Munch’s Restaurant and Sundries

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/.

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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.

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

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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.

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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 …

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

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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!

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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.

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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.

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

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We talked about it while having a tootsie-pop.

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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.

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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.

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