The Friendly Toast

Sometimes it is one in the morning and you are on the phone with a goober, and you say to this goober, "Goober, what do we do tomorrow?" and the goober answers your question, and you say a bunch of other things, for instance, you might say, "do the scales of the moon really produce cream cheese?" Or you might say, "If I was living in an epoch of mashed potatoes, but I had no butter, and I had no potatoes either, and if every time I tried to say anything true and meaningful, if what came out of my mouth was instead the broken components of a power steering linkage or a battery with a corroded terminal, would you hang up the phone right now?" No. Fortunately, goobers are not phased by this kind of talk, and so the conversation continues well into the night, and in the morning you find yourself a little under-slept and on your way to Portsmouth, NH, to dine at The Friendly Toast.


The Friendly Toast is what happens when a chef with all the skills and delight for perfection required to run a fancy pants, frou frou, pretentious French place decides instead to run a really killer breakfast joint.

The Friendly Toast is the best diner-style breakfast I have ever eaten. Period. I had the Mashed Mexican Meal, a big band of spicy mashed potatoes with two big hunks of killer homemade bread, two eggs over-easy, some chorizo (though, I must admit, they served me kielbasa), and some chipotle sauce. The side of black beans was excellent. The beans were not from a can. As for the goober, she had the Guy Scramble (also good) and a Shirley Temple.

About Shirley Temples: I am not personally into drinking pure, cherry sryup at lunch, but I'm sure it was good, too.