The all-purpose utility of Cafe Marie-Jeanne, on the suddenly restaurant-thick intersection of California and Augusta, is what makes it the most attractive among the newer venues to colonize this once desolate Humboldt Park junction. Pioneered by the California Clipper, a surge of restaurants and bars took a foothold here with the great Rootstock and, in more recent times, the Haywood Tavern, Spinning J Bakery and Soda Fountain, and Hogsalt Hospitality’s coffee shop, C.C. Ferns, tucked in a backdoor annex to the Clipper.
It can be overwhelming on the plate too, thanks to some awkward service protocols. Try to build a breakfast from some three or four small items on the a la carte menu and they might arrive at your two-top or small counter ledge on three to four separate plates; say, eggs, smoked brisket, broccoli smothered in melted cheese, and braunschweiger, each with its own small, blue-and-white vintage china turf to protect. If you somehow manage to rearrange those all on a single plate, they’re the makings of a fine breakfast, the crispy fried braunschweiger a nice foil for some runny eggs, the brisket not close to the Montreal-style smoked meat the cafe’s understated French-Canadian shtick might imply, but still dependably fragrant with woodsmoke even though it’s reheated on the flattop to order. Little dishes of sauteed button mushrooms are irresistible garlic bombs, and whole fingerling potatoes are similarly carried by the rich, almost stewlike beef jus they’re bathed in.
The emphasis on baking and pastry—croissants, monkey bread, and biscuits in addition to Simmons’s superb breads—contributes to the daytime appeal at Cafe Marie-Jeanne. (Though the babas au rhum ordered one evening for dessert were served ice-cold.) The space is bright and plain, and if you don’t mind being left alone for unexplainable stretches of time midday, it’s a not bad place to make camp for a few hours. v
1001 N. California 773-904-7660 cafe-marie-jeanne.com
