Cafe Centraal

Sunday Funday. I don't know about the average person but my weekend doesn't really get into gear until Sunday morning. That's probably due to the fact that I still wait tables Friday and Saturday not to mention most of my friends are in the food industry and have the same schedule. To most night servers Sundays are a holy day of rest. Sunday brunch is the first moment that you feel like you have time to spend enjoying life. This past Sunday, a couple of servers headed out to do just that.

When you work a Saturday night shift you're not really sure what time you'll be done and off the clock. Lets say midnight, Saturday night or Sunday morning (depending on how you want to look at it) is the equivalent of a normal persons Friday at 5pm.  Once your done unwinding from your work week you wake up hungry and exhausted so it's time to head out and find some food to bring you back to life. This week we headed out to Cafe Centraal. 

Brunch at Cafe Centraal is packed! Make a reservation in advance if you can. When we walked in there was a line out the door waiting for a table. We had a reservation and we were able to walk past the sleepy eyed Bayview residents and the host took us to our table right away.  The wait staff was awesome, the second we sat down we had our drink order in.

So lets talk about drinks for a minute. They have it all laid out; about five signature types of Bloody Mary's, tons of Mimosa variants, Irish Coffee's, Beermosas, a Beer list that puts some liquor shops to shame, and a full stocked bar if your having trouble finding the exact breed of dog that bit you last night. We had no such trouble identifying our dogs and were on our way to recovery. 

Some people like the lazy buffet style brunch, an all you can eat affair where you get up and serve yourself plate after plate of factory style produced scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage. Before I knock it, all you can eat bacon does sound good! Maybe it has to do with the heat lamps and the stainless steal pans that hold mountains of eggs, maybe it has to do with how lazy I am Sunday mornings, but I prefer a waiter or a waitress and fresh to order food. 

The menu has your standard brunch essentials omelettes, eggs any style and burgers with fried eggs. It's not to difficult to come up with a decent bunch menu. Take some eggs, add some sort of potato, toast, and you are in business. Where Centraal stands out is they do a brunch menu with a little added style. The potato's are flavored with rosemary, they cook with a lot of bier, the breakfast burger has smoked Gouda cheese on it. Centraal put some care into their menu and is still able to serve it at low prices.

However they do step out of the box on a few items, one being the Black and Bleu Benedict. Blackened flat iron steak and poached eggs served on a homemade black pepper basil biscuit, topped with blackberry jam, sriracha, ale-braised onions, bleu cheese, and sauteed portobellos. Oh and Bacon, there's bacon too. This dish was FOUR LETTER WORD (add "ing") AWESOME. Pardon the language, but it was that good. It was sweet, spicy, savory...  it was great. I had to go for a walk to stop from slipping into a food coma immediately after eating it, but it was well worth it.

Another great dish is the Red Eye Biscuits and Gravy. House-made black pepper biscuit, poached eggs, and chorizo cream gravy. It has a nice spicy kick to it and comes with rosemary potatoes.

To recap... So you went out Saturday night, you woke up Sunday morning hungry, in need of a jump start, you called Cafe Centraal, got a reservation, you packed your friends and family into the car, navigated your way to Bayview, you sat down and ordered either of these two dishes, and now you're going home a HERO!

Check 'em out 

Cafe Centraal

2306 S. Kinnickinnic Ave.

Bay View, WI 53207
Phone: 414.755.0378
Fax: 414.755 0387

Oh and always, more pics on the Eat MKE facebook site. Search Eat MKE on Facebook or go to http://www.eatmke.com/