Seuss Chef

Environmental lip service takes a back seat to tasty a.m. fare at Green Eggs Café.


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Published: Mar 17, 2010

MORNING GLORIES:
Winning dishes at Green Eggs Cafï¿½ include the

Neal Santos

MORNING GLORIES: Winning dishes at Green Eggs Café include the "Kitchen Sink" (two eggs, potato, cheese, choice of breakfast meat, and a jumbo biscuit covered in sausage gravy) and the surprisingly delicious quinoa porridge.

[ review ]

I don't know if it's because I'd been hearing about it from people who don't usually waste breath on food politics, or just that Dr. Seuss has been colonizing the family bookshelves lately, but Green Eggs Café didn't sound like a high-minded enterprise when I first heard the name. Not that I thought waiters would be carrying "Sam-I-Am" signs or anything. It just seemed kind of whimsical. Something you'd call a place that put more thought into high chairs and kiddie crayons than, oh, environmentally enlightened trash collection.

So I felt pretty foolish when co-owner Stephen Slaughter answered a phone call by reciting a manifesto covering everything from the café's Styrofoam prohibition to its composting policy to its (duh) commitment to sourcing local ingredients.

All of which is super duper, of course. Everyone knows that restaurateurs who use too much plastic wrap are the moral equivalent of coal barons who hand out high-fructose corn syrup to diabetic kindergartners from Hummers upholstered in baby panda fur. But almost every dinner I eat out comes with a side order of this rhetoric. Must it also be the main course at brunch?

Happily, the answer at this newcomer turns out to be no. If you overlook the menu line listing filtered tap water at $1, to be donated to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to protect the planet's waterways, you could have a whole meal at Green Eggs thinking the café was devoted exclusively to hedonism. One look at a passing "Kitchen Sink," a cast-iron skillet heaped with meat and eggs and a giant biscuit smothered in sausage gravy, is enough to banish any notion of austerity from your mind.

For starters, consider the vantage from which you might catch your first glimpse of one of Green Eggs' supersize plates: a pair of long leather couches set before a fireplace and flat-screen TV, where you can wait for a table in the kind of comfort almost every other bruncherie in town lacks. If you're used to hourlong waits on the sidewalk for a seat at Sabrina's or Honey's, this is a revelation.

The rest of the place — a modest breakfast counter, butcher block tables under a pressed tin ceiling, a quieter room in back — is cozy enough to attract boho hepcats and graying Catholics alike. There's even good news for Tea Party types: That dollar charge for water has been suspended, at least pending the installation of a higher-capacity filtration system. (Ocean and atmosphere lovers need not weep. The NOAA is a federal entity that tapped taxpayers for nearly $5 billion last year. It'll be getting your money no matter what you drink with your meal.)

But on with brunch already. Have it with tangerine juice, if coffee's not your speed. Or a $2 Steaz soda. You're not going to have much room for liquid anyway — at least not if you order the breakfast burrito. It comes out of the kitchen looking like the focal point of a rugby scrum, or a double-dog dare. Chorizo, black beans, corn, olives, potatoes, eggs, avocado — what doesn't this behemoth contain? It's terrific.

So are the potatoes that flank most of the other savory dishes: dry roasted and tossed with peppers blistered just to the point of moist succulence. You'll find eggs Benedict in two or three forms. A daily special anchored by lump crab stood out. Ten dollars bought you the opportunity to wonder if the café could break even serving that much crab, not to mention all the butter in an over-the-top rich Hollandaise.

An attempt to pay Philadelphia homage with another Benedict variation tripped up the kitchen, though. Halved pretzels took the place of English muffins. Grilled pork loin supplanted the bacon. Even if you could get your knife through all that dense stuff, the payoff was chewy and bland.

A yummy "crème brülée" French toast packs about as much vanilla as you could ever want. Serviceable pancakes get a lift from a pick-three list of toppings ranging from poached pear and lavender honey to a wonderfully intense berry compote.

The best dish was the biggest surprise. Quinoa porridge sounds like an attempt to out-vegan the staunchest eco-Samaritan who ever walked in hemp sandals. But Green Eggs turned it into a $4.50 bowl of luxuriant bliss. Scented with cardamom and cinnamon, simmered with a dash of heavy cream, sweetened lightly with agave nectar and topped with that outstanding berry compote, it sent everyone who tasted it into a reverie — followed by a resolution to copy it at home. The mint sprig crowning the bowl was as spot-on a garnish as I've had in ages.

The café also does lunch. Diced raw onions touched with Tabasco make for a pleasant burger-topping departure from Philly's griddle-fried and caramelized norm. The sweet potato fries aren't any crispier than most versions, but the tuber's natural flavor shines brightly through the clarified butter it's fried in.

Brunch is the main attraction, though. And even if you could care less how "green" your eggs are, Slaughter and his partners, William Bonforte and Andrew Zuccarini, merit praise for showing that environmentally driven restaurant practices don't necessarily prevent a café from serving good food in generous portions at a fair price. Or — phone interviews and that suspended water charity charge aside — from being pretty low-key about it. This is a really friendly and comfortable place.

Though it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to add a pile of recycled Dr. Seuss books and some biodegradable crayons.

(t_popp@citypaper.net)

Green Eggs Café | 1306 Dickinson St., 215-226-EGGS, greeneggscafe.net. Open daily, 7 a.m.-7 p.m. (full menu available daily, 8 a.m.-4 p.m.; supplemental menu 7-8 a.m. and 4-7 p.m.). Breakfast/brunch, $4.50-$9; sandwiches, $7.50-$10.50; salads, $6.50-$7.50. Wheelchair accessible.