Joe Momma's Breakfast (and Lunch) Eatery

I'm a big fan of aggregate review sites.  My favorite food-related one is Urbanspoon, and I will check reviews on Yelp on occasion, though I take them with a grain of salt.  The information I've found has been very beneficial, especially when researching places to eat while traveling.  However, they can steer you wrong on occasion.  People can be spiteful, and all it takes is one table with a little internet knowledge and an over-inflated sense of entitlement to skew a restaurant's rating.  If an eatery is relatively new and has only been rated by a handful of people, a group of three or four vindictive types can really impact a star or percentage rating.

When my roommate suggested Joe Momma's for breakfast one day, I shot her down pretty quickly.  The restaurant had a very good score on Yelp, but only due to a number of extremely negative reviews being "filtered" (translate: not counted against their overall score), and their Urbanspoon rating was, and still is, low.  Some time later, she finally ended up going with her father and came back determined to get me to try the place.  Now I don't always agree with this woman's tastes, but one of the few things we agree on is our love of breakfast.  So far we've seen eye to eye on every place we've gone to eat it, from our love of Goldy's to our outright hatred of The Griddle.  Needless to say, her insistence finally won me over.  As usual.

Big Daddy's Barbecue 2: Electric Boogaloo

Well my last review was kind of lame, seeing as how it was basically a photo gallery with a few random comments, so of course I figure why not do the same thing again?  I first encountered Big Daddy's Barbecue when they was serving up delicious meats from a shack in front of Cabela's (read about it here).  I've stated on more than one occasion since then that Hoss makes the best pulled pork to be had in the Boise area, and my feelings about that haven't changed one iota.  When he picked up and moved his operation to Kuna a few months later, I was crushed.  Where was I to get a barbecue fix on my lunch breaks now?  Fortunately for me, he built up enough of a following to take a location in Meridian that had housed a couple of failed Hawaiian eateries and turn it into a place where I can get those delicious porcine shreds six days a week.  There's not a lot to say that I didn't say the first time around, so what follows will once again be a selection of pictures, ranging from crappy (old camera) to not-quite-so-crappy (camera phone) to moderately okay (new camera).  Yes, I finally got a new camera, and I fully expect my pictures to improve as I get used to it.  The best thing about it is the speed, with my current record from "power off" to "decent picture" being just under three seconds.  But enough about my limited photography skills.  Let's look at some meat!

The Green Chile (CLOSED)

Okay, so I know my output has been pretty sporadic the last year or so.  It was starting to feel a little like work, and then I had a rather discouraging stint as a freelance journalist that kind of killed my interest in writing at all for some time.  And beyond that, there just aren't enough hours in the day.  However, just because I've been sucking at posting regularly, it doesn't mean that I don't still go out to eat, or that I haven't been trying new places.  But without the time or motivation to write regularly, I've been visiting places multiple times and spending more time revisiting old favorites. 

Recently, someone dropped me an e-mail and advised that I really needed to check out The Green Chile.  Ashamed, I had to admit to him that I've actually been there more than half a dozen times and I've just been too lazy to write it up.  I think it's time to rectify that.

Cosmic Pizza

2/9/14 - Edit: Something weird is going on with this place.  Apparently they've changed ownership yet again and their Facebook page is promising pizza that is "less Cosmic, more New York".  This really bums me out since we have plenty of NY style pizza here, but I guess we'll see what they put out starting next month...

I have a few hang-ups when it comes to the whole writing up restaurants thing.  One of them is that if there's a particular dish that gets the majority of people's attention at a place, I feel like I have to try something different.  Of course, sometimes exceptions have to be made, and that's why when I finally got around to trying Cosmic Pizza, there was absolutely no question what I was going to get.  If you've been there and you know anything about my tastes, you probably have a pretty good idea what I ordered.  If you're unsure, I got the same thing that everyone else who has written about them got, so I'll understand if you're sick of hearing about it.  If you haven't made it there yet and we have anything in common, I might just be able to sway you...

The Chef's Hut Cafe

I'm sure a lot of you have had the experience of hearing about a place over and over again for years, but for whatever reason have never gotten around to actually trying it.  Even though I've spent the majority of my life in the Boise area, there are still a lot of old restaurants I have yet to set foot in.  Every once in a while, I'll be overwhelmed with a sudden conviction that I must try one of those places, and NOW.  Recently I had that feeling about The Chef's Hut Cafe,  which has been in existence just about as long as I have.  And just like me, the place is something of a mixed bag...