Jalapeño Cheese Grits

Grits are a wonderful part of Southern cuisine. I personally prefer sweet grits (honey grits and jelly grits are my favorites), but the prospect of jalapeño cheese grits was enough to lure me out of my house today for breakfast with Mamacita, Papi Chulo, Mamacita's friend Letitia, Letitia's husband Mike, and their children. The place where these jalapeño cheese grits were to be found was the Daily Grind at 4115 Washington. And indeed the jalapeño cheese grits were pretty good. They weren't exactly grit-like, and there really weren't a whole lot of jalapeño, but they were tasty and satisfying. The problem was that there was nothing else positive about the place. I arrived about twenty minutes after the others, and they still didn't have their food. Not a good sign. I waited in line at the counter for about 5 minutes to order an $11.25 sausage and cheddar cheese omlette (with jalapeño cheese grits and fruit). The others' food still wasn't there when I got to the table. It still wasn't there 15 minutes later. Mamacita, Papi Chulo, and E&B's order (mostly) showed up maybe 5 minutes after that. Mamacita had ordered a breakfast sandwich on a croissant. They were out of croissants, so she got breakfast sandwich on burned wheat toast. Papi Chulo and E&B got Belgian waffles; and by all accounts, those were okay. They had also ordered a side of bacon, which was nowhere to be found. Shortly thereafter, my omlette arrived. I was expecting something special for $11.25. I got a pretty standard diner-style omlette that would have cost $6.50 at 59 Diner or House of Pies. Still no sign of the food for Letitia, Mike, and J&T. Eventually, that showed up, also absent an ordered side of bacon. The two missing sides of bacon finally arrived after we were all done. I don't know how it's possible, but it wasn't nearly salty enough. It didn't taste like bacon. Just bizarre.

So, let's enumerate the deficiencies of the Daily Grind:

1. It's very expensive for what you get.
2. The food, except for the jalapeño cheese grits, is ordinary at best.
3. The service is excruciatingly slow. It's as if there were only one cook who only prepared orders during the commercial breaks of the cartoons he was watching and the waitstaff had been hired off the street corner that morning.

That's enough. I'm not going back.