Polish Chorizo

It was a reunion of sorts for the squad formerly known as the Murray Crew as we ventured to Lake Murray Cafe as a group for the first time since last year.  I hadn't been there since starting a boycott after they gave me a dozen half-baked rolls that subsequently nearly ruined Thanksgiving dinner, so I was expecting a great meal.  It was Josh in Japan, LandonWhereBrandon, What If Featuring Amar Pawar, and myself partaking in the Feats of Strength to see who could down what used to be really large portioned meals.  First up is my Chorizo Scramble:

Scrambled eggs with Spanish sausage and a half plate of home fries

So when this came to the table I thought it looked and smelled really good.  The egg portion is still smaller than what it was once but it's adequate.  What really bugs me is this:

You.  Have.  Got.  To.  Be.  Kidding.  Me.

That...is a bread plate.  Those...are tiny, tiny pancakes.  Those are the sizes of what frozen pancakes used to be before companies like Eggo and Krusteaz decided to make their mini pancakes the normal size.  Because I didn't match this plate up against the regular sized plate, it may be hard to see the significant difference in size, so instead check out this picture of the pancakes I had at the Mission Valley Cafe, a satellite of San Diego Homecooking.  That's the size they SHOULD be, but once again Lake Murray is cutting portion sizes but maintaining the same price and what's really stupid is that MVC is only, like, 10 minutes away and you can see the dramatic size difference.  Unbelievable.  

Josh in Japan got the Polish Kielbasa, one of their better breakfast items:

Polish kielbasa, scrambled eggs, and home fries

Now that I look at this the plating actually looks pretty bad.  When we first ordered this they had the entire kielbasa intact and wrapped around the eggs and potatoes.  It looked nice.  The above just looks lackluster.  It's like three sides in search of an entree.  

Next up is BrandonWhereLandon, who ordered a Grilled Mushrooms and Onions burger:

This actually came out as a really nice picture despite the fact that I find mushrooms and onions to be completely disgusting

Oh, and here's his salad:

It's a salad.  Hooray. 

And then there's Amar.  Now, the Murray Crew shares a lot of regularly occurring memes and inside jokes, such as keeping a win-loss record of who finishes their meal (and subsequently those who can't get made fun of), taking shots of cream (seriously), and Amar's carefully crafted ordering process.  In the past Amar has actually requested that his meal be plated in the form of a smiley face.  Other times he's very specific in what he wants, such as separating the biscuits from the gravy or the sauces from the entree.  

Thanks to Josh for recording, we now have video of Amar putting in one of his famous orders.  It's not one of his overly-complicated ones, but notice how he pauses before he says each thing, carefully plotting and thinking about how he wants his plate to look.  The noise you hear in the background is me laughing because I'm a jerk:

Amar's a good sport and the waiter was too since I was sitting there cracking up and making the dude uncomfortable.  Anyway, here's Amar's chorizo:

I guess his order was more complicated than previously thought: he still got all the sauces even though he only asked for one

The meal was good, but the pancakes really ticked me off.  I can't believe they're cutting corners like that, especially when they have one of their other restaurants only 10 minutes away and it serves pancakes the way they should be.  Unbelievable.  Lake Murray has its charms, such as its quiet and intimate location on some neighborhood streets beside the lake, but the restaurant is still bugging me.  

Thanks for reading!