Morning Edition

Morning Edition
153 N Patterson Park Ave
Butcher's Hill, Baltimore
Brunch
410-732-5133
Cost: $
Reservations: not needed
Date of meal: Saturday October 6, 2007 (11:00am)
National Price-Quality Frontier: Inside It
Baltimore Price-Quality Frontier: On It

Morning edition is a cute brunch place north of Patterson Park. Please note that it has weird hours (only open Friday through Sunday and only for breakfast brunch but not too early). If you want to grab breakfast on a Wednesday, this is not the place for you.

Decor is homey. Tables are old, wood, and wobbly. Menu is handwritten (and photocopied and long). Decorated walls with lots of odd objects make give the place a personal touch. Given the dirth of alternatives, I was surprised it wasn't more full.

The menu is long enough that there is something for everyone. We had a raisin French toast and an omelette with Italian sausage. Both were excellent, and at prices <$10 for interesting omelettes it's almost a good bargain. The main problem with Morning Edition is the wait for food. We sat for roughly 30 minutes waiting for our food to come. While this can be nice if you want an extremely leisurely brunch, it can be a bit stressful if you only want a fairly leisurely brunch and have something to do afterwards.

I would be very happy to go back. The price point is much more appealing than Miss Shirley's, and the quality is almost as high. If they nailed service a bit more, it would be ideal.

Miss Shirley's

Miss Shirley's
410 W. Cold Spring Lane
Roland Park, Baltimore
410-889-5272
Brunch
www.missshirleys.com
Cost: $$
Reservations: weekend wait
Date of meal: several
National Price-Quality Frontier: Inside It
Baltimore Price-Quality Frontier: On It

Miss Shirley's is the quintessential generic, yuppie brunch place. Service is good and unobtrusive. The decor is bright, clean, upscale but unpretentious. Food is well-prepared with quality ingredients, with a diverse but fairly standard set of breakfast, brunch, and lunch fare options. (I believe they are open for dinner too but haven't been for that.) I would feel comfortable taking my parents there, having a social or business lunch, whatever.

My main complaint about Miss Shirley's is cost. At $13-$17 for omelettes and $3 for coffee, Miss Shirley's costs more than it should. I'm not sure there is any competition at or near this price point, but an entrant serving a similar product at 20% lower prices should be able to cover costs. I don't think there would be much point in trying to improve quality, as Miss Shirley's already provides everything most of us want in a brunch venue. Still, given the lack of other options, I will happily return to Miss Shirley's when I want a nice brunch.

Blue Moon Cafe

Blue Moon Cafe
1621 Aliceanna St.
Fells Point, Baltimore
410-522-3940
Brunch
Cost: $
Reservations: weekend wait
Date of meal: Sunday, August 19, 2007 (8am)
National Price-Quality Frontier: Inside It
Baltimore Price-Quality Frontier: Inside It

I was expecting to love Blue Moon Cafe. It's a cute Fells Point brunch place and looks the part. It's full of yuppie parents and urban hipsters in equal (and excessive, they don't take reservations and we had to wait even at 8am) numbers. The atmosphere is great.

I should start with a very fixable complaint. Their web presence stinks. It's not just the lack of a web page, but there is considerable ambiguity and disagreement among other cites (citysearch, etc.) about their hours. This problem is compounded by the fact that they don't pick up the phone much and their answering machine (if they have one) doesn't turn on within a small number of rings.

The staff are obviously over-stretched and this led to sub-par service (e.g., 10 minute wait to get a check) despite the best efforts of the servers. The menu looked promising and creative (apple and bacon pancakes!!) but execution was mediocre. I had an omelette, and ingredients were of low quality and eggs were cooked badly. Toast was served with sub-par jam. My spouse's pancakes were kind of blah.

I guess all this is about right given the low prices ($8 omelettes) but given the clientèle, the neighborhood and the high prices of restaurants in Baltimore in general, I think Blue Moon would be well-served by raising prices a bit ($10 omelettes) and putting the the extra money into better ingredients and more servers. While at a higher price-point, for me Miss Shirley's is worth the extra price for brunch.