CLAIRE'S ROADSIDE CAFE,

It had been a while since I'd been to Claire's for breakfast, so I was glad to see things just as creative and homemade as always (the motto below the name of the 10-year-old café is, after all, "Honest Food, Inc."). Claire's house-brand jams (the strawberry-rhubarb is in season), the unusual hash variations, the nod to several cultural traditions for breakfast, the fresh-out-of-the-oven lunch specials -- all are served up in a knotty-pine cottage with a diner-like counter at one end and 10 green plants hanging from the ceiling at the other. Even the prose of the menu takes you by the collar and says, "Listen up." No-surprise that owner Claire Reynolds, who worked her way around the world by cooking on sailing ships for 12 years, had completed an English degree at URI since we last talked with her. She devotes a whole paragraph in the lunch listings to why she decided to serve only breakfast on the weekends but will make exceptions for people who "can't face another egg" and fix them a sandwich-instead. Reynolds also throws in a "roofing tile" for $14.95, between the grilled ham and cheese and the tuna melt, "just seeing if you're awake." Obviously we were, since we found those lines, but we could still face eggs. The breakfast items are also hand-written on boards above the counter and in the dining room. Eggs are offered Texas-style, on chili, with jalapeno corn bread; Irish, with bangers and grilled tomatoes; Portuguese, with chourico and cheese on bolo (a sweet-bread bun); scrambled with kielbasa (Polish), with lox and onions (Jewish); or Midwestern, with baked ham and cheese.

Full review.