BREAKFAST: It’s What’s For Breakfast

The saying “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” was apparently just a marketing slogan made up by John Harvey Kellogg himself. Dr. Kellogg, who was seriously grape nuts, was also wrong. I’ve got breakfast down as the third most-important meal of the day. Dinner is obviously first, since it costs the most. Lunch comes in second, as it can be a nice break in the day and is also when you eat club sandwiches. The French treat lunch as the main meal of the day and I’m OK with that- there’s logic to it- but I still prefer dinner. Breakfast comes third. Brunch is more of an identity crisis than a meal, so that doesn’t count, and “Fourthmeal” was just some brilliant marketing from Taco Bell, those magnificent bastards.

Portland does love a good breakfast though (and brunch too, but I have already dismissed that as a subject of discussion). Lately I’ve taken to occasionally eating breakfast out of the house. It’s a nice enough way to treat oneself and support the local breakfast economy. It’s something I did once in a while back in LA, where there are perfectly acceptable greasy spoons like Pann’s, where Pulp Fiction was NOT filmed but a lot of people think it was, or Dinah’s, which is about to get surrounded by some overpriced apartments:

Dinah’s getting done dirty there, it’s just not right. The restaurant occupies a special place in my heart, since it’s where my very young daughter discovered that cereal also comes in miniature boxes, and she found that to be delightful.

The national chains are present here, but not ubiquitous. There are hardly any Denny’s locations, which is good since Denny’s is straight trash. IHOP is around, but that’s just breakfast Applebee’s. There aren’t any Waffle Houses, which is fine since the only reason to go to a Waffle House is to get in a fight with Kid Rock. They opened a Cracker Barrel in Beaverton, and that’s unfortunate. It’s one of the first things you see off the freeway when entering the city, and I’m convinced that property values are suffering as a result. I have never eaten at a Cracker Barrel and don’t intend to start now, go ahead and call me a snob I don’t care.

What we do have plenty of are outposts of three local or semi-local chains. There’s Shari’s Cafe & Pies, which came along in 1978, is now based in Beaverton and has 89 restaurants in a bunch of states. There’s Elmer’s, which started in 1960 in Portland and now has 29 locations. Then there’s Biscuits Cafe, which also started in the metro and has 23 spots in Oregon, Washington, and Arizona. I also considered including Black Bear Diner, which is more of a Northern California thing but all over the place here too, but I think I’ve got some deeply-suppressed traumatic childhood memories of the place and I’m not sure exactly what, and there’s no need to dredge that up. So for today it’s Shari’s, Elmer’s, and Biscuits. I am your breakfast knower.

Shari’s Cafe & Pies

The most important thing to know about Shari’s is that most of them look like this:

They went with a hexagon design, which they patented. Apparently it’s so there can be clear sight lines throughout. Note that this is also how they build prisons these days.

Inside, the ones I’ve seen all look like a coffee shop from the year they were (presumably) built, with a couple of Pacific Northwest touches like stock photos of mountains and rivers. Brown, orange, and green tones, because 1970’s. Nothing fancy. That’s not why you’re at Shari’s.

I ordered the Farmer’s Breakfast. Two eggs, hash browns, bacon or sausage, toast. Farmers are boring like that, and so am I. Got my eggs over medium, went for the bacon. Drank some coffee, which was fine. My plate arrives, and a minute later the second egg and third slice of bacon arrive on a different plate. Oooh, courses! Not sure how that kitchen malfunction happened, but whatever. Time to eat.

I’ll preface what’s next by saying that I don’t generally take pictures of my food, not only because I’m just not that guy but because it would be embarrassing being caught taking pictures of your food at Shari’s. I should have this time, since hash browns aren’t supposed to be the color they were (I believe this color is called Sherwin Williams Undercooked) and bacon, when crispy, is generally considered preferable to bacon, when plausibly-microwaved. Somehow they managed to not screw up the eggs, and the toast was fine. It came with a little ramekin with some sort of jelly in it, which was fine as well. I do prefer the rack of Smucker’s single-serve packages though, so I can build little towers with it while waiting for my food. So the breakfast was pretty sad. The nice people there offered me free pie on my way out (Pie Day I guess?) but my brain tripped me up and made me think it was some kind of scam so I said no. My wife is still mad at me.

Just like white-collar criminals though, everyone deserves a second chance. I went back a while later to a different location, and this time ordered the Breakfast Sampler:

I figured I ordered wrong the first time, since this one has three things going for it:

1. It has a little tree emblem next to it. This tree officially designates the dish as a Shari’s Classic.
2. “Breakfast doesn’t get any better than this.”
3. Pork all three ways.

Now I expect the second item to be hyperbolic, as that’s quite a claim. Indeed it was some serious hyperbole, but the breakfast was better than the first time around. This time I buried my shame and took a picture:

They certainly could have popped it under the broiler for 30 seconds to melt that cheese on top of the eggs, but otherwise it delivered. That is the correct color for hash browns and accurate-enough crispiness level of bacon. The sausage, which if they run out they can replace at the Safeway that’s adjacent to every Shari’s, tasted like sausage. It’s all I wanted the first time around.

On both visits to Shari’s the service was pretty great. I appreciate a diner waitress of a certain age who knows her regulars and will sass you if you try to sass her, and those are the waitresses I got. Also, fast with the coffee refills and friendly, even though you see some shit when that’s your job. I felt loved.

Elmer’s

When we moved up here, we stayed overnight in Eugene, and there was an Elmer’s right by the hotel. This was during the first few months of our eternal pandemic, long before vaccines were available. So, we weren’t eating indoors at that time, even if it was available (and it probably wasn’t). This made me sad, since I had visions of plowing through a big plate of diner breakfast before hitting the road for the last 100 miles to Portland, where we were meeting our moving truck at 9am. There’s really no better way to start your day on the road.

It took over a year before I finally set foot inside an Elmer’s. Design-wise, they lean into the Pacific Northwest look somewhat:

Going for that lodge thing. Inside, it’s green walls and brown wood furnishings, and there’s a portrait of an old dude over the host stand. Is this Elmer himself? Now I thought that the founder was some guy named Elmer, and that is such a wonderful old-man name. Apparently though, his name was Walt Elmer, and he started the restaurant with his wife Dorothy and their three sons. Given this information I think they should call it Elmers’ or Elmers instead of Elmer’s, like how it’s Caesars Palace not Caesar’s because everyone’s a Caesar, but who am I.

My order was the Ranch Breakfast, which per their menu has been a signature since 1960. I have two quibbles and no more than that. First, the coffee wasn’t great. It was a little bit harsh and a little bit burnt. That may describe my general demeanor but it’s not how I like my coffee. The second quibble was for the hash browns. They weren’t bad per se, they were just…chunky? Kind of thick like onion slices. The menu says they serve Northwest Hash Browns (the Elmers are the ones who capitalized those words), and I’ve never heard of such product. I think they made it up, and my suspicion was pretty much confirmed when I found this video which may or may not exist to train new line cooks. Potatoes, oil, and salt. It’s not like they’re adding marionberry or white people to make them more “Northwest.” They’re just hash browns that are sliced kind of thick and thus have too much uncrunchy surface. It’s a quibble.

It did feel comfortable inside, and less bunker-like than a Shari’s. Service was strong, and the food was mostly good. The locations tend to be more roadside than supermarket parking lot (looking at you again, Shari’s), which I appreciate since diners like this are integral parts of any road trip. I’ll go back, and I would EVEN consider having lunch there.

Biscuits Cafe

On the other hand, your Biscuitses Cafeses are straight-up strip mall in their locations. Usually the slightly more upscale strip malls, but I haven’t seen a free-standing one yet. Inside they’re fairly utilitarian. I’ve never worked anywhere that had an employee cafeteria, but I imagine these are what they look like.

The founders of this chain, Walt and Dorothy Biscuits Ed and Barbara Preston, opened their first one in Oregon City in 1997. There’s some information in the “About Us” section of the website about their history, and how they met while working at a Sambo’s in the 60’s. I’m old enough to remember this very large restaurant chain, and even back when I was a little kid I knew OH MY GOD THAT NAME IS SO RACIST. As I’m wont to do I fell down the internet rabbit hole and discovered that the name Sambo’s was chosen as a portmanteau of the founders’ names (Sam Battistone and Newell Bohnett) and apparently was just a happy racist accident, they themed the restaurants after a book that was being removed from libraries a century ago, and, perhaps most disconcertingly, when they finally succumbed to the pressure and changed the name, they went bankrupt. That was in 1981. The final remaining one changed it’s name just last year. Also, Sam Battistone was the original owner of the New Orleans Jazz and is the one who moved them to Utah. Go Pelicans?

Anyway, none of that has a damn thing to do with Biscuits Cafe or the Prestons, who as far as I know are lovely people and certainly have plenty of restaurant experience. I am once again unclear on the possessives though, as like many others, this restaurant chain seems to have trouble with apostrophes:

Is there a man named Benedict who controls this section of the menu? Is it that goofy chef with the handlebar mustache?

Can’t be. This picture says his name is Biscuit.

Oh yeah, the food! That’s what I came here to write about. I got the Biscuits (no apostrophe) Corned Beef Hash. Made from scratch, so the menu says. Had to give it a shot, as corned beef hash is my go-to breakfast order when I find it, and when I want to feel like a slug for hours. Gotta say, it was pretty good. Had that homemade quality, definitely wasn’t scraped out of a can (and I’m not against that style). The plate (with eggs, hash browns, and, yes, a biscuit) had no weaknesses, even if everything kind of tasted alike because salt. Coffee was fine and frequent, and service was great even if I didn’t get a sassy older waitress. I’ll request one next time. And that biscuit?

I accidentally got some Tabasco sauce on it and it was still pretty good, even with jam too.

Let’s rank some stuff. For quality of food, I’ve got Biscuits then Elmer’s then Shari’s. For service, it’s a wash- I was pleasantly surprised by all of them. For decor, it’s Elmer’s then Shari’s then mall food court then Biscuits. And I’d still travel back in time to eat at a Sambo’s rather than a Denny’s, but I would at least have the decency to burn the place to the ground after I’m done.