4 Egg Omelet - Broken Yolk Cafe

It felt like a breakfast-for-lunch kinda day in Pacific Beach, and after a morning of lugging heavy boxes around, I was pretty hungry for something big, wholesome, and probably constipation-inducing. Enter the Broken Yolk Cafe's 4 Egg Omelet:

So this is called The Californian, which is eggs, American cheese, bacon, and potatoes. Yes, I ordered hash browns as one of the sides despite there already being potatoes underneath that fluffy pillow of an egg pile. 

First off, the zigzagging sour cream here is really weird. It looks like cake frosting which is probably the last thing you want on your Mt. Rushmore of mixed cheese and eggs. Second, I originally ordered home fries but then switched to hash browns, which is something I regret for two reasons; A) I should have ordered fruit because there were already home fries in the omelet, and B) Frequently I find that restaurants tend to overcook the hash browns which creates an overly crunchy shell. That's what happened here. The toast, which I only ate one slice of, is just overkill for this meal. It's simply not necessary. If I had ordered the fruit instead then maybe. Otherwise it's just too many empty carbs.

The good news is that this is indeed a very wholesome meal. The omelet was exactly what I needed and it was pretty tasty. Despite the fact that I've cut dairy from my diet and am also avoiding anything that has sodium nitrites and nitrates (i.e. bacon), I'm in a cheating mood this weekend. 

The Broken Yolk is always a solid meal whether you're there for breakfast or lunch. I've been there several times over the years and have never been disappointed, though I've never considered it to be *THE* best breakfast in San Diego. It's kinda like the Portland Trail Blazers; always finding ways to win and get into the playoffs but never good enough to win it all. That's the Broken Yolk. 

This particular omelet isn't the best thing I've ever had on the Broken Yolk's menu but it was good and if I happen to be super hungry the next time I'm there, I'd probably order it again, or something similar. 

THE BROKEN YOLK CAFE

CALIFORNIAN OMELET

THREE OUT OF FOUR GARGANTOS

Bison Burgers

STOP.

THE.

PRESSES.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls; I have just had a perfectly cooked piece of meat. Let me tell you something: I got a steak at Chili's. Asked for medium rare...I got rare.

Got a steak from Olive Garden. Asked for medium...I got a living cow.

Saw the bison burger on the menu of the Pacific Beach AleHouse. How could I resist? I ordered medium...I got an orgasm:

Hallelujah!

Let me tell ya - this burger was probably the best I've had in recent memory. It was big, it was moist, it was juicy, and it was delicious. Seriously outta sight. And the fries weren't anything to skip on either! Flavorful, seasoned, fantabulous. 

One thing that didn't work, however, were the Rattlesnakes:

Looks like poop on a plate

These are bacon wrapped jalapenos stuffed with some kind of spicy cream cheese sauce. Normally I love jalapenos and anything that they're stuffed with, but these things were hotter than the frickin' fires of Mt. Doom. I was ready to drown my pallet in that ranch because these things were so damn hot. What the hell happened here? Is that normal? 

It's honestly gotten to the point where if a restaurant can cook a piece of meat properly then they're already in the upper-tier as far as I'm concerned. This bison burger, though...a thing of beauty.

The Return of the Buffet

So one of my favorite gourmet spots over the years has been the Great Plaza Buffet in Pacific Beach. Last October, much to my surprise, the restaurant abruptly closed for remodeling that would take them into January. Naturally the project lasted longer than it was supposed to and went into March. Due to the initial crowds, I didn't get a chance to try it until about May or June. It was fine but I wanted to try it again to really get a sense of the changes that were made. And yes, there were changes.

Let's start off very simple. The old restaurant was a dump for all intensive purposes, and then new management bought it over and invested a lot of money to clean it up. They also invested money into finally getting a working website (my virus scanner would alert me of Trojans whenever I'd try to visit the old website). But some programmer clearly jerked them out of their money, because look at this picture that's in the main slider of their site:

The American Beauty tagline is "look closer..."

Look closely at this picture. Something here doesn't make sense.

Do you see it yet? Apparently the Great Plaza Buffet is the only buffet in the United States that also offers an unlimited supply of mint Milano cookies and Goldfish crackers. SERIOUSLY GUYS??? I would LOVE to see how this website was built and how exactly this picture got placed on the main slider. Was it the owner? Was it a programmer? I mean, I'd love to see the butthole who thought out loud "HEY! Let's put a picture of a SUPER MARKET on our restaurant's website! YEAH!!!" When I update my Yelp review I'm going to include this picture.

Anyway. The food is the same for the most part. Let's get right into it:

Okay...something is wrong with this picture too, and it's not the redness of the meat

Yeah, one thing they got rid of was the mashed potatoes which makes about as much sense as a Progressive commercial that doesn't star Flo. How can you have steak but no mashed potatoes? And it's not like they're real, I'm sure they're powdered. So instead we get...French fries. Which were pretty good anyway but still.

The "Asian Sensation" plate

Another change: as far as I can tell they no longer have white rice. Con. But the Teriyaki chicken is now cut into smaller pieces and not served on a skewer. Pro.

The Transition Plate

Another possible change: The steak that they put out seems to be cooked medium rare at the highest. While many people may not like this, I enjoy red meat very much. Pro.

Fruity Tootie

Fruit. Nothing much has changed there.

Dessert

They have a few more dessert offerings but the main difference is the chocolate fountain. They give you marshmallows and skewers and you can dunk whatever you want in there. Naturally when I went to get my dessert they were conveniently out of skewers but whatever. Oh, and here's another waste of their money. They invest thousands in renovations and then when they finally get the menu together, this happens:

I bet Cholocate tastes really good

Seriously? Thousands of dollars invested and you're not even gonna proofread the front of your menu? 

So there are a couple lazy changes that I don't particularly like as noted above. The meals are about $2 more expensive and a drink is not included which is ridiculous. Last night the floors were also filthy. There was a frickin' piece of pineapple that was just sitting there for 20 minutes. Not good. Oh, and the menu also says that they still carry lamb ribs, though I haven't seen that item in the restaurant in years. 

Overall it's still good for what it is. I enjoyed my meal last night and would go back again. But I don't think it's as high up as it once was.