Lines outside of a restaurant can indicate a couple of things: it might be a tourist trap, or it might be one of a chain of themed restaurants scattered throughout major cities. In my opinion, these are places to avoid. Another sort of place has a line formed by loyal locals and tourists who did some research. Dottie's is in this category. There may be a line before it even opens at 7:30 AM.
Having been disappointed by my first breakfast stop at another famous SF breakfast eatery, I did some poking around and found Dottie's, literally a few minutes walk from my hotel. And my first meal there, the rosemary-lamb sausage scramble, made it obvious that I would be returning each day I had left in the city. There was no question about trying another place. That would mean missing out on another selection here, and that was simply unacceptable.
Dottie's is a relatively small restaurant, and it's packed during breakfast hours. One glance at the menu (or, gloriously, the specials menu) will tell you why. In the days that I visited, the breakfast specials included blueberry-cornmeal pancakes; banana-butterscotch French toast with toasted pecans; smoked whiskey-fennel sausage, mushrooms and baby spinach scramble with grilled cornbread and home-fried potatoes; chorizo, onion and cheddar scramble, flour tortillas, fresh salsa, and home fries; black bean cakes and eggs (any style), grilled cornbread and home fries; rosemary-lamb sausage, roasted garlic, tomato, spinach and goat cheese omelette, with buttermilk-dill toast and home fries. And that's not an exhaustive list.
It's wonderful to be confounded in ordering because there are too many items that sound good. And when you hear that they bake things like the wonderful buttermilk-dill bread for the toast and so many other items... the choice becomes more difficult. I wish I'd stayed in the city for a few more days, in part so I could have tried more of the breakfasts here (especially considering that my carefully-ordered tasting plan was thrown when the specials menu changed).
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