The inside is sleek and modern and has a great outdoor area, which is totally not what you would expect from the surrounding area. At first glance at the menu, it looked great and affordable (everything was $10 or under). I ended up ordering the ham and gruyere croque with a fried egg ($9), Dan got the fisherman's eggs ($10), and we split the chocolate brioche ($3) and cheese grits ($5). The food came out pretty quickly and everything looked great. My first bite went straight for the grits and they were definitely cheesy tasting and was one of the better grits I've had in the city. Many places make them super bland and they almost taste like oatmeal, but the grits here were extremely flavorful without being too salty. Another star was the chocolate brioche. I'm not a huge fan of chocolate but this had butter and sea salt and it was my favorite dish during our meal. It was perfectly warm and had the perfect combination of sweet and salty. I totally want to buy sweet croissant type breads now and put salt on them! The crust at the end was a bit hard and dry but I had left the crust on the plate for most of the meal and came back to it later, so I'm not really surprised by that. My croque had a lot of ham and was covered in the gruyere (not a huge fan that the cheese was a bit burned in some areas but that's to be expected in a sandwich like this). It was a pretty good sandwich except that the ham was pretty salty and the fried egg on top could have been a bit runnier. Dan's dish consisted of 2 poached eggs, over smoked trout, mixed greens all on a potato latke and hollandaise sauce. We didn't really expect the greens to be so prominent...we thought it was going to be more like a side salad but they kind of just dumped giant pieces of leafy greens without chopping or cutting them up. They were way too big to eat and seemed a bit excessive for the dish. I had the same experience with my dish except it was positioned as a side salad and not a main part of the dish. The poached eggs could have been poached just a tad bit runnier and the hollandaise sauce had too much lemon in it (not sure if that was because there was fish invovled), but overall the dish was pretty unique tasting and I liked the mixture of egg, trout and potato.
If this place was closer to where I lived (like walking distance or a shorter drive away), I would definitely return. The combination of the beautiful decor, affordable prices and great side dishes would make it a no brainer to come back to. BUT since it's a 20 minute drive away on the highway and not in a neighborhood where there is much else, I'm not so sure I would how often come back unless someone else really wanted to or ended up moving to the area. Total bill with tip for two was $32.
photo credit: Yelp
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