Kim and I borrow a car and head to San Francisco. We find a spot around Home Plate, add our name to the list, and wait outside in the early California sun. I close my eyes to face the sun in a way you only do on vacation. Just last week I was shoveling snow at mom’s. I should call.
“Hey ma, what’s going on in New York?”
“It’s cold and it snowed again,” she says. “Where are you now?”
“I’m in San Fran, waiting to get into this breakfast place we like.”
“Ooh, have something good for me.”
“I will.”
“Did you see the cat on the computer?”
“Which cat?”
“The one on YouTube.”
“Oh, they’re seating us, Ma. I’ll call you later.”
Inside, it’s a modest space – more cafe than diner – and I get to face the kitchen – which is always my favorite view.
“How often do you get to watch a kitchen full of Asians make breakfast?” I ask Kim. “Is that racist?”
“Probably,” she says.
It’s a flurry of activity back there, with folks poaching eggs, frying up sausages, baking scones, making omelettes, coffees, juices, mimosas. The servers dashing about, topping off coffees, cleaning-up plates. Everything about this place is friendly and attentive and apparently it’s paying off.
I know I’m in San Francisco when I’m finally dragging one of Home Plate‘s perfect little scones through their homemade jams. Sweet and delicious. Drinking some ice-coffee, waiting on Eggs Benedict and hash-browns. Life is good.
They got soy milk, so Kim is happy and chomping away at a plate of over-easy eggs, homemade sausages and fried polenta. On a good day, that polenta will blow your socks off.
There’s plenty to choose from. Don’t ask me because once I find something I like I usually stick to it. One of these days I’ll branch out and try their potato carrot pancakes with sour cream.
Home Plate is definitely an institution at this point, and the perfect way to start a day of hilly San Francisco walking. If my pedometer is right, we walked ten miles all over San Francisco ending with dinner at secret restaurant Pink Zebra. But that’s another post.