M. Wells Visited 1/15/11 3.75 Forks

M. Wells 21-17 49th Ave., Queens, NY 11101

It's amazing how a small diner in the middle of nowhere Queens has gotten so much buzz.  This place was recently written up in the NY Times as a place that was worth flying to eat at.  I wouldn't necessarily go that far, but I would say it's definitely an interesting experience.  Dan and I went at 11AM (it opens at 10) and it was already completely packed and was about a 30 minute wait.  The place is pretty small with about 5-6 booths, 2 communal tables, and then a few counter seats.

The concept of the diner is French-Canadian food, which I wasn't really sure what that meant.  Apparently it just means complete heart stopping food.  We ended up sitting at the counter, which I ended up loving because it was right in front of the main grill and I got to watch the chef make almost every dish on the menu.  I can safely say that this place makes everything with great quality food and with care.  The food is not your basic diner/breakfast food.  There are a few egg dishes, but they have quirky dishes like seafood cobbler, meat pies, tongue salad, scallop/clam ceviche, froie gras bread pudding, etc. Everytime Dan and I go somewhere for brunch we always feel inclined to get something with egg, even though a lot of places probably specialize in better things.  We started with a bloody ceasar ($8) which was a bloody mary with clam juice and the bone marrow with escargot ($9).  This was one fairly large piece of bone marrow, topped with 5 escargot and topped with bread crumbs and then baked in the oven.  It was pretty fatty and melt in your mouth but the bread crumbs were a bit too salty for me.

For our main dishes, I got the sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich ($9) and Dan got the egg tortilla with shrimp and blood sausage ($11).  I know it might sound lame to have gotten a breakfast sandwich but after watching them make it I had to try it out.  Everything about the sandwich was huge: the english muffin was the size of my foot, the sausage patty was about the exactly the same size as the muffin, and the egg was perfectly soft and gooey and it was topped with cheddar cheese and pickled jalapeno peppers that offered the right amount of spice.  It was so filling and heart stopping that I am afraid to learn how many calories were in it.  Dan's meal was also really good: they basically mixed egg, potato, shrimp, and chunks of blood sausage in a little skillet and baked it.  Neither of us have had blood sausage before and it was definitely not sausage-like with a casing.  It was soft in structure but not weird or scaring tasting.  While both our meals were good, the chefs were definitely very heavy handed with the salt.  I came home and felt like I should be drinking a gallon of water.   Everything that I watched the chefs make looked great and different than your basic diner, so I am willing to come back and try other stuff on the menu.

The service was a bit slow but after watching them make all the food from scratch and how many people were flowing through the tiny place, they were definitely trying as hard as they could.  Total bill was $43 without tip.