Diner Review: Strattons Cafe/Clayton

Soooooo.... your intrepid diner has been busy again. Due to the frequent vicous and critical complaints of my voracious readership (thanks mom) I keep getting told, “we need more diner reviews”. Well this is not an easy thing my friend. Despite my frequent travels and my relentless stalking of the city there are very few quality breakfast establishments that I have not made a visit to, and given the cursory review. For that matter there are not that many crappy places I have not been to. I realized recently that I had not been to Strattons in Clayton having gone to their Webster location years ago and panned it for having nothing but the dreaded “fruity” tea. But, though I normally avoid chains (there are two Strattons in town) I have to admit that I was relatively pleased with my recent trip.

I drove there by the way with my folio from work and iPhone on the roof of my car which is an act of stupidity I was embarrassed about badly until I opened the paper and began reading about “assclown” Charlie Sheen. He really has never been on my radar screen and always seemed rather talentless, even in “Wall Street” but he had good breeding and seemed not to take himself too seriously as an actor. I do not think i have ever watched “2 ½ Men” but clearly it is, or was an institution. His work in "Major League" was inspired as was his apparent cameo in "Ferris Buellers Day Off". As I said, I was feeling bad about my own stupidity when I was able to read some of this guys quotes. This one made my stupidity seem...just fine.

"Guys, it's right there in the thing, duh! We work for the Pope, we murder people. We're Vatican assassins. How complicated can it be? What they're not ready for is guys like you and I and Nails and all the other gnarly gnarlingtons in my life, that we are high priests, Vatican assassin warlocks. Boom. Print that, people. See where that goes."

Tell it Charlie...tell it. But I digress.

Strattons has an little impersonal feeling. You order at counter but not a cool counter with a lot of formica and stools and a grill behind it but a fairly bright, bland little counter and you have to pass by their yogurt or gelato or whatever the hell it is to order. Seeing the bright un-natural colors of these ice creamy treats in the morning is slightly offputting. The staff was friendly enough and it was a broad menu offering everything the hungry breakfaster could want from pancakes to omelettes to biscuits and gravy. It looked to me like a place that might have the dreaded “egg white” omelette” which is painful to even see on the menu but I understand...I guess how some people might consider them...breakfast.

I ordered and was given a number and I received my large, waxy, Pepsi cup (32 oz.) which is always a bad sign and then went to get my own beverage and found that they still had fruity strawberry tea from “The Republic of Tea” but they also had “The Peoples Black tea”. SHouldnt the folks in The Republic of Tea be having some kind of revolt or uprising against these embarrassing tea names? Anyway, the black tea was passable and I started to read the Post Dispatch...oops here comes another digression...

The Post Dispatch appears to be in a death spiral. I honestly feel like every day when i read it, it is getting worse and worse. I look forward to the editorial page just to get some decent writing. It is like reading the A.P. wire and although i cannot believe it is true it feels like they have made the actual paper stock even cheaper (after downsizing the actual size) so that it is hard to read and cannot hold its shape as it is being read. Also, with all this trouble in the middle east, they oftern get to it by page 12... but the paper...it feels cheap...end of digression.

So I was reading about Charlie Sheen with a big number 28 on a little stand and they quickly brought me my food. I had the biscuits and gravy half order with some sausage and some hash browns and it looked like this:

The gravy had a nice spice and the biscuits had a home made taste. They were pretty heavy and dense and one of them could have made a nice fatty breakfast. The sausage was well cooked and had a little flavor but nothing remarkable, also nothing really offputting. The whole thing was not quite hot enough but it all had a lot of flavor and a little spice. The hash brown casserole is a suspicious menu item but these were good (excellent really) and had a lot of moisture and mixed excellently with the gravy and biscuit for a nice hash. I would recommend them highly even though not traditional shredded and also also their was no crispness. Still, they were good. they also had an offering of “Potato Pancakes” which I will need to sample on a return trip. This is what it looked like when I was finished:

I checked out other people’s plats and all the food looked pretty good. They had a number of booths and lots of people working there (it looked like too many) delivering food and cleaning tables. The food was not cooked right behind the counter but the kitchen was visible and looked crowded as well. As least there were no worries about food being trucked in from a commisary or anything like that. It sits right by the Ritz and also by that upscale condo development and the street in front was full of Lexus crossovers for the well to do soccer moms. There were a lot of kids there for 8 o clock in the morning and I will need to figure out what that is all about because I am a grumpy old man and kids+morning=grumpier and grumpier. It was a little pricey coming in at over 9 bucks which rules it out as a regular stop but check their website as their breakfast specials looked reasonable. Here is a link to their breakfast menu:

http://www.strattonscafe.com/cafe_clayton_breakfast.html

I liked it. I will come back. It is good to have the place as an option. 8 Slingers on the 10 scale. I will hit Webster next time and report.