Allison's Country Cafe in Ventura, CA

The other day my mom and I ran into each other driving down the street so I made the universal sign for hunger, by pretending to shovel food in my mouth.  In response she vigorously shook her head like a savage animal, which I assume indicated that she too shared my hunger pains.  In a much more dignified manner than I displayed initially, I waved to her to try to tell her to follow me and I also mouthed the words.  Though while driving and shaking her head like a wild animal in agreement I figure it was probably the hand motion that ended up getting her on board, that and the fact that she was also very hungry.  We cruised a few blocks down and stopped at Allison's Country Cafe on Telegraph Rd in Ventura.

I'm pretty sure that if you are a Ventura local, you've been to this restaurant.  But if you haven't, there's few reasons why you shouldn't.  (But to name a few if you have, Cilophobia, Anthropophobia, Decidophobia, or Coulrophobia might want to wait until you get over your fears.  Those of you with Coulrophobia can't ever be too careful either!)

I was a little worried about going to a grown up sit down restaurant in my current state as I had come straight from the gym and was, well, disgusting.  I can't decide if I thought the waitress not giving me a dirty look for looking completely disheveled and being smelly was a positive or a negative for the restaurant.  On one hand, I'm glad she wasn't judgemental, on the other, what does that say about their normal clientele???

Going out on a limb, I ordered the lemon pancakes with berries and they were ridiculous!  I am not a pancake eater (at least since I was pregnant and ate pancakes every morning for at least three months, that really ruined normal pancakes for me.  Bleh!), but these were really good.  So good in fact, I'm sure I negated any calories burned at the gym plus a few by eating them - and I could't even finish the whole plate!

My mom order the one and only breakfast item that I've ever seen her order.  Bacon and eggs.  As bacon and eggs go, these are cream of the crop.  They offer the hash browns as regular hash browns or obrien potatoes with onion and bell pepper, which my mom loves.  And their breakfasts come with gigantic biscuits with homemade raspberry jam.  When I've ordered non-pancake breakfasts here before, the biscuits usually become my lunch or breakfast for the next day, there is just so MUCH of them!

We both topped our yummy breakfasts off with better than average diner coffee and I'm sure we'll go back one of these days.  As a side bar, I once recommended that some family that was visiting from out of town go here for breakfast.  Well, they liked it so much that they went two mornings in a row!  They would have gone a third I'm sure, but they had to leave town.