Cottage Cafe

The chicken fried steak and eggs is what I order every time I walk into the Cottage, and I've never once been tempted to try anything else. The portions are enormous and the food is genuinely good — this is not a place you leave hungry.

The Cottage has been on Appleway since 2008, and it's owned by the people who work there, which you notice before anybody tells you. Sit at the bar if there's a seat open. You can watch the whole thing work from there — the line, the pass, the timing, and a crew that moves like the place belongs to them. Twenty-six years in restaurants and I still can't help myself. It's a breakfast-and-lunch house and it doesn't pretend otherwise: doors at seven, kitchen done at two.

One quirk worth knowing — they don't hold a liquor license, but you can still get a beer or a mimosa with breakfast, which is all anybody actually wants at nine in the morning. Come hungry, or come ready to take half of it home, because the portions aren't a figure of speech. It's the Valley breakfast I'd send anyone to.