With the race cancelled yesterday, I had an unexpected free morning. After church, we headed to The Meadowlark for brunch. I felt strange within myself, like I had walked into the wrong party. I had been mentally gearing up for the final MTB race of the season, trying to harness all of my aggression and readying it to be unleashed on Sunday afternoon. Instead, I found myself in a rather posh and hipster brunch joint, sipping a coffee cocktail and exchanging polite conversation with the sort of people who regularly eat Sunday brunch in posh and hipster brunch joints, most of whom were twice my age and several brackets above my income. It’s not a situation in which I would normally find myself uncomfortable, but it was such a departure from the way I had expected to spend my day — drenched in mud, sweat and adrenaline — that everything else seemed a little surreal.
Existential crises aside, the meal was actually pretty good. My mushroom and Gruyère omlette was well cooked and supremely tasty, and the quality of the mushrooms used was apparent. I paired it with a cocktail they call a Grasshound, which is coffee, rum, cream and mint. It was interesting, if a little earthy, but worth ordering again.
Katie’s French Toast, on the other hand, was a disappointment. They tried to use some sort of artisan bread for the toast, and it ended up just being a mushy mess. The toppings were cold, which made the whole dish cold, and they finished the trainwreck by adding a cheese that Katie found entirely too strong for the dish. One wouldn’t think that French Toast would be easy to screw up, but I guess this is what can happen when you try to get too fancy. For a restaurant with such a sterling reputation in the local foodie community, we were surprised that they’d mess up something so evidently easy.
So no race, and brunch on a rainy Sunday was 1 for 2. Not exactly the roaring Sunday we had hoped for.
