It's About Breakfast

It’s 6:30 on a frosty Saturday morning, and I’m sitting at my table inside The Big Biscuit, a restaurant tucked inside a shopping plaza a few miles north of Kansas City just off Interstate 29.?

I love this place.

There are about two dozen Big Biscuit restaurants across the Midwest, so this diner isn’t one-of-a-kind, much as I wish it was. But the food is great, the portions are healthy, the place is spotless, the service is prompt, the coffee’s hot and the staff is friendly.

They play great music on the house speaker system. Daydream Believer by the Monkees and I Second That Emotion by Smokey Robinson are on the menu this hour. It’s music of the 60’s and, judging by the age demographic of this morning’s patrons -- including me – it’s music FOR the 60’s!

And then there’s the name.?

How can you NOT love a place called The Big Biscuit?

Their logo is a cartoon chef carrying a biscuit the size of a Toyota. ?

Sitting here, taking it in, alone with my thoughts, has me thinking about Breakfast in America, and I don’t mean the Supertramp album. ????

I think of breakfast as the unsung hero of meals -- the meal that doesn’t get its proper due.

Lunch is a great meal for business discussions. Marriage proposals are made over dinner.

Breakfast? ?It’s the sibling that does the job quietly, without recognition.

It’s Lou Gehrig batting behind Babe Ruth.

It’s the astronaut who stepped out of the capsule after Neil Armstrong.

It’s the guy who sits in the corner of the office and manually enters data onto spreadsheets, without complaint.

There are a lot of reasons why breakfast is best.?Here are my ten.

10.?You Can Dine Alone. If you’re dining out, you can have breakfast by yourself and not be looked at like you’re a leper. Nothing says “loser” like walking into a restaurant at lunch or dinner and sitting down by yourself. It’s like using the HOV lane with no passengers in your car. With the latter, you get a $300 ticket. With the former, you get an equally pricey dose of shame and self-consciousness.

Breakfast??It’s the perfect meal for solitary reflection. It’s the great “go it alone” meal.

9.?Breakfast Is Cheap.?Relatively speaking, that is.?You can get in and out for under $20. That’s why you see so many old guys lingering over breakfast and discussing world events each morning at McDonald’s. Man, I can’t wait to retire and be part of a group like that, even if I only hear half of what the other guys are saying.?

8.?The Waitresses. Breakfast waitresses are the best. They always seem to be models of efficiency – scurrying around like they’re motorized, beautiful the way your mom was when you were a kid, with names like Peg or Lil proudly displayed on name tags pinned to their blouses. They call you Hon and Sweetie and Babe, and they always make sure your coffee cup is filled. It’s important, I think, to be generous with your breakfast tip. Kay or Jo (or here at The Big Biscuit, Mel, short for Melissa) worked just as hard serving your $8.50 omelet this morning as Andre did delivering your $75 steak dinner last weekend.

7.?If You’re Dining at Home, Even an Idiot Can Do It.?I speak from experience. Cereal + milk + bowl = breakfast. Bread + toaster + jam = breakfast. Only slightly more complicated are eggs and bacon. Crack an egg, and if the yolk stays intact, you get sunny side up or over easy. Yolk breaks, ya’ get scrambled. Bacon: low and slow and you’re fine. Really, making a decent breakfast is one step above boiling water, which I’m proud to say I’ve mastered, but only recently.

6.?Breakfast is a “No Surprise” Meal. You take your chances with lunch and dinner, and sometimes you can’t even pronounce the names of the entrees. When you dine out at breakfast, you pretty much know what you’re getting, and nobody messes it up.

This, however, doesn’t appear to be a universal phenomenon. When I visited China a few years ago, the restaurant at the really fancy five-star hotel where we stayed served a breakfast buffet that included roast beef, spaghetti noodles and some things that appeared to still be squirming on the plate.?

5.?It’s Fast. You can’t have the word “fast” in your name, and not be.

4.?Speaking of Names, Menu Items at Breakfast Places are a Hoot. Big appetite? You might want to try “The He-Man,” “The Hungry Man” or, “The Lumberjack” -- the latter of which always seems to include pancakes (apparently pancakes are favorites of lumberjacks worldwide).

I’d order “The Lumberjack” more often, but I never seem to be wearing the requisite flannel shirt at the time.

Most menus include entrees such as “The Light ‘N Lively” for the health conscious. I’ve yet to find a diner that lists “The Arterial Plaque Builder” or “The Plavix Inducer” as options, but as a heart attack survivor who likes to laugh, I’d appreciate the stab at humor.

3.?It’s Relaxed and Unpretentious. My wife and I have reached the age where the kids of friends and family are getting married, and we go to a lot of out-of-town weddings. The wedding ceremony and evening reception are great, but sometimes the best part is the “next day” breakfast, where we get to shuck the fancy suit and dress and replace them with khakis and a polo shirt or jeans. The conversations are relaxed, the mood is friendly and the music, if there is any, is soft – no doubt in deference to that morning’s hangover.

For the last several years, my wife and I have hosted an event at which friends from across the state come visit for the weekend. Saturday night steaks and wine, and the subsequent campfire are terrific, but so’s the next-day breakfast. The guys emerge from their bedrooms unshaven and wearing sweats. The ladies come to the table often sans makeup and with pillow hair, and that’s just fine with everybody.

2. The Coffee. Is there a more bountiful product on the market today? I looked it up. The world consumes about 25 billion gallons of java each year. Meanwhile, global gasoline consumption is about 97 billion gallons. If we could find a way to have the former augment the latter, maybe we wouldn’t be paying $4 a gallon for gas. I’m paying about $3.50 for a cup of coffee here at The Big Biscuit, but it’s a bottomless cup.

Imagine a bottomless tank of gas!!

And about those cups: always look for a place that sells coffee in a thick, white mug. This isn’t a dealbreaker but -- wait a minute -- it IS a dealbreaker! Do you know why a cup of Joe is so often served up in a big, ceramic mug? It’s because ceramic is a solid and neutral material that neither absorbs nor imparts flavors - leaving coffee to taste the way it should.

Who says you don’t learn anything from these blogs?

1. Breakfast Is Tradition. Watch any old black-and-white movie and look for the breakfast diner scene.?The sights and sounds haven’t changed much in nearly a hundred years.

Neither have the aromas.

Twenty years ago, I found myself in Branson, Missouri over a Veteran’s Day weekend.?On Sunday morning the whole town – filled to the brim with silver-haired military vets from World War II – was bathed in the aroma of bacon and eggs and coffee.

It was like being home, in 1970. ??

Breakfast is the original comfort food. It’s been that way, and hopefully will stay that way, forever.

Breakfast is ten-year-old you bounding down the stairs in the morning, schoolbooks in hand, seeing your family at the kitchen table. It’s your mom fixing you a hot breakfast to start your day, reminding you not to gulp your food at the table.

It’s your dad telling you to listen to your mother.

It’s momma giving you your sack lunch and a hug and kiss goodbye on your way out the door – and you hoping your buddies don’t witness this moment of affection before you meet up with them to walk to school.?

It’s your pop driving home from church on Sunday morning, then suddenly taking an impromptu detour to take the family to the IHOP down the road.?

And it’s you repeating the above with your kids, 30 years later.

Yes, breakfast is nutrition. But it’s tradition too.??

When I was growing up, everybody said breakfast was the most important meal of the day. That conventional wisdom continued until my early adulthood, when, somewhere along the line, somebody burst the bubble. I found out the whole notion of breakfast importance was kind of a scam. It turned out the phrase, “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” was nothing more than a marketing slogan coined in the 19th century by John Harvey Kellogg to sell his newly invented breakfast cereal.

Breakfast may or may not be the most important meal. But I think it’s the best meal.?

Next time you’re in town – look me up, and we’ll do breakfast. Together, we’ll see if I’m right.?

As always, thanks for reading.