Ball Square Cafe: 708 Broadway, Somerville
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Caitlin and I have had a monday-morning breakfast tradition for 5+ years now. Our traditional standby, the deluxe town diner, seems to be reducing portions and raising prices (though the food remains awesome) and the ugly omlet is too far away, so we have branched out a bit. Our search eventually led us to the ball square cafe.
Next door to (and a direct offshoot of) the well-regarded Sound Bites, I like this place even more than its progenitor. Since Sound Bites has gone from a breakfast/lunch place to an all-around restaurant, it lost a bit of the hole-in-the-wall novelty (and crazy "specials" menu) that made it so appealing. Enter Ball Square Cafe (founded by one of the original kitchen guys from 'Bites) - like the old feel, with an even better menu.
The atmosphere is ideal for a breakfast place: close, loud-ish, kitchen partially exposed, the owner going from table to table making smalltalk and asking about your meal, people milling around the coffee station and so on. The coffee station deserves special mention. There are no drinks on the menu at Ball Square - you just get them yourself. This is in every way superior to waiting for your server to happen by.
The food is great. The mashed/grilled homefries are the highlight of a menu that offers all the traditional staples, but has a fantastic variety of variations that makes coming back week after week the highlight of our otherwise errand-laden day off. For example, one of the specials 2 weeks ago was stuffed french toast with peanut butter, bananas and nutella. It was easily the best french toast I have ever eaten. Today I had a hash omelet with a grilled corn muffin - the hash was not like any I have ever eaten before: it was like a hash-meatloaf hybrid with cheese. Yes, holy crap indeed.
Portion size is exactly right for me, which means normal people may have some to take home with them. Generally the two of us have a combined bill of 20-22 dollars - not at all bad for a meal that hold you over till dinner and is very, very tasty.
