We visited the Clearwater Marina Restaurant 25 Causeway Blvd in Clearwater on 10 May 2009. Today was Mother’s Day, so in honor of mom we struck out way beyond our normal territory with the plan of leaving the house empty and quiet at least until after lunch. Andy’s been to the Marina Restaurant before for lunch, but that was well before Marek was born. Breakfast was reasonably priced, but the menu offerings were a bit odd. The place was obviously a healthy mix of tourists (like us, all the way from Tampa!) and locals (“Hi Walt!” “Hi Judy!”) and most everyone seemed friendly, in that working-on-Clearwater-beach-and-harried-by-tourists way.
We had breakfast. There was no standard pancakes-eggs-bacon that we usually get, so we got a single pancake for Marek and an egg “McMuffin” for Andy. Greasy but tasty, and for some reason it came with potato chips and a pickle — that’s a unique breakfast! Marek’s pancake came with Mickey ears, so that’s a plus right out.
Marek had coffee. He usually gets coffee. Err, <finger quotes>coffee</finger quotes>, but this time he had a bit of milk in the cup and really enjoyed it. For Andy, the coffee was perfect: super-hot, super-black, super-bitter, super-diner-style all the way. Mmmm, acidy.
The neatest thing about the Marina Restaurant is that if you bring in fish you caught, they’ll cook it for you. At least that’s what’s painted on the window!
Marek paid the bill.
After a compass heading correction, he found our cheerful waitress. First he tried to pay the nice folks there in the booth. They were kind enough to not take a two-year-old’s breakfast money.
We were all set to give the Marina Restaurant a rating of 2.5 or 3 pancakes. It’s an OK place, but the odd menu was a little outside our usual pleasure and it did take a little while to get served. You know, a fine place but not one to drive 45 minutes just for a pickle on your breakfast.
Then Marek got a sticker.
For our faithful readers, I would like to remind you that this rating system is half about the food and half about leaving happy. Our man Marek was so pleased with that sticker that he stuck it on his hand and wore it until it sweated off him (we were playing at the beach playground after) and then proceeded to carry it pinched between his little fingers for an hour until he finally lost it. That alone is worth bumping the 2.5 to 3.5. We give this Tampa Bay Breakfast a rating of 3.5 pancakes.
