breakfast

The Bongo Room

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Over the weekend we found yet another amazing breakfast place, the Bongo Room. We knew about this place and had wanted to try it out for some time, so we finally gave it a go. The thing is, it’s just around the corner from our other favorite breakfast place, Yolk. The first time we just sort of flipped a coin between the two and ended up going to Yolk. It was so good, we never really had a reason to look for another place.

So you can’t help comparing the two places. The thing is, it turns out it’s not really as much of a head to head competition as you might have expected.  Although they both serve breakfast, Yolk has more choices in the savory department (like egg-based things) and the Bongo Room has more choices in the cake-y department (like pancakes).

The things that we had at the Bongo Room certainly were amazing. Sara had an apple French toast with crushed up ginger snaps on top. I had red velvet pancakes with a white chocolate sauce. It was basically like eating a cake for breakfast! The interesting thing was that 3 of us independently made the comment that, although our food looked really decadent, it wasn’t too sweet. That is, it was plenty sweet, but not to where you were thinking, “I can’t eat all of this” (although it should be noted that I could not, in fact, eat all of it). There were also plenty of choices that looked good that I wasn’t able to order, so future visits should not be a problem.

The Bongo Room is much smaller, with nowhere really to wait. I imagine it could be hard to get in at times. We’ve had to wait for awhile at Yolk, but it is a huge place, with plenty of waiting room.

So, at the end of the day, I highly recommend either place. I guarantee you will not be disappointed! As to deciding between the two, it would depend on what you are in the mood for. For savory, I’d still go with Yolk, but for sweet, choose the Bongo Room.

An exciting, yet relaxing weekend

/ Shane / 7 Comments

On one hand we didn’t really do all that much this weekend, and on the other hand we had a lot of exciting things going on.

The library has passes for all of the museum etc. around us, but they are mostly always gone, or at least the good ones are. Some of them are so completely always gone that one of the librarians confided that they were probably lost. But Sara managed to snag a pass to Adler Planetarium. I was already on board with going there for free, but that was before I knew that one of the exhibits right now was Sesame Street based. We did have to pay for that part, but it was well worth the money.  Evie was in 7th heaven, by which I mean she was happy as opposed to how you feel when someone forces you to watch that god-awful show. Although she was a little young, she was just so thrilled to be watching an “Elmo movie” on this huge screen, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from it. It was fun in the audience too seeing all the kids get so excited and like shouting out the answers to Big Bird’s questions, etc. and all the parents singing “twinkle twinkle little star” and just enjoying watching their kids. Needless to say, it was a big hit. I would recommend the show to anyone with little kids. There was more to see at the planetarium than I expected, but it was a little boring, especially for someone Evie’s age.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for one little girl’s day, we also rode the train there and back. Since the train runs right by our house, Evie has always been into trains a little bit. This was the first time she ever rode on one and she was pretty excited. The train trip worked out perfectly and we definitely plan on using it a lot more in the future.

Probably the highlight of my day, was the (for lack of a better word) hipster-ish breakfast place that Sara found, Yolk. It was sooo super easy to get to from the train, and it was delicious. The best part? Instead of toast, you can substitute pancakes! “Yes, instead of my toast I would like to substitute a second breakfast.” I paid a little extra and upgraded mine to blackberry / banana pancakes. Evie approved. It was a tad pricey for breakfast, but I ate so much that I hardly ate anything else the rest of the day. Given it’s proximity to the Museum Campus, I’d imagine it could get busy in the summer, but it is huge and kid friendly.

So to top it all off, we decided to give Evie her first haircut! We only cut her bangs. They are always in her eyes and she would rather die than wear something in her hair to keep it back, like a barrette. She was really good for it. She didn’t exactly sit still, but she did okay. I think Sara’s not really happy with the job she did, but I think it looks fantastic, and not too short no matter what you might hear.

Evie has been saying a lot of funny words lately. Some of her favorites are perfect, excellent, and exactly. Like, “Hey Evie, how about when we’re done eating we go downstairs to play?” “Perfect!” Or “How are the grapes?” “Excellent.” Or “It looks like you’re putting your froggy to bed.” “Yes, exactly!”

But my favorite quote of the weekend? “And what else starts with the letter ‘R’?” “Arm!”

In other news, I started the dead and the gone and I have to say, with going on my second end of the world book in a row, all of this swine flu talk is coming at a bad time for me.

Hipsters

/ Shane / 10 Comments

Wikipedia gives us a few definitions for a Hipster:

“The term became a blanket description for middle class young people associated with alternative culture, particularly alternative music, independent rock, independent film and a lifestyle revolving around thrift store shopping, eating organic, locally grown, vegetarian, and/or vegan food, drinking local beer (or even brewing their own), listening to public radio, riding fixed-gear bicycles…”

Alternately, Hipsters can be defined as young people with:

“… mop-top haircuts, swinging retro pocketbooks, talking on cell phones, smoking European cigarettes,… strutting in platform shoes with a biography of Che Guevara sticking out of their bags.”

And if you are interested in becoming a Hipster yourself, it only takes 5 easy steps. Finally, you can check out the Hipster Olympics:

Okay, so now that we are all on the same page as to what exactly a Hipster is, we can discuss the mystery that brought up Hipsters in the first place…where are the Hipsters in Fort Wayne? And more specifically, where do they eat breakfast?

Allow me to explain.  We had recently gone to a couple of really awesome breakfast places including Over Easy , a place in Philly, and another place in Grand Rapids whose names I can no longer remember (Sara and Anna? Can you comment?). These places were awesome and had really interesting unique items, for example basil omelets and blue berry pancakes with granola to make them crunchy, egg and bacon breakfast sandwiches on spicy focaccia bread, etc. I was sure that there must be a unique breakfast place in Fort Wayne with the same kind of vibe, but I didn’t know how to describe that exactly, other than to say that Hipsters would eat there.

After much discussion over the course of the weekend, we determined that not only were there no Hipster breakfast places in Fort Wayne, but the Hipsters seemed to be missing altogether. Chris was especially bothered by the fact that Grand Rapids had Hipsters and at least one Hipster breakfast spot, meaning that Hipsters are not confined to large cities. I even asked someone at the local health food store, and they didn’t know where to get a good Hipster breakfast.

So, Fort Wayne, where are your Hipsters? Are they there but hiding, longing for a breakfast spot? Do they leave and go else where? Is there anywhere to get breakfast that is a little more unique than your standard bacon / eggs / pancakes?

I should say for the record that we ended up getting breakfast at Flatop Grill, and it was really good. I didn’t know they had breakfast, but they do and in particular my toffee-butterscotch chip-almond pancakes were sooo good.