Miss Shirley’s Cafe

There are plenty of places waiting to lighten the load you carry in your wallet along the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, but for the most part, they tend to be chains headquartered in other states, with little actual Baltimore flavor.  This statement does not mean ‘tastes like Old Bay seasoning and hooker tears’, but rather, something that’s in Baltimore and nowhere else. So to find a more unique and local dining experience in the Inner Harbor is a nice treat.

Jen and I randomly came across the listing for Miss Shirley’s Cafe, and headed over to grab breakfast on a particularly overcast and drizzly morning.  The location is on the ground floor of a large office building, with the restaurant tucked away in the back.  The entire lobby of the office building is transformed into a large waiting area/overflow dining area on the weekends, which only added to our belief that we had set upon the start of a fantastic dining experience.

We sat down at a booth and scoured the menus.  Jen, as per usual, honed in her selection, while I continued to pour of the offerings in search of the most cheatiest of cheat meals available.  After considerable deliberation and several days later, we got our order in for breakfast.

Jen’s order of Pumpkin Cheesecake Stuffed French Toast turned out to epic in proportions.  Two giant slabs of challah bread, filled with pumpkin cream cheese and graham cracker crumbs, then given a generous dusting of cinnamon and powdered sugar, served with a dollop of whipped cream and a mini-pitcher of maple syrup.  This dish tasted amazingly good.  I teared up a little bit after having a bite of her dish, and this time, it wasn’t because I had just snorted a teaspoon full of Tabasco sauce (but that’s an entirely different story for an entirely different time).  This dish will have no problems satisfying even the most ravenous of breakfast seekers, although in my opinion, it could use a little bacon worked in there somewhere.  I guess that’d pretty much nix it for vegetarian options though.  You can’t please everybody.

I ordered the What Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? dish. A boneless fried chicken breast on a biscuit, with a poached egg on another biscuit, served up with a ground beef and sausage gravy.  This dish could have been fantastic, but it fell a little short of expectations.  The flavor is definitely there, as is the presentation.  However, the chicken breast was less of a breast portion and more along the size of a large wing.  The amount of gravy was also a bit on the light side for a description that mentions “smothered”, and simply did not come in a large enough portion to accommodate two biscuits in the order.  Luckily, me being me, I was prepared for such an event to occur.

Did I mention I’m a huge glutton?  Or have you just figured that out by now?

Miss Shirley’s also offers a short stack order of any of their specialty pancakes, and I felt it necessary strictly for restaurant review purposes to try one of their specialty pancake orders.  I ordered the Cinnamon Danish Pancakes- two enormous pancakes coated in cinnamon and sugar, and then coated with a cream cheese icing, served with whipped cream and maple syrup, just in case you weren’t sure that you’d be getting enough sugar here to put you in a diabetic coma for the next two weeks.  I have to say that these fit right up with my opinion of Jen’s french toast…amazing.  The only way to make them better?  Find a way to infuse bacon in there.  Really though, these pancakes were off the chain good.

Service is quick and courteous, and my cup of coffee was rarely left empty.  I can vouch for their pancakes and french toast, but the lilliputian chicken breast portion left something to be desired.  That being said, the pancakes combined with the breakfast dish I ordered sufficiently filled me up, but not everybody is going to order like that.

If you’re in Baltimore and looking for a good breakfast or brunch, look no further.  Miss Shirley’s is a win in my book, and I anxiously look forward to another opportunity to eat up there again.

Miss Shirley’s Cafe has two locations in Balitmore.  See the Inner Harbor location on a map here.

Recommended For:

• Casual Breakfasts
• Vegetarians
• Lazy Saturdays
• Slothlike Sundays
• An alternative to the megachains along the Inner Harbor
• Tiger Woods, looking for an alternative to Perkins

Not Recommended For:

• Carbaphobes
• People with Diabeetus
• Paleoheads
• Zone Dieters
• Velociraptors
• Robocop