Review Published in "Best of New Orleans"
THE BROKEN EGG CAFE has left the Northshore littered with satisfied breakfast diners.
WHAT: The Broken Egg Cafe
CUISINE: Breakfast, brunch and lunch
WHEN: Breakfast and lunch Tuesday through Sunday
WHERE: 200 Girod St., Mandeville
CARDS: Major
I break about 1,600 eggs a week," says Ron Green, owner and manager of
his aptly named breakfast eatery, the Broken Egg Cafe. Such large-scale
destruction inspired Green's concept for his restaurant's logo, a
rooster standing on the shattered shells of his own offspring. "I
wanted a real cocky rooster, who looks like he accidentally stepped on
his own eggs," says Green. "I don't know where that idea came from
exactly, but you know how males are."
Hungry travelers from New Orleans arrive at the Broken Egg Cafe by
crossing the Causeway, taking a sharp right turn and following the
narrow turning road through piney woods until eventually reaching
Mandeville's Gerard Street, where antique shops cluster. Another right
turn toward the lake brings you to the 80-year-old house of barge board
and heart pine that Green began to renovate in 1994 and then opened as
a restaurant in 1996. A graveled, manicured parking lot across the
street and a goldfish pond in front complete the cultivated, rustic
picture.
Inside the house are exposed brick, terra cotta walls decorated with
copper posts, murals of sea oaks dripping with Spanish moss, and
matching checkered curtains and tablecloths. Green lived in the house
during the two years it took him to do the renovation with his own
hands. "It was mostly intact, but it needed to be brought back to
life." He then lived in the upstairs during the restaurant's first year
of operation. Such sweat equity leaves him more than just strongly
attached to his business. "I've had people ask me if they can put their
table in the ladies room because they love that room. It's so spacious
and purple and pretty," reports Green. "Now, I'm proud that people
recognize that."
Green has not always focused his professional judgment on what shade of
purple to paint the ladies room. Before the Broken Egg Cafe, he had
been redesigning launch pads at Cape Canaveral in Florida, and most
recently was a facility designer for the Department of Energy, working
on a superconducting super collider facility in Hammond. Budget cuts in
1994 required the doors of that facility to close; after 25 years in
the field, he considered other possibilities. "I had what I like to
call a mid-life clarity," he explains. "Not a crisis, but a clarity."
The epiphany came when Green looked around his town and realized that
he did not have any of what he refers to as "high-end" breakfast
options. So he wrote five letters to breakfast restaurants in San Diego
that he had admired and asked the owners if they would teach him how to
run a business like theirs. Three positive responses came back, one
from the Broken Yolk and another from the Good Egg. Green purchased the
rights to the menu from the Good Egg and then combined the two names
for his own place. Since he opened in 1996, Green has regionalized the
original menu. Now he offers such omelettes as the Grand Isle,
featuring shrimp ($8.45); the Mardi Gras, filled with crawfish ($8.45);
Lafitte's tortilla -- scrambled eggs, chorizo, green chilies and onions
($7.75); and an egg-smothered croissant with broccoli, tomatoes and
mild green chilies, called the Pontchartrain ($7.25).
Although Green had to leave town to learn the multitude of exotic
things that can be served with scrambled eggs, he has enhanced the
Californian's vast array of egg-related creations with the
Louisianian's favorite: banana's Foster ($6.95), which his menu
declares "a bona fide humming experience!" One noteworthy item that
might go overlooked due to its modest placement in the lower left-hand
corner of the menu is the blackberry grits ($1.95). This is a warmed
blackberry compote poured over your classic, creamy, bland, slightly
lumpy and profoundly comforting grits. It is, in fact, the nicest thing
anyone has ever done to grits, and you'll never find that on a menu in
San Diego, where grits are something you scrape off your headlights.
The high-end breakfast business has been so good that Green has opened
two other Broken Egg Cafes, one in Destin, Fla., and the other in
nearby Covington. But he still shares partnership for this concept with
the original company in California. "When are you going to open another
Broken Egg?" is a frequent question. The answer is that Green is in the
process of trademarking the name Another Broken Egg, which he would
wholly own and be free to franchise. Word has spread, it seems, and
Green claims to have received more than 70 requests from restaurateurs
all over the country to purchase a franchise of Another Broken Egg.
This flare-up of interest in his concept leaves Green modestly
reviewing the map and his place in it.
"I plan to open everywhere from all the way up to Montgomery, Alabama,
down to Boca Raton, Florida," he announces of his long-term business
plan. "My goal is to litter the Gulf Coast with broken eggs."
