Yellow Church Café earns praise

It's probably not a good idea to ride, whether on an ass or in an Acura TL, into town on the local citizenry's high holy day with expectations that the populace will drop its festivities to feed you breakfast. Thus Weisenheimer was driven to some trepidation, hungry and rolling into Ellensburg, Washington mid-morning on Aug. 30, to find the masses already massing into downtown for the annual western parade that celebrates the burg's annual high point known as the Ellensburg Rodeo.

"Tarnsarnitall," I muttered to myself, scooting down a side street to avoid the main drag/parade route. "Where's a city slicker going to get some vittles in this bronc-ridin' town on a morning like this?"

As my sweetie, the scorer, is armed with an iPhone, we no longer have to wander through strange towns looking for neon signs that read "Bacon and decaf" in order to find a suitable breakfast. Indeed, she'd already identified a strong candidate and even had a favorite chosen from the on-line menu, we'd punched the address into the car's GPS, and the route was plotted. (Though much of Ellensburg is in what Lola, our GPS lady, likes to refer to as "unverified area" into which we'd be crazy to venture and don't come crying to Acrua's lawyers if it doesn't work out the way you'd intended.)

I figured the place, if it was even open, would be a madhouse. I was amazed, then, when we pulled up to the Yellow Church Café to find it open, to find a street parking space right around the corner, and to be shown to a table without a wait.

The Yellow Church Café is just what it purports to be: a café in a yellow church. It was, according to the Web site, built by German Lutherans in 1923, giving Weisenheimer and his sweetie some heritage in the place, though the building has also served over time as a private home, a architect's office, and an art gallery. We suspect that the building was not painted yellow when the Lutherans owned it. We also suspect the floor of the café is the original wood; it is scuffed and worn where several generations of poor miserable sinners fessed up. Through our boundless mercy, we forgive them (though they may well deserve temporal AND eternal punishment) for vacating the place and letting it fall into the hands of a couple of pastor's kids who are now the owners of the joint.

The breakfast fare is, as indicated by the Web site, "praiseworthy." Weisenheimer enjoyed the sunrise scrambler, a standard scrambled eggs and potatoes concoction, and my sweetie went for the giant cinnamon roll with a side of bacon and eggs. The only fishes on the menu are found in the smoked salmon omelet, but there are plenty of loaves, and biscuits, baked on site. There's no indication that they fed the multitudes that morning; in fact, we're guessing the rodeo and parade crowd mostly took advantage of the pancake breakfast rustled up in the Albertson's parking lot, just $5 per head.

At the Yellow Church Café the food was divine and the service angelic. Our delightful breakfast powered us the rest of the way on our trip from Seattle to Boise.