Miami has breakfast chains such as Denny's, IHOP, and the like. We boast a few two-bit diners and coffee shops too, as well as fancy hotel establishments that offer ostentatious brunch buffets on weekends. Michael's Genuine serves cool breakfast items on Sundays, as do perhaps a couple of other restaurants that are better known for dinner. There are bagel joints that pretend to be breakfast cafés.
But we're not talking about any of these. What this city needs is a restaurant devoted to solid, home-cooked, home-baked breakfasts and nothing else (except for friendly, efficient service and a great cup of coffee).
A place like the Old Fort Lauderdale Breakfast House (better known as the O-B House), which despite its name opened only one month ago, would fit the bill.
O-B's breakfast offerings include all sorts of basics such as egg dishes, pancakes, and the like, but they are not put out in just a rote manner. Egg yolks arrive deep orange in color -- they're free-range, organic, and, most important, very fresh. The pancake is baked in a cast-iron skillet (and it performed very admirably in the Broward-Palm Beach edition of Flapjack Flip-Off XI). Maple syrup comes from Vermont, while low-pasteurized milk and churned butter arrive from a local dairy farm. You can veer towards a more unconventional meal too -- how about oven-baked Florida grouper with eggs, cheese grits, and toast?
Now it would be nice if O-B House decided to open a branch down this-a-way, but we are not saying Miami needs an O-B House. We'd be more than satisfied with any venue that served home-baked biscuits, corn breads, and muffins, perhaps with locally-produced jams; that could put out buckwheat griddlecakes, or whole grain waffles, or grits with red-eye gravy, or coddled eggs (locally fresh), or properly prepared omelets with the aromatics of garden herbs; that offered freshly made sausages and slabs of quality bacon and ham; that focused on the details that make a breakfast memorable (ambiance, coffee, a cat sitting on your lap, etc.). One last specification for our wish list: We wouldn't want this breakfast joint to be too glitzy or trendy or expensive.
Last time we noted a need -- one-cup-at-a-time coffee shops -- Panther answered (as did Eternity Coffee Roasters). Now it's time for a morning-minded entrepreneur to come to the early-riser's rescue. (And while you're at it, free international newspapers would be a nice touch too.)
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