Title: Doyle Street Cafe
Author: jean komatsu
Last saved by: ENU

Doyle Street Cafe in Emeryville, CA – update, breakfast
Review date: January 2012

We really enjoyed our lunch here in December 2011 and came back to try breakfast with our friend Christie.

Carlos ordered the chicken quesadilla. It was a reasonably sized flour tortilla, and the grilled chicken was juicy and flavorful. However, he was supposed to get a side cup of chili and a cup of soup, which they never brought. They comped him his cup of coffee when we complained, however.

Christie ordered the Joe's Special scrambled eggs, but with egg whites only and ground turkey. She left the hash browns, which were sliced potatoes, parboiled and run too quickly under the broiler, so that they got a little more burnt in spots instead of evenly browned. She really liked the eggs, saying it was amazingly flavorful. 

I ordered the egg white scramble, a similar dish but without meat: mushrooms, tomatoes, onions and Parmesan. The tomatoes were poor out-of-season quality. I think this scramble is probably best left to summer when hopefully a better quality of tomato would be used. 

Both Christie and I chose cornbread over toast. It's a generous square; lightly sweetened and slightly toasted to warm it up, then served with a wrapped pat of butter and the standard small plastic square of strawberry jam. It's a winner with both of us, although we would have liked served a little hotter with softer butter. There is no point to cornbread without butter, LOL.

The restaurant was busy that day so we received a graphic example of why Yelp reviewers ding DSCafe on service. When they fill up – and this was just one of their two dining rooms – two waiters just can't cover everyone, even though both are experienced staff.

Not only were they busy, but the kitchen was clearly having some issues. I couldn't get iced tea, for example – the waiter confessed someone had done something wrong and the iced tea had come out tasting like coffee, so they had to throw the day's batch out. As mentioned, Carlos never got his chili and soup sides. And the cornbread was very late in coming, because they burned the first pan of it and had to make another.

When the stars align and the kitchen and waitstaff aren't being stressed, this is a great place. Doyle St. Cafe is good, and we liked our first lunch a lot. But...the competition is fierce, and located near by. If they want to be held at the top level where Mama's Royal/Oakland and Royal Cafe/Albany reign supreme for breakfast, they need to execute better, especially when it comes to consistency. We have been to both Mama's and Royal when they're crowded, and neither the service or kitchen has ever faltered – maybe slowed down a little, but you get what you order, instead of having to sit and wait, and wonder what happened. 

If DSCafe is going to have such a large space, they need to show they can handle a crowd with more professionalism than we received today. They have the quality ingredients, a great vision, the right kind of layout with the bonus of parking. But if they can't execute except when the pace is slow, that could be a deal-breaker where we're concerned. They're good, but they're very far from being the only game in town when ten minutes' drive in either direction offers a slew of other, equally good choices, especially for lunch as we had the first time.

Christie paid, so we can't report the total.

Doyle Street Cafe
5515 Doyle St. @Stanford Ave., Emeryville, CA
www.doylestreetcafe.com
Review date: December 2011

Emeryville sits between Oakland and Berkeley, a tiny city (only 2 square miles) of some 10,000 residents in a rectangular swath along the bay. Formerly it was a center for cattle processing plants of meat and hide, which sprang up to serve first the wharf and its sailing ships, and then later the Santa Fe railroad tracks which flank the Hwy 80 freeway. These days the old light industrial buildings have been repurposed into commercial space. The businesses are now likely to be law offices, biotech, or yoga studios, in addition to Pixar Animation Studio and Jamba Juice. 

Emeryville only has a few major 'through' streets. Doyle St. isn't one of them, and the Cafe is located where the street peters out around a curve and then dead-ends. We have been meaning to try this well-regarded cafe for ages. But we usually drive north/south down Hollis St. or San Pablo Ave., so I could never keep it in mind as I'd never actually seen the place.

But recently we were going to be running errands in the area, and I finally remembered to take their address with us so we could check it out. It's a clean, casual, modern space, located in one of the many one-story commercial buildings in Emeryville.

Doyle Street is so narrow on this end that two cars passing have to crawl past one another, and still mostly residential, consisting of small Victorian cottages alternating with multi-story modern condo developments. So it's a good thing the Cafe has its own good-sized parking lot across the street, a rare amenity for a modern breakfast/lunch diner in Alameda County.

We like places that keep serving breakfast even through the lunch hour, but today we felt like having lunch. We're not big sandwich eaters, but the prime rib melt and the Reuben (misspelled on the menu as “Ruben”) sounded good to both of us. 

Now that the cold weather has arrived – well, as cold as it gets in Northern CA – soup seemed the ideal starter. They offered two, so Carlos got the chicken-rice chowder and I got the potato-red bell pepper.

While we were waiting, Carlos checked out the two hot sauce bottles on the table. Both were a brand called El Yucateco. One was a red chile jalapeno sauce, and the other was a virulent bright green habanero. We opened both just to get a whiff, and the habanero definitely had a good dose of real heat in it – we've tried some habanero sauces that were barely spicy.

When the soups came, both were thick with pureed vegetables. The potato soup used roasted red bells, which made all the difference in flavor. It was excellent with a tremendous depth of flavor, one of the best vegetarian soups I've had in a long time. The soup had a little bit of a kick, just enough that I enjoyed it (I don't like chiles quite as much as Carlos does, LOL). 

Carlos' chowder was good, but a little bland after we tasted mine, so I suggested he put some of the green habanero sauce in it. He put in just a little, no more than 1/2 teaspoonful, and wow! that stuff was really hot!! By comparison, if he'd been using the standard Tabasco sauce that most places offer, he said he would have dumped in at least three or four times as much. 

Amazingly, the company makes a chile sauce that's even hotter than the green habanero – I think that might be too much even for him (you can read about their hot sauces on their website: http://www.elyucateco.com/english/products/sauces/green-habanero.html. They're considered unique in that the green [salsa verde] is hotter than their standard red salsa).

We both ordered cups, not bowls, but DSCafe's soups are worthy of ordering in the larger size. They were hearty and soul-satisfying, more like homemade soups than the usual minimal restaurant offering, where commercial base is tossed into a pot of water with the smallest amount of ingredients possible and whipped out in record time, instead of the long slow simmering as these soups seemed to have had.

Then the sandwiches arrived. The flavor and quality of both impressed us. The bread in the U.S. is all too often given short shrift. This is especially true of a Reuben, which is totally dependent upon using a good American-style rye with caraway. Rye bread, whether American light or European dark, has fallen out of favor in the U.S. except in a few circles. DSCafe uses an excellent, light-textured, flavorful rye, cut thicker than usual (“Texas toast”-style) and is properly toasted – enough for slight crustiness, but still soft inside.

A true European style rye (dark rye or pumpernickel) will get hard in texture when toasted, because rye has little gluten (Wiki's got a great article on the history of rye bread: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rye_bread). Using the American style of mixed-grain rye – the wheat flour lightens the bread by supplying the needed gluten, and also eliminates the need for using a sourdough starter – may not be traditional, but frankly it makes for a better-tasting sandwich.

DS Cafe's Reuben/Ruben is certainly one of the better versions we've encountered since the original Max's Deli slid into bankruptcy. Saul's Deli/Berkeley, which we reviewed June 2010 and August 2011, has the edge on quality of corned beef, but DSCafe makes a better sandwich overall. The corned beef is sliced thin, as it should be (Saul's thicker cut lets them skimp on the amount used for sandwiches). It's not overfilled a la NY deli style, but there's enough filling to satisfy. 

Better, there's more sauerkraut, also as it should be – many places, including Saul's, skimp on the sauerkraut. We adore sauerkraut and are often disappointed at how little is put into most Reubens. The Gruyere is there to mellow out the kraut, along with a sufficient amount of Russian dressing to pull all the flavors together.

The prime rib melt was on a sweet French roll spread with a pungent horseradish cream. The roll was the perfect texture: not too soft nor too hard, and extremely fresh. The sliced beef had a good amount of nicely browned onions in it, which is a combination we approve of.

Coffee and iced tea were both excellent. Service was fast and cheerful, although the cafe wasn't crowded when we were there. The space is unexpectedly large, divided into two separate dining rooms.

We really liked Doyle Street Cafe's lunch, and plan to return to check out their breakfast. Oh, and that super-hot habanero sauce? A fellow diner who doubtless was also new to the Cafe put at least a tablespoonful on the side of his scrambled eggs, only to find it so hot he commented to the waiter he was having trouble eating his eggs (and he hadn't put the sauce on top of the eggs, it was only on the side of the plate).

The waiter tried to convince him to let the kitchen redo the entire plate. The customer declined, saying that he could manage. But we were impressed that the waiter didn't just ask once – he asked at least three times if they could bring out a new plate. You don't often find that kind of service in a modest diner setting....but then, this kind of attention to detail, quality of ingredients, and focused execution isn't often found, either. 

That all this came at a price less than we usually pay at other places, was pretty darn impressive. We will definitely be back, and soon.

Two people: two cups of soup, two sandwiches, two beverages, with tip was $33 – a bargain for the quality in ingredients and execution.