Solid food, ingredients are a couple of tiers up from greasy spoon, but still served with enough grease to tame my tummy the morning after a night on the town.   Scrambles and omeletes galore, but the various incarnations of eggs benedict are what usually garner my attention.  John’s potatoes are tasty enough to warrant take-away when I’m serving up a batch of my pancakes for breakfast at home.

Four stars for the food, but an extra star for the artwork on the wall: alongside the standard shots of the Embarcadero and construction of the Bay bridge, movie stills from the dawn of technicolor and a huge black velvet Elvis in the corner mate with the rockinest non-functioning jukebox in the city.

John’s falls just shy of five stars for serving up long pours on their espresso drinks and only having pancake syrup, not real maple syrup.  Yeah, it’s a diner, but if you’ve got it on the menu, you’ve gotta bring it.

But did my dad ever find his “Frisco” french toast?  Yup, he found it at John’s.  It wasn’t organic, it wasn’t fancy-schmancy, and it wasn’t even served with real maple syrup.  But it was made at the edge of the world in San Francisco, and it turns out that was enough to make it special.