Birthday Breakfast @ The French Laundry

(All blog photos today brought to you by my little iPhone...not bad for no flash and no manual focus!)

Yesterday was my little sister's birthday...so off we went -- out to celebrate in the morning --it's as good a time as any, right?

We went to a tiny little gem of a restaurant called "The French Laundry" in a small town about an hour from here. (Here's a link to their blog.) Getting there is half the fun, I always take the back roads and enjoy the countryside.

The closer we get, the more lakes we see....and in town are many, many beautiful old homes and historic structures everywhere you look.

The little place started out as a sandwich/bagel shoppe, and the owner expanded and added on as his business grew and the new building is just as cute and quirky as the old!

Cute: mismatched tables and chairs, all vintage.

mismatched coffee cups and dishes

mismatched bar stools

fresh dahlias on all the tables in various odd bottles used for vases

Quirky: Delicious menu with the most odd dish titles such as:

"Chicks love pale, skinny guys"

"Leah's new job"

"The Downriver"

Sandwiches are called "Would-be Prom Queens"

my favorite sandwich titles?

"He Ain't Heavy..."

"The Floydian Slip"

"The Peeping Chicken"

"I Don't Need No Cell Phone"

and...

"Stop Twittering"

Loved, loved, loved it all....lots of smiles, snickers, and chuckles.

(I ask you, isn't Katie the cutest?)

Katie passed on "Ron and Deb's Weekender" and instead ordered "Norma & Floyd's Corned Beef Hash" ....

(Smile, you're looking at a dahlia!)

And covering the freshly-made corned beef hash was a blanket of eggs to keep it all hot and was served with baguette.

I passed on the breakfast called Nancy's California Proposal. Instead, mine was breakfast pizza with a twist: scrambled eggs with green pepper, red onion, mushrooms, sausage, apple wood smoked bacon, Grafton Vermont cheddar, as well as tomatoes on a very flavorful pizza crust.

(Oh. My. All of this was just too yummy....we sounded like happy California cows as we ooooohmmed and aaaaahmmed over each bite. I swear the mushrooms and the rest of the veggies had been marinated in some sort of wine or infused vinegars before they were used in the eggs, each bite was so fresh and bursting with flavor!)

The birthday girl considered "Farewell Rudy, hello Rhodella" but had a quiche (of the day) that was purely out of this world....I cannot tell you how delicious this was! We shared our entrees with each other as we like to do when trying a new place.

The crust was melt in your mouth flaky, to die for...and the fresh tomatoes, basil, artichokes, goat cheese, it all was just a perfect symphony and each bite was bursting with fresh flavors all melded together with that cheeeeeese! The cheese! Oh. Sigh.

Go ahead...drool! We both enjoy going out for breakfast....for one thing, it's so nice to experience the variety of choices and for another, it's just a wonderful way to start the day. I would recommend this dining experience for breakfast or any other time of the day...

I ordered up a sweet treat as a sort of appetizer to go with our savory breakfast...after all, we were celebrating a birthday, so this would serve as our "cake"....

And this would be one of their famous pastries: a gigantic cinnamon roll that would feed four gals. It's grilled to perfection on the grill in back and served up hot with a carmelized bottom that is crunchy and sweet. Again, we were mooing when we took each bite!

Have you ever thought of grilling a cinnamon roll? WOW!

Mary and Katie shopping in the "fresh-baked" section of the French Laundry. One of their cookie bars would feed four people!

Then we walked to the old town section and did a little shopping in a store called "The Iron Grate" and it's a shoppe that I swear Joy, from "Savvy City Farmgirl" or Ang from "Parisienne Farmgirl" could have set up, it was full of their kind of goodies, two stories of it!

Mary bought a beautiful ornament by this gal, who once lived in our old farmhouse and now sells her ornaments and framed silhouettes around the country.

The shoppe had set up for Christmas and was it ever fun to look around and admire their beautiful trees and displays. We came home in the mood to decorate our own homes for Christmas.

The order of the day was cream, cream cream everywhere, and then accented with either dusty aqua or a dusty green, black or whites. It is a fun place to look around and shop!

However, I have to make note of this: the staff is less than helpful and very unfriendly, in spite of that, they do have a nice shop, if a little pricey.

We did get both applesauce and apple pie filling canned and Mary left with almost a dozen jars of each to put on her shelves. We also did some crafting after we got done canning, too!

I hope Mary had a happy, happy birthday...on the day she was born, my dad was gone hunting (he made it home 45 minutes before she was born) and for most of her birthdays growing up, and now....married to an avid hunter herself, most of her birthdays are spent sans a man, so we ladies work it all out!