Letter to the Broken Yolk Cafe

Owner
The Broken Yolk Café
1851 Garnet Avenue
San Diego, California 92109

Phone: (858) 270-9655

Dear Sir or Madam:

I have fond memories of your restaurant in Point Loma, most especially the biscuits. In recent years, I have had several occasions to visit your restaurant again (the Pacific Beach location). Unfortunately, the only thing that remains the same from my memory is the restaurant’s name and the signs on the bathroom door. Usually, a long line outside a restaurant announces great food inside. Though we have waited in line at your restaurant several times, you have yet to fulfill the line’s promise of great food.

We appreciate that you bring an entire pot of coffee to the table, although the coffee is among the worst I’ve had, weak and bitter. Thank God for the mimosas to wash the coffee down.

The omelets are massive and filled with ingredients but the egg on the outside is always overcooked and squeaky. In contrast, the insides are often undercooked even to the point of being raw. Even with these massive portions, there is no need for a doggy bag.

We recently tried the Eggs Florentine, which was probably the worst dish we’ve ever had and definitely the worst benedict-style dish we’ve ever had. The uncooked English muffins provided the bed for the hard-cooked (rather than soft-poached) eggs. The Hollandaise was absolutely disgusting. It tasted gritty and like it had been made from powder. It was overwhelmingly tangy, broken, thicker than paste and made me gag. The spinach was completely unseasoned, cold and undercooked. Apparently, your cook uses frozen, as opposed to fresh, spinach. Though you use frozen spinach, you could at least heat the spinach through so that it is not cold. The home fries that came with the dish were very soggy.

Even though everyone in our party of four barely touched their food, our hurried server anxiously removed our plates without asking us if our food was good. One of our party ordered the Grilled Chicken Sandwich which was dry and flavorless and, startlingly, still pink in the center. If it hadn’t been for her fries, she would have left hungry. Another of our party ordered the burger, which was charred to a crisp and so tough it was virtually inedible.

Hoping to relive my fond memories of childhood, I ordered a side of biscuits. The biscuits had diminished in size and flavor. They were too salty and had been reheated so that they were crumbly rather than flaky. The packages of strawberry jam on the table were the only way I was able to eat the biscuits at all, though I left most on my plate.

Any restaurant that holds itself out as having the best breakfast in town should strive to live up to that title. The Broken Yolk Café hasn’t done so for years. Your motto seems to be quantity over quality. It’s almost hard to blame you, though, considering the amount of business you do, though some restaurants in San Diego manage to maintain their quality of food and service while still serving a lot of customers. The hung-over college students who predominately frequent the Broken Yolk must not be complaining.

Yours Very Truly,

San Diego Restaurant Review


http://thebrokenyolkcafe.com/