Breakfast in Chattanooga

Been commuting back and forth from ATL recently, where we spend a good portion of July every year, and we decided to take a side trip with the kids to Chattanooga. We did the whole shebang: stayed in a train car at the Chattanooga Choo Choo hotel, visited Rock City & Ruby Falls @ Lookout Mountain... but for this blog's purposes, I recount our breakfast visit to Aretha Frankenstein's (http://www.arethas.com/), which I had not heard of, and only discovered by typing "breakfast Chattanooga" into my Blackberry Google search bar... turns out Rachael Ray had visited before me (scooped again!) and featured it on her show a while back... but, I digress...

The scene at this converted Victorian style house just off the beaten path of downtown Chatts is definitely hipster: tatts and piercings are the norm. I really dug the alt-rock music choices that played from the iTunes selection, and the mix of pop culture (music, movies) paraphernalia and neon, barroom beer lights added to the coolness factor. A couple of Halloween masks strategically placed gave credence to the place's sir name, too. Only problem was, this tragically hip attitude fell on the bad side when it came to service. My wife's Beglian waffle, while deliciously crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, took forever and a day to arrive (we'd all finished our meals before it came out), and the waiter made no attempt whatsoever to apologize for the delay nor explain it. The cook came out and I tried to engage him with a compliment, only to be rebuffed, like he had no time to waste talking to patrons -- he musta had an appointment to get his nose ring de-boogered...

Now, let's be clear, I make it a point to keep my restaurant blogging decidedly on the positive side: Golden Rule applies here. So I will leave it at that. Onto the food... the saving grace, if you will. The pancakes I enjoyed here were among the BEST, if not top of the charts. They use cornmeal batter and must griddle them with either a spring form or in a pie pan, because one single, solitary pancake has the thickness of 2 or 3 run of the mill ones. The blueberries were abundant, fresh, and whole. Eating this pancake tricked my taste buds into believing I was simultaneously eating super-moist cornbread and blueberry pie at the same time!

If you want to attempt to recreate this in your home, visit http://www.frankensteinmills.com/ to purchase this insanely good mix (and enjoy the cute commercial)...

Another major revelation at Aretha's was the quality of their sky-high, double-decker biscuits, which are served with a sprinkling of granulated sugar on the top AND bottom . The highest praise I can bestow on these is that they rival my all-time fave biscuits from the Flying Biscuit, which I've blogged about on this site before (http://www.flyingbiscuit.com/)...

While my wife may not agree, I would definitely make a return trip to this quirky, funky place, if for no other reason than to indulge in their pancakes one more time. Maybe around Halloween-time, when the patrons may spook you as much as the wait staff...