Over the last year or so, Jolene and I have been to a number of places for breakfast on the west and east side of Lake Washington. Call it a tick from my childhood but I dig on brunch… I’ve been known to eat a burger at 8am for exactly this reason, but what’s also good is a varied amount of different foods be it a random menu or a buffet thingy.

The Eastside has a finite number of places that cater to breakfast… Brownbag, Hector’s, George’s, and Original Pancake House in Kirkland, Ruby’s and Pomegranate in Redmond, with the random Denny’s or IHOP all over the place. The Westside, as it includes the sprawling landmass of Seattle, has a much larger number of places… with that much distance to cover, we’ve been returning to an area that’s well known to one of us and sorta known to the other: Capitol Hill.

And so begins the List of Shame…

Actually, this all started when two places on the Hill started advertising brunch a couple of months ago… one was a Mexican place called Galerias and the other was a Thai place called Jai Thai. This was interesting because most places offer what amounts to an American styled breakfast/brunch with a couple of extras thrown in and both Galerias and Jai Thai have had great food.

Over Memorial Day weekend, we decided to go to Jai Thai, because we had checked out their menu the day before. Place opens at 8am – we got there at 8:30. Pull on the door: locked. Looked inside: there was a guy sweeping the floor and when he saw us, he motion that they weren’t open. Weird, right? OK, fine. We instead went to Julia’s across the street which had a pretty solid selection and we had a good meal.

The next day, we try again after 9am: closed again. This time we went to Broadway Grill, which is down the street from Julia’s. Buffet this time which was average in size but very, very solid on food – everything was well seasoned and tasty.

This past weekend, we decide to try Jai Thai another time: closed again, and at 9:30. This time, however, I banged on the door until we got someone’s attention and he motioned us to the side door. Seems that “the server” hasn’t gotten in yet so they can’t open. She has the keys and the computer knowledge to get the place started… without her, they can’t open. When Jolene asked about last week, he said something like, “Yeah, she doesn’t show up sometimes.”

List of Shame entry: Jai Thai, Capitol Hill

Disgruntled, we decided to walk down Broadway to see Galerias, which had an excellent Mole Poblano, and because they have been advertising brunch for a while. Pulled on the door: closed. Right under the sign that says “Brunch! Sat & Sun! $6.95”. Even though this is their first known offense and they have great food…

List of Shame entry: Galerias, Capitol Hill

Just to get this all out of my system, we also tried 611 Supreme at least two different times before getting in there… a combination of vacation time and inaccurate hours posted to both Yelp and their answering machine sent us to a locked door on two different occasions.

List of Shame honorable mention: 611 Supreme, Capitol Hill

Yes, this annoyed me enough that it mutated from a Facebook comment to a Yelp review to ultimately a blog post…

Simp.