Breakfast in the North Suburbs

This is an occasional depository of where to eat breakfast in the northern suburbs.

Yesterday there was a desire to go out for breakfast. My Mom wanted to go to her favored place where Milwaukee and IL-41 meet at The Point, which serves breakfast and lunch only. While we go there occasionally, it is usually the first suggestion off Mom's head and will be a future post here. Yesterday, I wanted to try something new.

Waukegan has an interesting roadway called the Amstutz Highway, which may get Guinness Odd Facts Memorialized status of the world's briefest limited access expressway of merely two miles. So you accelerate to 50 mph, then immediately begin to deaccelerate because the road is coming to a screaching halt. Such a limited expressway is quite popular with film crews according to my friends who live on the bluff above.

The Amstutz Highway deadending on Greenwood on the north, you turn left toward Sheridan Road and pass Bob & Anne's Restaurant. This was a place I have passed hundreds of time thinking it might be worth a visit someday. Well someday was yesterday, when I made it our destination breakfast location. We walked in and immediately saw there were several parties from Great Lakes Naval station, which also has its' own piece of the Amstutz Highway in their front yard though not physically connected to the Waukegan portion. You just have to marvel at the pork fat politics to create these two disjointed blink-and-it's-gone expressways.

This is pure conjecture on my part, because I haven't asked anyone specifically about this: I have noted some of the restaurants around the base offer a broader range of food with some catering to Southern and/or soul food sensibilities. When we sat down to Bob & Anne's menu, I immediately found biscuits and gravy as well as grits; which are not regularly on the menus in the northern suburbs. However even Sheridan Restaurant in North Chicago run by Koreans, has grits, biscuits and gravy as well as soul food on their menu.

I ordered the half biscuits and gravy with two eggs sunny side up:



The biscuits would not impress JiminLoganSquare, though I have had worse. The gravy had chunks of sausage and needed a bit more pepper, which is an easy fix. Slight defects aside, the marriage of biscuits and gravy was very satisfying. I loved the big yolks on my egg. I had an opportunity to carefully extract the yolks from the whites. balance them on some rye toast and get it into my mouth without breaking. Ta da!

I finished my breakfast by digging into the grits with a piece of cheddar cheese melted on top. The additions of some salt and plenty of butter made these grits perfect for my taste.



My Mom has a new breakfast destination to add to her roster of places to go.

Bob & Anne's Restaurant
1739 North Sheridan Road (corner of Greenwood)
Waukegan, IL 60085
847-662-8770