Return With Us Now

No, not to those thrilling days of yesteryear when the Lone Ranger did his thing. Return with us to last spring when last we camped seventeen miles south of Black Canyon City, home to the Rock Springs Café and the greatest pies ever.

“As a historic location, Rock Springs Café gained its international notoriety over 30 years ago when it started selling pies, and the legend of the cafe's pastries was born. The legend continues to grow to this day. It’s not uncommon to sell thousands of pies in one weekend.

The legend of Rock Springs home-baked pies has expanded worldwide. Folks will travel miles to bite into a tasty fruit or mega meringue pie.

These sweet and savory preparations, baked fresh daily, have become as much of the American culture as say ‘apple pie’…” (from the Café’s web site).

So with memories of blueberry crumb, apple crumb, peach crumb, and Jack Daniels pecan still fresh in our minds, we took ourselves off one morning for breakfast and pie. The menu at the Rock Springs Café is pretty basic. Pie is the main attraction. For breakfast one can chose from pancakes (regular or blueberry), french toast, or biscuits and gravy. Omelets include The Works with sausage, bacon, ham, onion, mushroom, peppers and melted cheese topped with diced tomato and sour cream; a Western omelet with green pepper, onion, ham, and melted cheddar cheese; a chorizo omelet with mexican-spiced sausage and nacho cheese; and the chili and cheese omelet with chili beans and cheddar cheese.

But both of us decided to order from the Eggs and More category. For me, it was two eggs over easy with corned beef hash. For Chuck the country fried steak with scrambled eggs. Both of our breakfasts came with home fries.

Let’s talk first about the home fries – an exemplary example of the home fry art. Cut into cubes, these were deep fried and then tossed with lightly sautéed onions and peppers. The potato cubes were crisp, but not oily, and the crunch from the vegetables gave additional texture. I am usually a hash brown person (as long as they are fried crisp), but these could make a home fry believer out of me.

I always order my corned beef hash fried crisp and seldom get it as crisp as I would like. But today I was lucky, and the hash came with the crispy and crunchy edges that I love; and the hash did not contain an excess of salt. When I told our server that the hash was perfect, she told me that she also likes her hash crisp and so knows what the customers are looking for. As I said, this was my lucky day. Eggs are eggs, but these were well prepared with solid whites and liquid yolks.

We both gasped when Chuck’s plate was set on the table. He’s ordered country fried steak at breakfast before, but never has he received a portion this large. This was twice as large as the norm. While he would rather have his country fried steak battered than breaded – and this was the breaded variety – the coating was extremely crusty and the breading was seasoned with what tasted of garlic and/or onion powder and some spicy seasoning. This latter seasoning, when coupled with the black pepper in the white gravy, served as a wakeup call to the taste buds.

So did we order pie for breakfast? No, but a blueberry crumb did come home with us.

These are 5.0 Addie pies, and we had a 4.0 Addie breakfast.