Champion breakfast
By LIZ BOMZE | July 11, 2006
At five minutes to nine, hungry patrons were already snaking around the block. Those in front peered into the Centre Street Café’s long windows, waiting for the griddle to start smoking, the tables to be set.When the doors opened, the rain-sprinkled millions filled their mugs from steaming carafes on the front counter. Then, like schoolchildren looking for their assigned seats, they headed to their “usual” tables.
Overstuffed plates of vegetable-loaded “California Sunrise Eggs” ($6.95), complete with a homemade biscuit of the day, moved down the narrow aisle in the hands of a good-humored waiter, while in front of me landed a plate of featherlike, overnight-batter waffles ($11.95) hidden beneath heaping piles of fresh local strawberries, pineapple, Granny Smith apple, cantaloupe, and banana, plus three country sausage patties ($1.95). Had I not left sated (with a container of maple-syrup-drizzled fruit salad, no less), I would have considered showing up for dinner later that night.
Centre Street Café, 669 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain | Mon - Fri, 11:30 am - 3 pm and 5 - 10 pm; Sat,9 am - 3 pm and 5 - 10 pm; Sun, 9 am - 3 pm and 5 - 9:30 pm | 617.524.9217.
Related:
2005 Boston Restaurant Awards, Whole Foods on the cheap?, The Pump House, More 
- 2005 Boston Restaurant Awards
Once again we reach year’s end, and I pass out some awards to summarize the year in restaurant reviews.
- Whole Foods on the cheap?
I recently had nightmares of losing my twenty spot the moment I enter the store.
- The Pump House
Perched next to Rocky Brook Pond, the stone-walled Pump House restaurant — a retired pumping station for South Kingstown — has been an attractive eatery for three decades.
- Audubon Circle’s habanero-infused guava margarita and grilled shrimp with citrus dipping sauce
They start with the world’s hottest peppers and let them soak in white tequila for three days until a mere whiff puts tears in your eyes.
- Street beat: Maria Razza
MacIntosh apples, to bake them and make cake and muffins.
- Zoe’s Gourmet Chinese Cuisine (Brookline)
There were extreme reactions to the news that Zoe’s, which has another location in Somerville, was taking over Shalom Beijing (formerly Shalom Hunan).
- Old South Tomolives
If you’re one of those people who really just orders a Bloody Mary for the olives, you might want to reconsider.
- 9 Tastes
If the crowd of eager diners spilling into every open crevice of 9 Tastes’s foyer was any indication of a promising meal, we had come to the right place.
- Rincon Limeño
I’ve often called East Boston our city’s most overlooked cheap-eats destination.
- Anise
Be careful what you wish for. I have been asking Chinese restaurants to upscale their service, shorten their menus, make clear what the chef’s specialties really are, and offer the more-authentic dishes on the English-language menu.
- They're no grasshoppers
If you’re skeptical that local-food activists can survive the winter on, well, local foods, swing on by this Sunday’s Skill Share and Harvest Dinner.
- Less
Topics:
On The Cheap
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, Culture and Lifestyle, Food and Cooking, Foods, Fruits and Vegetables, Less
