First Street Cafe

Because it was my birthday and I belong to their birthday club, I had a free meal so had to take advantage of it.

I love their dungeness crab and artichoke melt sandwich on sourdough. It never fails to satisfy my palette.

My daughter had breakfast of scrambled eggs and chicken sausage with a berry scone. Her eggs were cooked perfectly and the scone is always good.

One day I'm going to go for the evening jazz upstairs. I hear it's a nice evening if you can do that so one day.......

PROS:
Friendly service.
Outside eating.
A variety of options

CONS:
Sitting next to the loud old-man who would not stop talking and condescending his lady friend/wife - not the restaurant's fault of course.  We tried to move seats but sadly there were no more to move to.

My sister got the corned beef hash with eggs and she gives it a 4.
I got the artichoke bruschetta and I give it a 2.  I think I paid $11 for 4 pieces of bread - 2 were traditional bruschetta and 2 were artichoke tapenade... didn't seem like a good value to me.

Like the reviews say, we went there in the early afternoon and they were out of scones.  It seems like if they are always out of scones, that they should make more?  Just a thought.

Our server was friendly.
The food arrived in a good amount of time.

I wouldn't dine-in though as the restaurant inside was run down and smelled dirty.  Maybe it's time for a deep cleaning and re-painting.

The service was great!

I have often eaten here and am surprised by the quality of the meal I got. I ordered the apricot/cilantro chicken breast because I felt the flavor combination would be interesting. I can say that this meal itself is not worth the $18. It came with potatoes and some pretty good sauteed but oily vegetables.

I could make and present a meal better from home.

The chicken breast was not a natural chicken breast, either it was frozen or pre-formed and although it was cooked nicely, I have had the same chicken breast at Denny's. It was a plainly lightly seasoned sauteed chicken breast with some very sweet apricot salsa scooped on top. I could not taste any cilantro, which indicates that they cooked the salsa too long with the cilantro in, rather than adding cilantro before serving.  The sauce was too sweet. The chicken's seasonings did not match the topping, and it would have been nice if they had taken more time to season this chicken according to this recipe, but it is probably the same chicken they use for every dish, without much thought into matching flavours.

The vegetables were fresh and in season, and sauteed to a nice texture, not too much, not too little. The asparagus was underdone, however. I make the same type of vegetable side dish at home with a lot less oil. There was nothing creative about it.

I had a choice of mashed potatoes or seasoned red potatoes. I ordered the red potatoes and they came whole, seasoned with an oily rub, maybe a little salt, but nothing that permeated to the inside of the potato. Red potatoes are good on their own, of course, but like I said, $18 for such a simple meal? I don't think so.