Pearl's Starts Breakfast, Brunch

Ship's bow statue at Pearl's Oyster Bar

Pearl's Oyster Bar introduced a breakfast/brunch menu last week, featuring egg dishes accompanied with seafood, including a crusted shrimp/egg Po' Boy on a Sarcone's roll, and eggs benedict serve with either crab cake, shrimp and grits, or smoked salmon. French toast is also on the menu. I'll vouch for the cheese grits.

With the help of 10,000 librarians attending their association's mid-winter meeting at the convention center Pearl's owner David Braunstein appears to have picked a good week for introducing the breakfast menu. By the time I left the market about 10 a.m. Saturday, nearly half of the restaurant's seats were occupied -- not bad considering Pearl's is only eclipsed by the Down Home Diner and Molly Malloy's in seating capacity.

Since taking over the business from his parents Braunstein (together with executive chef Jason Ledee) have made substantial tweaks to the menu. Most of the classics remain, though not the fried clams. The snapper soup is a good one: when I sampled it two weeks ago it had plenty of snapper meat, lots of traditional flavor, but none of the over-cornstarch gloppiness that detracts from some versions. The plate of a dozen Cape May Salts I tried were properly shucked with a minimum of broken shells and served with the classic mignonette sauce (hot sauce, lemon also available).

Amazingly, Pearl's offers buck-a-shuck oysters from 4 p.m. to closing on weekdays. Since Pearl's doesn't sell booze, it's hard to image Braunstein is making any money on the deal.

Waiting for Breakfast

I'm not an egg person for breakfast. But I love grilled cheese and I love sausage. Which means I can't wait until two of the newest lunch stands at the Reading Terminal Market start offering food for the barely-awake set.

Valley Shepherd Creamery hopes to open their panini machines for breakfast sometime in the near future, but not quite yet. Right now you can't get a grilled cheese until 11 a.m.

Same goes for Wursthaus Schmitz. I'm told their sausage sandwiches are quite tasty, but I haven't been by at lunchtime yet. Still, I think bratwurst on a roll is a great wake-me-upper.

A third new lunch vendor, Keven Parker's Soul Food Café, has a waffle maker, but that's for chicken and waffles at lunch.

Speaking of breakfast, I regularly buy whole bean mocha java from Old City Coffee and enjoy it most mornings at home. But as much as I enjoy it, and the coffee Old City brews on premises, my fav coffee for sipping on site at the RTM is the java from Flying Monkey Bakery. IIRC, it comes from Vermont Artisan Coffee. Hardly local. But then again, when's the last time you saw a coffee plantation in southeastern Pennsylvania or South Jersey?