Mae's Phinney Ridge Cafe

6412 Phinney Ave., Seattle, WA - (206) 782-1222

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Posted By Michael Stern on 5/14/2006 2:10:00 PM

We were not charmed by most of the food at Mae's Phinney Ridge Cafe, but the place itself is hard to resist. A multi-room cafe decorated everywhere with pictures, statues, blow-up dolls and every sort of nick-nack imaginable, all depicting cows (an ode to the proprietor's Wisconsin roots), Mae's is a popular breakfast-and-lunch destination for Seattleites with large appetites. It boasts that it has been a Seattle institution since the 1930s, and the spirit of fun it exudes is undeniable. Our friends Rebekah and David, who took us here on a weekday afternoon, when we had the place practically to ourselves, said that the wait to get a table for weekend breakfast can be close to an hour.

Our primary quibble with much of what we ate is that the homey spirit of the food was belied by an ersatz taste. The "hand rolled" cinnamon roll is an impressive monument of dough liberally blanketed with thick sugar glaze, but it was pretty dry; and it made us wonder where and when the dough actually was made. Similarly, milk shakes – a beautiful sight, arriving in tall silver beakers – did not taste like they had been mixed from scratch. We won't yammer on about the biscuits, hashbrowns, turkey in the hot turkey sandwich, and even the globes of butter that tasted more like buttery spread, none of which thrilled the tastebuds of anyone at our table. On the plus side, we will say that the house-smoked trout was beautiful and quite delicious, its luxurious meat lifting up in moist, full-flavored hunks. About the best thing on the table, we thought, was from the part of the menu headlined, "Meatless at Mae's": a tofu breakfast scramble of mushrooms, scallions, broccoli, and nuggets of tofu in a ginger-sake-soy marinade. The tofu, we have no doubt, was the real thing!

Scorecard

Overall: Excellent - Worth a Detour

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"Mae's menu promises that the trout is house-smoked. We believe it, and it's the meal we liked at Mae's: a handsome hunk of trout with meat that was moist, rich and smoky. It comes with eggs, hash browns and biscuits."
Michael Stern

"It would be possible to argue that tofu is a local specialty in these parts, but even if it is not, this "tofu scramble" with broccoli and cheese has a zingy soy-ginger marinade that is fully satisfying. "
Michael Stern

"A rare sight: Mae's with no line of people waiting to get in. This photo was taken early on a weekday afternoon. Mae's closes at 3pm."
Michael Stern

"Mae's menu boasts that the cinnamon roll is famous. We're not sure why it should be. It's big, alright, but pretty dry until you get to the very center, and as for that globe of yellow on top, it was hard for us to believe that it was butter."
Michael Stern

"Mae's is a multi-room establishment, each room filled with moomerabilia to celebrate the proprietor's original home in Wisconsin, the Dairy State."
Michael Stern

"We love the idea of an espresso shake, but this one had only a minimal caffeine kick, and the shake itself was ersatz."
Michael Stern

"This is the small version of the spud feast, which is a full-meal size portion of hash browns grilled with onions and peppers, topped with cheddar cheese and sour cream, and sided by a cup of salsa."
Michael Stern

"Listed on the menu under a category labeled "Mae's Home-Cooked Comfort Food," the hot turkey sandwich comes blanketed with mushroom gravy. The waitress assured us that the turkey was cut from a bird roasted right here in the kitchen. Maybe so, but there was speculation at our table that the mashed potatoes were made from a mix."
Michael Stern