Heading to Pinellas this morning. It’s a weekday. Malfunction Junction is a little backed up. I haven’t heard it called “Malfunction Junction” lately, have you?
We visited the Egg Platter restaurant at 6767 US Highway 19 N in St. Pete on 12 October 2011.
It’s a long haul to St. Pete. Folks tend to fall asleep. And then they also lose a shoe.
One of us looks like a goofus. Is it Marek? Is it Andy? Hard to tell, isn’t it?
I’m thinking that the Egg Platter has a serious problem with folks cooking up a nice meal at home, packing it up, and driving to the Egg Platter to have supper and use the toilets. If they didn’t have a problem, why would they take the time to make this sign? With serifs and everything!
The first thing I noticed when we walked in the door was this exuberant painting on the wall. Clearly, the Egg Platter values its employees if it gives an Employee of the Month award.
The menu is pretty extensive, though no proper blueberry pancakes. Two things to note here. One, the little chicken with dumb bell weights at the bottom. Two, French toast and Belgian waffles. They could add a “Full English,” a Swiss hot chocolate, a German beer, and a Swedish surströmming and we’d have quite the European experience.
Ivo likes to have his own menu, of course. Independent-minded lad that he is. He’ll probably grow up, much like Marek, thinking that breakfast menus count as books that he’s read.
Special treat this morning! Favorite Guest Reviewer Mom is with us. She comes along to keep an eye on our antics, though I suspect she secretly dislikes that we just drove 45 minutes to get here.
Egg Platter coffee. This is proper diner coffee. Black and bitter, just the way I like it.
Ivo has the straw-thing down, but not the holding-the-cup-thing. Shown here, master cup-holder Mom. Her barbed-wire tattoo, by the way, goes all the way around under the armpit there. She’s crazy with the ink.
The Egg Platter has a nice and cozy dining room inside. Lunch counter in the back, you can see into the kitchen, plenty of space of a good breakfast crowd.
I asked Marek to stand up so I could take a good picture of his t-shirt. Because I wanted to tell the whole world that … Marek’s Dad is Rad!
I thought kids stopped saying “rad” about ten years ago. Which means that the guy who designed this shirt is probably about 25-30 years old. Or the shirt is 10 years old (Marek and Ivo, I’ll admit to you now, almost everything you own is either hand-me-down or thrift store. Sorry to burst any bubbles!)
This Chevy pickup truck is making a comeback. Not in the real-world of actual trucks, but in the Tampa Bay Breakfasts world. I’m absolutely sure we’ve had this one featured in at least one of our many breakfasts before.
Here’s some breakfast!
I had these awesome banana pancakes. Never had them like this before, really well done!
Ivo had toast and jelly. Or maybe the jelly had him.
Mom had French toast. Oh-lah-lah!
And Marek, true to his new nature, had scrambled eggs and bacon.
The price tag for all of this was about $25 smackeroos. Maybe a little high, but we did have three whole breakfasts, and Mom ordered grits ’cause she likes to be fancy like that, so all-said the bill wasn’t bad.
Take THIS, Chick-Fil-A. Those cows on the billboards on I-75 shouldn’t have messed with these chickens.
As we were leaving, I started looking around. These murals are custom work done when they opened the place.
They go on. If you really spend time with these images, you get sort of unsettled.
There’s this whole mechanized chicken theme all the way down the hall. Very weird, which is, of course, just the way we like things.
This was a fine breakfast. Chow was good, coffee was just right, and there’s crazy chicken murals all over the place. We’re pleased to award the Egg Platter a Tampa Bay Breakfasts four pancake rating.