My Quest for the Perfect Breakfast

My favorite meal is this:

Steak, medium-rare
Eggs, over-medium
Hashbrowns with onions
English Muffin with cream cheese.

It's quite simply the best meal ever! So I'm looking for a local restaurant who will cook it to my liking. I've decided once a week (most likely on Saturdays, but it's an open schedule) I will go to a new place and try out their steak-n-eggs. And then I'll write a review. I went to Elmer's first, but I want to talk about the one I went to today since it's fresh on my mind.

I stopped at a mom & pop diner just off the freeway called "Tom Tom's". I don't know why it's called that, but they have a banner that says, "Pray for our troops", and I like that. It looks very truck-stopish and yet family oriented as well. But somewhere in the back there's a lounge. There are two entrance doors, one was blocked with a little sign that you can't read until you walk up to the door. It says, "Please use other door".

You seat yourself and there were enough choices for me to choose from, even though the entire left side of the place was closed off. There were enough people eating there that I wasn't afraid of the food though. I sat in a booth near the main window in front which still has holiday paintings on it.

The waitress was awesome. She was really nice and called me "hon" or something like that. Apparently she wasn't even my real waitress, but she kept helping me because mine was otherwise detained. She gave me coffee and I was polite and looked at the menu even though I knew was I was going to get. It's good to know the price anyway.

She brought my creamer, took my order without writing it down, and I entertained myself with the classifieds, comics and crossword puzzle. Some weird flashback from the 80's came in with an older fella. The 80's guy had feathered hair and a style that said "Duran Duran Rocks!"... and the sunglasses (in rain) topped off the look. (I wear my sunglasses at night, so I can, so I can...)

The coffee was typical diner sucky-fied java. It was bitter and old. I tried to make it better with sugar and cream, but to no avail. The silverware was very thin. When I got my meal, I think my fork flexed when I mashed up my eggs into the hashbrowns.

The english muffin was fine, but how do you mess that up? The cream cheese was not whipped, which I prefer. You get less, but you don't need much and it's much more spreadable. And they put butter on the muffin. That's okay, I can deal with it.

The hashbrowns were fine. But no onions. That's why you should write it down! But they weren't greasy or anything. In fact, they were a little on the dry side.

The steak didn't look very good. It looked small (it was only 6 ounces) and appeared to have been cut with a dull knife. It almost looked like hamburger on the surface. The inside was okay. It wasn't special by any means, but it wasn't totally horrible.

The meal was $9.25, the coffee $1.50 and the cream cheese was an extra $0.50... a total of $13.25 with tip included.

All in all, I give them a C+. Pretty good service, not so great food and too expensive for what I got.