Brunch @ Mission Beach Cafe

Finally made it to brunch at Mission Beach Cafe today, after hearing about it for ages.  It was pretty much what I expected: long wait, decent food, but really not worth waiting for like that.

We arrived at 10:45am and put our names down on the already 2 page long list.  It took just over an hour to get seated.  Seating was at the end of a large communal table.  I was on the end and got bumped constantly by every person walking by.  It really made no sense to have a person sitting there.  The menu had a lot of great sounding dishes; I wish I'd been there with a bigger group so as to try more things!  I love sweets at breakfast, but I don't really enjoy JUST having a plate of sweet, and my dining buddies weren't into sweets, so I didn't get to try some of their famous items like the pancakes or french toast.

Egg Sandwich.

Egg sandwich: egg over easy, white cheddar, caramelized onoins, bacon, housemade bun, potatoes. (Normally has mushrooms too).  I didn't try this, but it looked quite fantastic, and the person who ordered it was a regular at MBC and has settled on this as his dish of choice.

Dungeness crab and bay shrimp benedict.

House made english muffin, topped with dungeness crab and bay shrimp, red pepper sauce, poached egg, hollandaise and served with roasted potatoes.  The english muffin was good, one of the better english muffins I've ever had, clearly fresh and house made.  The egg was poached decently well but was a little cold when it arrived.  The hollandaise wasn't very plentiful nor flavorful.  The red pepper sauce with the seafood paired nicely and lightened up the dish.  The shrimp and crab however weren't very good.  It tasted mildly fishy, and the crab was particularly not very sweet.  I know it is the end of crab season, but still, this failed to impress. I wouldn't order it again.

Wild mushroom and spinach benedict.

House made english muffins, topped with wild mushrooms, caramelized onions, spinach, poached eggs, truffle mornay sauce, with roasted potatoes.  Again, a good english muffin with decently poached but sorta cold eggs.  The mushrooms and spinach were flavorful and good, although there wasn't much spinach.  The caramelized onions were great, super flavorful and combined perfectly with the sauce.  And speaking of the sauce ... ZOMG good.  Why ever have hollandaise when you can have truffle mornay sauce?  Super flavorful and delicious, went perfectly with all the other components in the dish.  A bite with english muffin, caramelized onion, spinach, mushroom, some gooey egg, and a bunch of this sauce was pretty incredible.  Again though, not much sauce, I certainly would have liked more.  I'd gladly order this again.  The potatoes served alongside all of these dishes were incredibly forgettable - not really seasoned, just there being filler.

Since I didn't have any sweets with breakfast, I HAD to order a slice of pie to go.  They are known for their pies, so I was pretty excited to get some pie, particularly since they had a BUTTERSCOTCH BANANA CREAM PIE!  People rave about this.  I love butterscotch pie.  I like banana cream pie.  And it had chocolate on top, even better!  The waitress told me it was great.  I was so excited!  Unfortunately, it really really failed me.  What it was: chunks of bananas in thick butterscotch custard, drizzled with white and dark chocolate, in a classic piecrust.  The crust was decent and flaky, although a little hard and burnt on the edges.  Nothing offensive, but nothing to write home about.  The banana chunks were plentiful and fresh, not mushy.  The chocolate/white chocolate layer on top was sort of annoying to break through, like magic shell on ice cream, but not as fun.  It was the butterscotch pudding component that I really didn't care for.  It was just sweet and didn't have any good flavor to it.  It was also thicker than I really like, but that wasn't too big of a deal.  Maybe I'm spoiled because my grandmother makes an awesome butterscotch pie (hers is topped with meringue, soooo good!), but this just didn't work for me.  Banana, butterscotch, chocolate, pie ... all things that sound like they should combine together really well, but didn't.  I didn't get a photo since I brought this home and forgot to take a pic before starting in on it.