Public House (Downtown Sacramento): Brunch Edition

food: 4/5
experience: 1/5
overall: 3/5

Public House is a sister restaurant to Cafeteria 15L down the street. They are both owned by the same restaurateurs, namely the Wong family. This place is definitely a bar first and a restaurant second. It is noisy as hell. You cannot possibly converse inside without screaming. You think I'm joking, don't you. Go and see for yourself. On to the brunch menu.


Malt waffle: 2/5
This waffle is the same as Cafeteria's, which is to say, it sucks. I don't know if it's the malt or what but it's bad and I'm a waffle fanatic so I should know.


Cinnamon French toast: 3.5/5
Yes this looks delicious but honestly it was mediocre. The flavor is all in the sauce. Cinnamon vanilla icing. It's made with sourdough bread which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just the flavor wasn't there. At least it wasn't soggy.


Pancakes: 5/5
For plain pancakes these were actually delicious. They were fluffy and had a slightly sweet, buttery flavor. Who knew Public House had some of the best pancakes in Sac. They're pretty simple with just syrup and butter so others may not agree with me, but I'd have these again out of everything I tried. I ate them without anything on top and they were still great.


Fruit salad: 5/5
I know it's weird to rate fruit salad but theirs is good. They give a big portion and actually put quality fruit in there like raspberries and peaches and stuff. Not the lame banana-grape-melon combo you typically get at cheap places.


Breakfast burrito: 5/5
Unfortunately for me both their chicken chorizo and maple brown sugar bacon sausage have some sort of allergen in them. Damn, both those sound delicious. Just as well, I'd rather not be poisoned. I subbed chicken apple sausage (which they charged full price for). Their burrito, as with most breakfast burritos, is huge. You got your eggs, your cheese, black beans, onions, red peppers, and of course your sausage, with salsa and guac on the side. The salsa is nice and spicy and the guac is fresh. Oh and they put breakfast potatoes in there too. Their breakfast potatoes are pretty bomb, they're not just regular fried potatoes, they put some spices on 'em.

Good news for weight watchers: they do half orders! Woo. You can get a single pancake or French toast instead of a plateful.

Service can be kind of slow. For whatever reason last time we were here it looked like there was one waitress waiting on the entire restaurant. We got a side order of bacon and for four bucks got two measly slices. They were crispy, thick slices, sure, but two bucks a pop is a little steep. Also our English muffin was not warm and was slightly burnt. Minus points for all that, plus the sausage surcharge.

If you do come for weekend brunch and the wait is hella long, ask to sit outside. We were gonna sit out there to wait but they just decided to serve us. I guess everyone likes to watch TV inside and yell at each other. Only thing is it's midtown so there's homeless walking by in intervals and that just makes things awkward. Also there's still loudspeakers on the patio blasting the latest action sports games show so it's almost as loud outside as it is inside.

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