I usually don't do brunch when I'm home but when Jeana recommended Saturday brunch at this place that was 5 minutes from my mom's place, I couldn't say no. Founding Farmer is a cute modern American bistro type place in this new town center community in the Potomac/Rockville area. They claim to be part of the whole farm to table concept, but after eating there I'm not so sure if they are on par with some of the places in the city that are truly farm to table. I wasn't sure if people really brunch in the suburbs, but they clearly do because the place was packed at noon. Luckily we had a reservation and we sat down quickly.
The menu has a brunch and lunch section. The brunch section has your typical benedict, eggs, pancake and waffle section as well as a few hash scrambles. I usually would head straight for the benedicts and the people next to us had gotten it and it looked pretty good, but I decided to go for something more healthy: the sausage, mushroom and spinach scramble ($12) and it came with a side of grits and a biscuit. Jeana got the pastrami hash ($12) and we each got coffee ($5) and orange juice ($2) to start. Jeana wanted me to point out that she was disappointed that they did not offer regular white sugar for the coffee but instead only had sugar substitutes. The scramble came out and for some reason I had thought it was going to be one of those scrambles that came in a cute cast iron skillet but it just came out on my plate. All the ingredients in the scramble (pork sausage, mushroom, cheddar cheese, spinach and onions) were fine but it just looked and tasted like a scramble that I could make at home myself not something that tasted like it came straight from the farm. The presentation of it was also like something that I would serve myself at home too - pretty blah. There wasn't anything super special about it in any way - I mean, it tasted totally fine but nothing really unique or interesting. I will say that the grits were fairly decent - it wasn't super cheesey nor did it have any other special toppings to it but it was totally acceptable. By the time I got to the biscuit, I was surprisingly full. I generally like my biscuits to be warm and flakey but this one was cold and just fell apart at every bite so I stopped after the 2nd bite. To be fair, I did wait to the end of my meal to eat it, so it might have been a different experience if I had eaten it first.
To me the service was acceptable but Jeana was pretty annoyed by their lack of attentiveness. When our meal was over, they gave us our bill in this kitchy mailbox, without asking us if we wanted anything else which did also annoy me. As I looked around the restaurant, it looked like a lot of people were getting burgers, so maybe that's what they are better at. They do have a pretty extensive lunch and dinner menu, so I would possibly come back for either of those menus but I would probably not order from their brunch menu again. Total bill: $26/pp with tip, tax and drinks.
Photo Credit: Yelp
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