Breakfast ‘out of the ordinary’ at The Nucleus
Bring friends
so you can
share dishes
Sunday, April 27, 2008
If
You Go
Name: The Nucleus Cafe.
Established: Easter 2006.
Owners-operators: Jeremy Kachmar and Susan Kachmar.
Manager: Alissa Freeberg.
Address: 405 Water St.
Restaurant hours: 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays. Breakfast is served until 1 p.m. weekdays and 2 p.m. weekends. Lunch begins at 11 a.m.
Telephone: 834-7777.
Web site: www.
racysnucleus.com.
Wheelchair accessible: Yes, through Racy’s D’Lene’s Coffee Lounge.
Reservations: Only for large groups.
Smoking: No.
Parking: On nearby streets or in nearby municipal lots.
Prices as of April: Breakfast — omelets, $3.75 to $7.75 (includes one side dish); pancakes, $5.50 to $5.75; French toast, $5.75 to $7.25; quiches, $4.25 a slice; crepes, $6.75 to $7.50. Lunch — soups, $2.75 for a cup or $4.25 for a bowl; sandwiches, $5.25 to $6.75.
Children’s menu: No, but the kitchen happily will accommodate special orders.
Extras: A full range of specialty coffees and coffee drinks from Racy’s; check out barista Mike Contezac’s latte art.
By Audrey Fessler and Jeff Vahlbusch
Special to the Leader-Telegram
“Deathbed. Last meal. That’s what I’m getting.”
These the words of a friend — and philosophy professor — who stopped by our table at The Nucleus last weekend to say “good morning” and check out what we’d ordered.
The dish in question was the cafe’s most eye-
catching breakfast: Stuffed French Toast. Essentially this is a massive French toast sandwich filled with banana chunks or fresh ripe strawberries and sticky hunks of warmed cream cheese; drizzled inside and out with semisweet chocolate syrup; garnished with much whipped cream, more chocolate syrup, thick drifts of powdered sugar and more fresh fruit, $6.25 to $7.25.
Those who dare to gild the lily (or risk what one of The Nucleus’ witty, professional, unflappable servers called a “food coma”) can pour on pure maple syrup for 75 cents extra or regular pancake syrup for free.
Like all breakfast dishes here, the Stuffed French Toast is presented so beautifully that it will make you feel special and celebratory. But like many breakfast entrees anywhere, this dish also offers a lot of sameness. Nearly every bite is warm, rich, sweet, soft and yielding — and most bites except the strawberries taste creamy.
The best solution? Arrange to go to The Nucleus with friends — and share. Ideally, you’ll bring enough friends and family members to order from each of the four main parts of the breakfast menu: French toast; eggs and omelets; pancakes; and crepes. Each category has delicious, out-of-the-ordinary dishes.
An order of pancakes at The Nucleus has five medium-sized, well-made cakes: thick, cushiony, syrup-thirsty, $5.50. We liked the light-textured buttermilk pancakes with blueberries best. Unfortunately, the gorgeous, denser buckwheat pancakes had enough ground cinnamon to mute the delicious earthiness of foods made with that flour.
Pair your pancakes with a side order of the excellent applewood-smoked bacon, $2.75. Ours came perfectly cooked: dry, lean and crisp, with an occasional hint of tasty char. Skip the thin disks of salty, unctuous breakfast sausage.
The Nucleus also makes huge “hand-spun” crepes to order and fills them with many things sweet and savory. Our least favorite, a lemon crepe, came stuffed with a daunting amount of barely sweetened whipped cream and a mere dollop or two of something lemony, $6.75. A chevre crepe set the tang of goat cheese against the zing of fresh basil — to neither’s benefit, $7.50.
But a buckwheat crepe full of diced ham and mounds of soft-scrambled eggs was very good, if a bit dry. And a wheat-flour crepe with cream cheese, béchamel sauce, dried dill and dense nuggets of first-rate hot-smoked salmon was delicious, $7.50. Fresh herbs would have made it a masterpiece.
Of the many fine omelets, we especially liked the oozy-moist Cheese Omelet ($5.75, with Cheddar, mozzarella, provolone); the Pepper-Bacon Omelet with its casual light sprinkling of spicy-hot red pepper flakes, $7.50; and the Cuban “Beef” Omelet made with citrus-marinated pork. All three omelets elicited oohs and aahs from everyone at our table.
We also all loved the Omega Scrambler, a special: avocado chunks, minced scallions, havarti and Jack cheeses and that good smoked salmon stir-cooked with eggs until lightly browned and crisped on the bottom, then shaped like an omelet and served, $8.25. We hope this dish makes the regular menu.
Toast with preserves is a better choice than the hash browns here; choose from white, wheat and marble rye. If you must have potatoes, get them “lyonnaised” (included, or $2.75): some added Cheddar and the sweet red onions mask a mildly bitter vegetable-oil edge.
If at all possible, get the outstanding fresh orange juice, which The Nucleus squeezes to your order and serves immediately — $2.25 small, $3.50 large.
Lunch at the Nucleus is primarily workmanlike soups — which change week to week and with the seasons — and light, creative sandwiches. Recently, a carrot-ginger soup had good cooked-carrot flavor but a disappointing pulp-in-water texture. Cream of broccoli and cream of green asparagus were thick and warming.
We like The Castro sandwich, which unites Cuban beef, chipotle mayonnaise, fresh lettuce and onions on ciabatta bread, $6.25. Even better is the Nucleus’ unique Reuben — called My Cousin Reuben. The addition of a sweet and slightly tangy apricot marmalade to the usual corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and rye bread creates a surprising and thoroughly delicious sandwich, $6.
The Fickle Chicken is house-made curried chicken salad with cranberries and sliced almonds on good house-made focaccia, $6.25. Thanksgiving on Bread plays smoked turkey deli slices against cranberry-mango chutney on marbled rye, $6. Asian Delight is a BLT with light wasabi mayonnaise and mashed avocados, $6.25.
When our philosopher-friend wandered out of earshot, our many forks descended on the Stuffed French Toast. After first bites, someone said: “Last meal? Bad idea. Tell him not to wait!”
Main Course, the Leader-Telegram’s restaurant review column, runs the fourth Sunday of the month. Diners’ Notebook, a sampling of favorite restaurant offerings, runs the second Tuesday of the month.
