Theresa & Johnny's Comfort Food. Olivia and I tried to go to the Seafood Peddler to try their brunch on Sunday morning, but they don't open until 11:30 (sounds more like lunch than brunch to me). Hungry, we decided to try another place, and lucky for us Theresa & Johnny's Comfort Food in San Rafael was open and had just a short wait for the table.

Olivia patiently waited our turn, sitting in the trunk of a Jaguar that has been fitted as a seat in the front of the restaurant.

While we waited, I enjoyed looking at the wacky memorabilia on the walls. It is an atmosphere much like Mama's Royal Cafe in Mill Valley, but less artsy and more masculine. It is really kid friendly too.

The wait staff were friendly, but they were working through a full house, so we had to wait a bit before being served. Olivia, the budding omnivore, wanted variety, so they made her one pancake (size of a dinner plate!), one piece of French toast (was deep fried, so not on my list, but Olivia liked it, although she noted that she likes her mother's better!) and scrambled eggs. While she was waiting, she played with the alphabet magnets on the metal door behind her.

I enjoyed the Crab Cakes Benedict with cheesy grits. This was a muffin-less Benedict dish, and I'm glad I chose to try their cheesy grits with this rather than the home fries or hash browns that were offered as other choices because the spiciness and flavor punch of the crab cakes was off set nicely by the bland grits. The crab cakes were the star of this dish, having just the right amount of spiciness and although they had small bits of spinach and sun-dried tomato in them, were not stuffed with filler, so the flavor of the crab came through in the combination. Though not apparent from the outside (and they do not have a website) Theresa and Johnny's definitely has a Cajun-southern twist to it. From what we experienced, and what I observed at the other dining tables, this is definitely not a haute cuisine kind of place, but has a unique funkiness and down-home feel that is refreshingly original in a very northern California city.

I still have not been able to access my normal means of posting and communicating back to the comments on this blog. Now my controls read in German! I'm looking forward to it all working again. Usually the photos I post can be enlarged by clicking the photo, but this feature doesn't work when I'm posting from Google Docs.