We visited Munch’s Restaurant at 3920 6th Street South in St. Pete on 21 August 2010. This was our first visit to Munch’s, and we heard about this little gem via a recommendation on the Breakfast Hotline. Munch’s has a very groovy web page at http://www.munchburger.com/.

Right away we were struck with how perfect Munch’s is, in the diner-sense of the word “perfect.” Cozy booths, a great lunch counter. Obvious investment of a lot of time over the years making this a personal and warm place. A bit sublime, really, the atmosphere here.

After all that wistful, nostalgiac, philosophical thinking, we had to play cars.

After all that work, the cars fell asleep. This makes it a challenge to play with them, honestly. But I don’t make the rules here.

Notice anything different about Marek? Did you think that maybe he got new glasses? Or maybe that his old man (that’s me) sent his butt off to the Army …

… Where he got a regulation haircut. Oddly enough, he kept telling me it was my turn. Yeah, like THAT’s gonna happen.

He spent the whole ride home enjoying that fresh, fuzzy feeling on the back of his head. Now that’s a haircut you can set your watch to.

So now that the mystery is cleared up, let’s get back to breakfast. The menu has all kinds of healthy goodness in it, and a heaping pile of not-so-healthy-but-really-goodness too. Check out this little number on the back of the menu.

We debated the various merits, back and forth, on what to drink. After a lot of arguing, we settled on coffee, for a change.

While we waited for morning chow we noticed the walls covered with pictures from the local middle school. These pictures went back decades. Munch’s is truly a place with a deep root in this neighborhood. You just can’t franchise that.

When breakfast came we were both hungry and delighted in equal measures. We actually got two breakfasts rather our usual M.O. of splitting one. I like to say “M.O.” so that my writing gets a Mickey Spillane feeling to it. I’m like Mike “Breakfast” Hammer. Marek had some little pancakes and as much bacon as I’d let him have. It never seems to be enough.

I had the blueberry pancakes and the scrambled eggs. The eggs were quite nice and the blueberry pancakes were something special.

I was really enjoying all of this when I was rudely interrupted during breakfast by a series of phone calls. First, the ketchup starts ringing off the hook.

Then, as soon as I hung up, it was the syrup.

Finally, when the pepper rang I had to get rude and tell them to just stop calling.

Here’s the only flaw we found in our whole breakfast experience. That’s an empty coffee cup on the left. Stayed that way until we flagged down someone.

We’re going to give a free pass on the echoing cavern of the empty cup because when we went to wash up we were treated to this lovely larger-than-life Baywatch girl on the inside door of the men’s latrines.

The bill came. It was high by our usual standards, weighing in at 14 clams, but considering that we had two meals instead of our usual singleton, I think that’s OK. Oh, and that blue superbeetle with the intake stacks and derby numbers, it’s got a blown front axle and bad wheel bearings all around. It spent a few weeks in the bathtub and managed to find its way into the Pancakemobile and onto the breakfast circuit. Another mystery solved.

Marek paid the bill. Don’t you just love that haircut? He looks like a six-year-old, only half-as-tall.

He found the register and handled the transaction like a pro. Which, obviously, he is considering that he’s been doing this for half his life!

When we were leaving I saw this sign. I’m glad that Marek got that haircut and looks so old, otherwise they’d have auctioned his butt off at the next bake sale.

Munch’s being a restaurant AND a sundries place, we had to stop and buy a 15 cent pop on our way out the door.

This was one fine breakfast! We talked about it on the way out the door.

We talked about it while having a tootsie-pop.

We talked about it while we were listening to the brand new Android Lust album that I just got in the mail the day before.

We talked and talked and talked. And we decided that Munch’s is as close to a perfect diner as we’ve found. Great food, lots of locals, been-here-forever and it shows. Prices good, lots of interesting things to keep you coming back. Great food. Oh, and the food was great. I think we’re going to have to break down and pull out our five-pancake rating for the second time in as many months.

We’re pleased to award Munch’s Restaurant and Sundries with a Tampa Bay Breakfasts Five Pancake Rating.

Today we’re giving Pinellas some breakfast love. It’s a long ride, so we cruised across the Gandy listening to our latest local-band find, Have Gun Will Travel. We <3 local music.

We visited The Busy Bee at 7345 49th Street North in Pinellas Park on 14 August 2010. This was our first visit to The Busy Bee, and we liked it as soon as we walked in the door.

Marek and I have always felt that a good diner should have an exposed kitchen. The guy with a Mohawk is just a bonus.

The menu is good, old-fashioned, quality breakfast chow. No big surprises here. Well, except for the “Assorted cold cereals with mild”. We can probably blame some left-brain/right-brain cross-talk there, since the ‘k’ and the ‘d’ are both the middle finger on the keyboard. At least it’s not “cereals with mold.” That would be terrible.

First thing we did was get coffee. This is good morning go-juice! Marek, for the second week in a row, put in our order. “I want pancakes. And dad wants eggs. And coffee. Thank you ma’am.” Kid knows what he wants, and he’s polite, too. Let’s see how long this lasts. I’m thinking until he’s 10, then it’s all down hill.

When was the last time you saw a Hebby Chebby slung that low? And what the foxtrot is that orange car? Some sort of futuristic jet-powered contraption, it seems. Probably a direct descendant of the early Chrysler turbine car. Check out the double-decker bus and the 1986 Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck behind Marek’s coffee. Do you think a London bus and an ’86 Chevy pickup have ever been parked next to each other? Not until this moment, breakfast fans. As always, you can count on us for innovation in both the breakfast AND automotive departments.

When breakfast came we were ready. We had an appetite that you can only get from a morning of playing cars. Our first impression was, this is sort of a smallish breakfast. But it turned out to be just a smallish plate; we really did walk out of here with full bellies.

Marek actually gained an audience from several tables as he took care of the syrup.

As our loyal TBB readers may know, Marek can be picky sometimes. But he didn’t hold back from these hotcakes. It helps that I don’t let him eat for 24 hours before we do an official breakfast, just to be sure I can get a good picture of him eating something. Fashion models do the same thing.

Marek’s verdict? The Busy Bee is a knock-out breakfast!

The whole thing set us back under eight clams. NOW we’re talking good value. We’re not disparaging the more expensive places, but an $8 breakfast means we have something left over for the flea market. (That’s the “flohmarkt” for our German readers.)

After Marek woke from his pancake pause, he jumped up to pay the bill.

After wandering around for a while, he finally found someone to take his money. Everyone here treated him like he was their own grandkid. Not only was Marek the youngest kid in the dining area, but I think I was the second youngest.

Marek brought back change, and TWO lollipops!

We had a great visit to The Busy Bee. Great folks, everyone (but us, of course) were by-name regulars getting “the usual.” Really good chow: Eggs were delicious, bacon just right, and the pancakes were exactly what we had in mind. Black and bitter coffee. And lollipops at the end. It’s all good at The Busy Bee!

Thanks Busy Bee! See you next time!

We’re pleased to give The Busy Bee a Tampa Bay Breakfasts Four Pancake Rating.

With all the money we saved at breakfast, we were able to go to The Wagon Wheel!

We got to hold and pet a bird.

And we found this table of cars. 50 cents each, or three for a dollar! (We got three for a dollar, of course!)

Marek picked out two stock cars and I picked out the solar car because I’m a believer in the future of clean energy, and because I was completely impressed that Matchbox made a solar car. We love Matchbox.

Car seat and $1.95 Wal-mart children’s sunglasses?

Or military-grade ejection seat and wicked aviator glasses?

You, our dedicated reader, know Marek pretty well by now, so I think you already know the answer.

That’s right, car seat and two dollar kid’s shades. He’s only three, for cryin’ out loud. Plenty of time for him to be a pilot when he grows up. For now, all he needs is daddy-kisses and pancakes.

We went to Sub World at 10051 North Dale Mabry on 7 August 2010. This was our first visit to Sub World, and we would have never in a hundred years looked to a sub place for breakfast if Tampa Bay Breakfasts fan Brandt hadn’t recommended it.

Once we got in the door we were greeted with some friendly hellos. Customer-wise, folks seemed to be more tucked into breakfast than anything else; it was sort of quiet in the room at 0830. We, of course, broke the seal on that in a hurry.

I’m going to tell you a story that, for once, I’m not making up. Nice lady comes over to ask what we’d like. Marek turns to her and says, complete with waving hands and bugged out eyeballs, that he would like juice, and empty coffee cup, and his dad wants coffee with chocolate too, and we want pancakes.

Chocolate? Really, Marek? Don’t you ever read Tampa Bay Breakfasts?

Did we get our coffee based on his wild, ranting, slightly inaccurate order?

Yes. Yes we did.

Our truly dedicated readers, the ones that also read the tabloids and the speculative writers, the opinions and the fan sites about us, and there are hundreds (including one that suggests that Marek is actually Jennifer Anniston’s long-hoped-for baby), our truly dedicated readers know that all of our photographs are taken with the super-delux, professional-grade camera built into my little Nokia. Frankly, I’m amazed you can even tell the difference between Marek and pancakes with this sorry little phone cam. But regardless, for you, the TBB fan, we try to push the limits and really bring you as close to the breakfast edge as possible. So here’s a look at the Sub World’s coffee … from inside the cup! Now that’s ground-breaking breakfast-photo-journalism, seen here first!

Inside Sub World, you find folks who either know the secret that this sub shop serves breakfast or folks who are hoping to get a foot-long cheesesteak for breakfast. Two tables over from us we overheard an interesting conversation. “So, what is this face book thing everyone’s talking about?” “It’s this thing on the inner net where you tell people things about yourself.” .38 Special was playing on the radio in the background.

While we waited for some morning chow, I was given the duty of operating the fire department mobile command post vehicle. I pointed out to Marek that a mobile command post would probably be at least an SUV if not a full-blown rig. He told me that he was calling the shots here. It was his active flightline.

Active flightline, you say? Yes. Not only is it an active flightline, from what I could gather through local intel, this was a secret spy mission flightline somewhere in the Kyrgyzstan mountains. Why else would they be flying a decomissioned cold-war-era SR-71? (And if you follow that link, notice that it ends with “shtml”. I didn’t know ANYONE was using server-side-includes anymore. That’s so cutting-edge-web for 1996. (I still write HTML by hand, to the version 3 spec, so I’m actually excited that someone else is also stuck in the 90s. In Kyrgyzstan.))

The SR-71 is truly a lovely aircraft. This one has been tricked out with chrome exhaust ports. That’s definitely not in the maintenance TO. Another reason why I think this whole operation is under the radar. (Get it? Under the radar? For an airplane? I slay me.)

Sure enough, without following the established guidelines for aircraft maintenance you’re bound to get in trouble. This is why you should always have the United States Air Force involved. Do not try to operate your chromed-up, tricked out, end-of-life military aircraft without adult supervision, kids.

Luckily, the ejection seat from the start of this morning’s effort came in handy. No one was hurt.

Good thing for us hungry pilots, here’s breakfast!

Not bad, all around. Pancakes were just fine. Bacon was not Steve-Standard but was above average for our travels. Eggs were pretty good. Syrup came in a cute little jar.

We ate and we ate well. When the bill came we were a little surprised that we were set back almost 13 clams. This same breakfast usually costs us about 11, so we’re going to call this on the high side, price-wise. Must be a surcharge to support the pilot recovery from that crash we had earlier.

Marek offered to pay the bill. He is truly a Breakfast Scholar. Ph.D. of the Morning Meal.

Especially when the lad brings back the change. That’s the part I’m going to miss when he gets older.

At the end of the breakfast day, we had a pretty good morning chow. Folks were nice. Food was good. Price was high. We’re happy to give Sub World a Tampa Bay Breakfasts rating of three and a half pancakes.

After breakfast, Marek said, hey old man, let’s get that pretty girl of ours some flowers. So we pointed the Pancake Pontiac (it’s actually a Toyota) to Tampa’s Florist, our favorite flower shop.

Marek picked out the perfect flowers for mom. Part of what made them perfect was that he could reach them.

And he even delivers. For a nominal fee, of course.

For any readers who are intrepid enough to read to the very end, I want to assure you that Marek is a highly trained and qualified pilot. None of the stunts we perform for Tampa Bay Breakfasts are ever accomplished without a lot of preparation, training, and certification of skills.

Marek is pictured here with his actual SR-71 and his ground support team from the Kyrgyzstan mission. Note that the intake baffles are NOT chromed, thank you very much.