Sweet Maple

photo - Yelp, Amy H.

Sweet Maple, Lower Pac Heights, Breakfast
March 5, 2016

P:
Big Hip (deep fried French Toast)
Scrambled Eggs, Millionaire's Bacon

J:
Hass Omelet, avocado, bacon (I had mine without), Monterey Jack cheese, pico de gallo served with potato medley and ciabatta toast
Millionaire's Bacon


Notes:
This has been on our brunch list for a while, and Millionaire's Bacon is what put it there.  We were up earlier than usual this one Saturday morning, and needed breakfast, so we decided to head to Sweet Maple, a seemingly very popular neighborhood spot (there was a line out the door by the time we left around 9am).

I tend not to get too adventurous when ordering breakfast/brunch foods, for fear that I'll end up with something that's just too something (heavy or greasy or sweet or some other unpleasantness).  So, I picked the avocado omelet, leaving out the bacon since the Millionaire's Bacon was required for me on this first visit.  The omelet was moist, tender, and full of diced avocado and Monterey Jack cheese with a little bit of very tart pico de gallo, a perfect offset to the rich flavors in the omelet.  Multicolored chunks of deep fried potatoes on the side were fine but nothing to get excited about, as was the ciabatta toast, it was cold and hard by the time I got to it.

Patrick went for the crispy french toast over their more traditional option.  This one is dipped in pancake batter and deep fried.  It wasn't discernibly "French Toast", but was sweet, crunchy, and more closely resembled funnel cake.  Good, but not a favorite.

The Millionaire's Bacon is what lands this place on every "Best Brunch"-type list in town.  It's been featured on TV shows, in magazines, newspapers, blogs (ahem), you name it.  Thick cut bacon is baked in brown sugar with cayenne, black pepper and red pepper flakes; it's spicy without overwhelming heat, and sticky sweet.  I liked this quite a bit, particularly the fattier parts of the bacon slice - that sweet heat worked wonders with pork fat - though I did find the leaner parts of the slice to be bordering on tough.  Patrick was not such a fan, he prefers his bacon thin and crispy, which this was not.

We weren't in love with this place, but if there is a next time, we'd probably try some other things on the menu.