Brunch at Fairway Cafe

I've been looking for an opportunity to check out brunch at Fairway Cafe for a while now because the last time I had dinner there - I must admit, months ago - I was very impressed with their tasty, affordable food and free flowing, delicious focaccia and savory spreads. So when Emily and I met up early at the Whitney on Sunday and then wanted to work our way back to the West Side to do some grocery shopping and grab a bite, I suggested we check out the restaurant on the second floor of the market at 74th and Broadway.

The trip started out well. Although the place was packed, we only waited about three minutes for a table and even snagged one right next to a big, sunny window overlooking the street. There were flowers on all the tables and even though the place is big and crowded (not to mention above a popular grocery store) the background noise didn’t interrupt us much at all.

Our waiter appeared quickly to take our orders and discouraged me from ordering the Corned Beef Hash since it takes 20 minutes. Instead, I ordered scrambled egg whites with chorizo, roasted tomatoes, and chipotle. Emily went for a burger, medium rare, with grilled onions and a side salad. Dreaming of the warm, chewy bread from my last visit, I also asked for bread and we each requested water.

Twenty minutes later there was neither bread nor water, despite the waiter's occasional promises that they were "on the way!" When the bread finally did arrive, it was brioche and seven grain toast, one slice of each. It’s certainly wasn’t bad but it wasn’t the focaccia I’d come looking for. Water came in plastic cups.

Continued...

After another ten minutes our food arrived. Emily had no complaints about her burger, she liked it quite a lot, but my eggs came sitting in a pool of yellowy liquid which seeped into my (second) piece of brioche. The chorizo was abundant and delightfully chewy, the eggs pretty fluffy considering they lacked yokes, and the tomatoes were sweet. You’d think it would have been a successful dish but there was something about the lack of heat from the chipotle (if someone told me they were bell peppers I would have believed them) that left the scramble tasting incomplete. There was no unifying flavor. I wish I'd gone for the corned beef hash. When the waiter said it took twenty minutes, I didn't realize that he meant ONLY twenty minutes.

The one thing to arrive promptly was the check. And imagine my surprise when they charged us $1.50 for the toast and another $1 for the egg whites. I'm used to paying extra for egg whites but they should have at least mentioned it on the menu, not to mention warned me about the bread surcharge! If I'd known what to expect from it, I'd have thought twice.

Rather than waste more time, we paid the bill and left, passing up some yummy looking desserts on our way out because by this point it had already been close to an hour and a half.

Moral of the story, the best ingredients on earth can't compensate for the worst service.