Thursday, September 1, 2011

Pauline's Visited 8/28/2011 2.5 Forks

Pauline's 1754 W Balmoral Ave., (between Paulina St & Ravenswood Ave), Chicago, IL 60640

This is one of those places that I really want to give higher marks for and if I was still giving 1/4 stars I would go with 2.75 forks here.  Why? Because it's so cute and seems like your classic homey cafe place that serves classic homey food. Luckily we were able to sit outside but it was quite a squeeze for all 6 of us.  I don't really think they are equipped to deal with large parties.

 The menu is your typical breakfast food stuff and they actually specialize in breakfast/lunch since they're only open from 7-3pm.  Their menu offers a million different types of omelettes, pancakes, benedicts, burgers, sandwiches and salads.  So many choices.  I opted for the old favorite omelette ($8) which came with ham, cheddar cheese, mushroom, spinach, broccoli, tomato, onion, asparagus, and peppers. So it was like getting every ingredient on the farm and shoved into a 5 egg omelette.  The omelettes were huge (as you can image since it had all this stuff inside) but luckily they weren't thick.  It seems like the 5 eggs were mainly used for surface area and not density.  The omelette looked great and I enjoyed all the veggies inside.  But my biggest issue was that they didn't cut the veggies at all.  The pieces were completely gigantic and it made it really hard to eat. Also one of the pieces of ham was super fatty, which yes, I love animal fat such as pork belly, but this was just kind of chewy and didn't go down right.  I wanted to like my food more than I did.  On the plus side, Ingrid's grilled cheese did look super cheesy and delicious.  Maybe I should have gotten that instead. But I wouldn't say that people shouldn't come here at all. It's definitely cute and the waitstaff was super nice...it's just not amazing food.  Another negative, it's cash only but they do have an onsite ATM. 

photo credit: Yelp 

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