Traditionally, my Saturday morning routine has consisted of sleeping until eleven, wandering downstairs for some coffee, and then watching TV until it's time for my mid-afternoon nap. And by "nap," I of course mean "two hour sleep." And I wonder why the weekend is never long enough.
In an effort to get the weekend started at a more reasonable hour, I've been meeting up with friends Jay and Cameron on Saturdays for breakfast over the past several months. Not only has this given us a more productive Saturday, but it gives us a chance to catch up on a regular basis, despite Jay's busy workload and Cameron's now-successfully-defended thesis and the impending arrival of his first child. And we get to eat breakfast. I love breakfast. I would eat it three times a day, were it socially acceptable to do so.
Over the course of our breakfast excursions, we've been making an effort to patronize locally-owned eateries over the big-chain style restaurants. After the obvious selections were visited, we had a little trouble finding some of the smaller, less-well-known locations to check out. As chock-full-of-useless-information as the internet is, apparently there isn't much of a good reference for smaller breakfast places in Columbus available. I'm going to try to make an effort to fill this gap by sharing our breakfast adventures here.
This past Saturday, on the recommendation of Cameron's dad, we visited Marshall's Restaurant in Grandview. Marshall's is a bit of a strange place, as when you first walk in you're given more the impression of a semi-trendy restaurant / nightclub than that of a place the serves biscuits and gravy. It almost looks like two different restaurants are missing their adjoining wall. Apparently Marshall's does serve standard bar food and drinks during the evening hours and has been bestowed with such accolades as "Best Single's Scene" and "Best Martini." By whom, I'm not exactly sure, as their website doesn't really go into details on that. I can't speak to that directly, as I opted for coffee over a martini, and the "single's scene" has never really been my niche.
As to the breakfast, I think the three of us agreed that it was definitely in the top tier of places we've visited so far. Jay and I showed up a bit before Cameron and were immediately seated, which is rare for a Saturday morning. While the coffee wasn't the best I've had, I'm admittedly a bit of a coffee snob. Adding a little cream and sugar brought it right up to par with most breakfast places' offerings. I'll give you fair warning, however: there is a reason that there is no breakfast plate on the menu that has both pancakes and hash browns. Jay and I both made the mistake of ordering the #3 plate (two eggs, two pancakes, and side of meat) plus a side of home fries. Someone should have warned us that the pancakes were approximately a foot in diameter. Needless to say, we were more wasteful than we usually are that morning.
On that note, Jay made a very good point in discussing our proposed reviewing system, and that is the need to classify the different styles of hash browns. Or "home fries" as the southern folks may call them. Just about every breakfast restaurant serves something called "home fries" or "hash browns," but what you end up getting can vary widely. Marshall's version of "home fries" are basically the fried potato cube variety as opposed to the shredded potato kind. And they're plentiful, just like the pancakes.
At the end of the breakfast, everyone was full and the restaurant was starting to fill up. Apparently with marathon runners? Marshall's certainly wasn't the greasiest restaurant we've been to yet, but I was a bit surprised to see that many apparently-health-conscious people there. Maybe there are some options on the menu that are more healthy than the "giant stack of pancakes" platter i opted for.
But I, for one, will never know.
Marshall's Restaurant
1105 W 1st Avenue
Columbus, Ohio 43212
(614) 294-1105