on the hill in the train and since their shift ended in a few hours, would probably get picked up by the van and brought home. I figured he would get in very later or very early, depending on how you look at it, so left the living room light on for him so he wouldn't trip over any cats or anything coming in.

I woke up at my usual between 6 and 7 am the next day and the living room light was still on and no Keith, so I'm thinking maybe he stopped for breakfast somewhere or fell asleep in the car in the parking lot at work, or even in our driveway which has happened before. I waited a bit before I started to get worried and then went on the employee website to see what time he clocked out of work, and his end shift time showed 7:30 am so I stopped worrying, knowing he would be home soon.

They were stuck on the train for about 5 hours over shift since there were absolutely no crews that could come and relieve them, another train had broken down ahead of them and another train was having another sort of problem, so there were all kinds of crews stuck on the hill waiting for their relief, which made for a long boring night for most of them. Luckily they are allowed to take naps when this happens, but still.

Anyway, he finally got home and we were both hungry, so decided to go get some breakfast and were trying to think of someplace we hadn't tried yet that might have decent food. I kind of like IHOP for breakfast, it's close to the house, the food is consistent, you get a pot of coffee at your table, and everything comes with pancakes. It's all good as far as I'm concerned, but he wanted someplace else.

After some deliberation we headed downtown to the 24th Street Cafe, a little restaurant on, you guessed it, 24th Street, a restaurant that is only open for breakfast and lunch and one that we had never been to because every time we thought about it we would drive by and see a big long line outside waiting for a table. And I don't like to wait.

The food must be good, though, since so many people are content to wait outside for it, right?

Wrong.

It was not good.

The only reason I can come up with for people waiting outside is that they either have no taste buds or there are no other cafes downtown to have breakfast at. Really, it was not good. Well, the coffee was good. But the rest of it was not.

I had an english muffin sandwich, eggs, bacon, and cheese, with what were supposed to be pan fried potatoes. The potatoes were so dry I could hardly swallow them and really had no flavor, the muffin didn't seem to be toasted at all, the eggs on the muffin were brown like they had been cooked in bacon grease but were dry, the bacon was actually okay, but the cheese was not even melted. Keith's breakfast of chicken fried steak and eggs didn't look much better.

The service was good, it's a very small cafe which must be why there is always a line outside because it certainly isn't for the food, but the food was not.

It was very disappointing and a total waste of $25.00 and we should have just gone to IHOP like I wanted to.