by Normally, I don’t write about food, but as I have been travelling along, a late breakfast and an early dinner usually make up my food consumption for the day. So here are some observations…
The Waffle House is an old southern food institution, famed as much for being open 24 hours a day as for its food. I’d planned to go to one when I reached the South, but hungry for a waffle, I stopped by one in Tucson. Maybe I should have waited until I reached the South. Maybe I should have ordered a pecan waffle. My breakfast was nothing special.
But this disappointment lead to a search for the best breakfast in Tucson.
On every list of recommendations for breakfast 2 names showed up: the Bisbee Breakfast Club and the Baja Cafe. Happily both were very close to my hotel. And since the Baja Cafe’s website announced that it was recommended by a program–which shall remain nameless–on the Food Channel, it was the first one I went to.
Oh, Food Channel how could you be so wrong. The scrambled eggs were greasy. The hash browns so undercooked and oily looking that I didn’t even taste them. The sausage was just okay. And then there was the single slice of cinnamon swirl French toast, the specialty of the house. It was sweet enough to cause instant diabetes. No photos of this one. It would be a waste of pixels.
Fortunately, breakfast comes every morning, so on to the next…
First a few words about Bisbee, Arizona. It is an old copper mining town twenty miles beyond Tombstone right on the border with Mexico. Like a lot of old mining towns scattered across the West, it faded away almost–but not quite entirely–to ghost town status. A few aging hippies and desert rats lived there. Then urban escapees showed up and among other things established the Bisbee Breakfast Club, open only for breakfast and lunch. Word got around among tourists and locals that BBC’s breakfasts were great so the owners branched out to Tucson.
Sadly, they do not serve waffles, but their “biscuits” seems to be fresh from the oven and are amazing. I had the Zorba scramble with feta cheese and spinach, plus home fries. All excellent. And the biscuits are huge and almost more bread-like than biscuit-like. As with every other place I’ve had breakfast in Arizona and Texas so far biscuits and gravy–which I remember eating as a child–are a staple. I haven’t tried them yet but I will sometime.
One other thing of note about the BBC: the sign near the front that read “No Firearms Allowed” Yikes. Like the cantina in Arivaca. It is to the left of the big sign on the brick wall. Nothing about the Arizona Militia though.
This brings me to Texas. After driving for hours from Tucson in a dust storm with winds up to 50 miles per hour, low visibility, and scary 18 wheelers wobbling in the wind ahead of and beside me I checked into a Quality Inn in El Paso. For the next day and a half as the wind/dust storm raged across the area I holed up in my room and began reading a massive contemporary Russian novel.
And every morning since I arrived I’ve had the free Quality Inn Texas-shaped Belgian-style waffles with okay scrambled eggs and an okay sausage link for breakfast. Verdict: too-cute, but tasty. The syrup could be better.
Coming next: The Camino Real Missions outside of El Paso.
