Pictured is a buttermilk pancake and a brussels sprouts bowl. They’re both from a place called The Square Cafe, which used to be in the Regent Square neighborhood in Pittsburgh but recently moved to East Liberty. Although I haven’t eaten inside of a restaurant since March, I still do pick-up orders, and it might be my favorite breakfast spot in the city.
The pancake, pictured above, is a mostly standard buttermilk pancake. Fluffy. Soft. Happy. Brown. (I’d never, until this moment, realized how many attributes good pancakes share with nice booties.) What distinguishes their pancakes from most other pancakes, though, is sweetness. They almost taste like sheet cake. I still put syrup on them, because I make curious decisions sometimes, but you really don’t have to. Syrup is overkill. (Unless it’s just for moisture.)
The star of my breakfast, however, is the brussel sprouts bowl. It’s a counter-intuitive but hearty and sneakily delicious mash of sprouts, cheesy grits, onions, and bacon, topped off with an egg. (On the menu it’s over-easy, but I ask for it to be over-hard.)
I’ve been getting this same order from The Square Cafe for a couple years now. And while the pancakes are an obvious choice, I don’t know what prompted me to first order the sprouts bowl. I think I was in the same sprouts phase everyone else seemed to be in at the time, where we collectively discovered that 1. they’re actually good if you prepare them right, and 2. the sprouts-related trauma we all experienced as kids was unnecessary. This whole sprouts trauma thing has me reassessing lima beans, beets, and cottage cheese now, too.
Anyway, I had a great time eating breakfast this morning, and I just wanted to share my happiness with you.