This Sunday we went to the Coffee Pot, which is very close to home. They offer a full breakfast for 6.95, and I mean full: egg, 1 rasher, 2 sausages, 1 hashbrown, baked beans, sauteed mushrooms, white pudding, black pudding, and two pieces of toast, along with tea and orange juice. The food was pretty good, although I’m starting to wonder if it’s just me because everywhere I go the eggs are always solid. Do people not know that a fried egg is suppossed to have a soft yolk?? What am I do dip my sausages and toast in?
Aside from that I had no real complaints with the food (except for the toast which somehow seemed very stiff and chewy), and there were free refills on the o.j. which I consider a major plus. I don’t think there was enough tea for Claire’s tastes (she probably was only able to get 3 cups or so), but their major problem was that their tables were only big enough for four. See back at the Gingerbread house when this problem occured we’d just push some tables together, because there was plenty of floorspace. Not so at the Coffee Pot. They’ve put in as many tables as they can possibly manage. The upside of this is that if we get two adjacent tables we’re not that separated, but as we’re usually a group of 5 or 6 and there’s no guanrantee that we’ll find tables next to each other it means we run the risk of having an odd person out. It’s seat yourself, which means it’s our problem if we can’t fit at a table, not theirs.
All in all I think it was a good breakfast for a fair price, so my main complaint would be the seating and general atmosphere. Lots of restaurants here just play the radio, and since it’s a small country there’s really only two major radio stations to choose from. Truth be told I’m not that fond of either of them except for their evening shows which have a good selection. During the day it’s the usual crap.
This leads me on a tangent but I’ll make it quick–what the fuck is up with all the crappy covers that are getting played? Here’s the thing–I love a good cover song. I really, really do. But the other day I heard some band do a Violent Femmes cover that was so bland and tasteless, with no unique spin of its own except the singer had no passion to his voice whatsoever. It was pathetic. These are the covers I hate: an artist takes a song that they like, and either do it exactly the same (fulfilling some stupid wish that THEY had written the song), or they take everything out that made it a good song to begin with. So not only is it a bad cover, now it’s a bad song in general. And these guys get radio play? Dude, if you liked the Violent Femmes, just play their fucking albums, don’t try to pass their music off as your own because you physically can’t emote the same grating angst that Gordon Gano can, and that’s a big part of VF’s appeal. So do your own damn song if you can’t do a proper tribute to someone else’s.
Filed under: recaps
On the eggs, in all fairness it’s a bit much to claim that eggs “should” be soft, as far as I know there have been no EU directives on the consistency of egg yolks. Just the curvature of bananas. Some people actually like their eggs solid, my mom gets asked for it relatively regularly (we run a B&B) so ideally they should ask you how you like your eggs. Of course they can’t do that, the easiest and cheapest way to cook breakfast in a cafe situation is to cook in batches so food can be sitting under the heater for quite a while, the busier the cafe is the higher the turnover of food. When you arrive late in the service, when things have slowed down, you increase the likelihood that the food you are served has been sitting there for a good while. It’s different in hotels and B&Bs but then you won’t get breakfast for �7 in a hotel. Well I doubt it anyway. The easiest way for you to get the eggs you want is to try and hit the place early.
If memory serves, The Coffee Pot is basically in Blackpool right? That’s Red FM land, the radio station that taste forgot.
The V. Femmes cover…was it Gone Daddy Gone? Because if so that was probably by Gnarles Barkley (Cee-Lo + Danger Mouse), and that’s worth giving another chance. I got that album for my birthday and have been enjoying it, including that cover, which fits well with their sound while still capturing (IMO) some of the spirit of the song. And actually Danger Mouse said in an interview, “If you love Gone Daddy Gone, listen to Gone Daddy Gone.” So as much as I usually am hyper-critical about covers, that one I’ll make excuses for.
If it was that cover. Which it might not have been.
I understand that the eggs aren’t made to order but cooked way ahead of time and sit in a greasy pan under a heatlamp, but I persist that eggs should have runny yolks.
Also it probably is the Gnarles Barkley cover, and I still say it sucks and offends me.
So both of you are wrong, wrong wrong. =)
I recall you saying to me that we were listening to a Violent Femmes cover and I can confirm that it was the Gnarles Barkley version.
As for the eggs, you could ask for them to make ‘em runny but you run the risk of getting them with a runny white.
Now, where to for Sunday’s foodening? Would you like fancy, foreign-ish or just Irish?