Back To The Sunnyside Cafe Again

There used to be two chains of donut shops making traditional cake donuts, Mr. Donut and Dunkin' Donut. The amount of shops ebbs and flows with how worried people seem to get about eating fats and sugar. All of the Mr. Donut shops seem to be gone, although one hung in there for several years under the name of The Donut Connection

Forty years or so ago this place was a Mr. Donut but they used to make the donuts at the larger 163rd St. store and bring them down here to 139th St. Then one day ALL the donut shops were history.

Coffee is the twenty-first century buzzword. Starbucks opened shops all over the place. Somebody at Dunkin' Donut got the brilliant idea of featuring their coffee, talking about what a smooth flavor it had, not mentioning donuts at all. It must be working because there are new Dunkin' Donut shops springing up everwhere. I often stop to pick up a couple donuts on my way to Starbucks.

This location sat empty for several years, then reopened as a breakfast and lunch place with counter seating and a few tables. You get a choice of home fries, hash browns, or grits and the eggs are cooked like you want them, along with link or patty sausage, bacon, or ham. They've added a Kreyole speaking Haitian waitress to the already bilingual Spanish/English mix. When I need something more sustatial than a donut first thing in the morning I stop at the Sunnyside Cafe (then I go to Starbucks for some stronger brew).

The All Night Hangout ~ No More

I was on 167th St. in North Miami Beach when I decided I was hungry and had a hankering for breakfast type fare. The Ham & Eggery had been an institution since 1970 or maybe a bit earlier. It was a 24 hour place serving mostly ham, bacon, and eggs with hash brownes or grits, and some pretty decent pancakes and waffles too. The coffee was too strong but usually fresh.

Many nights after a concert, or just with a bunch of friends, I'd go there in the middle of the night. Well, here it was early afternoon. There was that white van, the only vehicle in the lot until my red truck showed up. No lights on inside and the door was locked. The place looked deserted. I'd sure like to see it reopen but I'm pretty sure that a combination of the changing demographics in the area, together with a fear of crime, means that it'll never again be what it once was. I headed on down the street and had coffee and donuts instead.