After looking forward to the re-opening of The Homestead Restaurant and reading with great interest the article published in a recent issue of The Lake County Examiner, this morning we ventured to Paisley in near blizzard conditions to have breakfast. Having been patrons and fans of The Homestead for the past 6 years, we looked forward to seeing some of the same items from the previous owner’s menu as stated in the newspaper article.

The choices on the breakfast menu were extremely limited. One of our favorites, the Bubba breakfast sandwich was not listed, nor was the delicious breakfast burrito. With such few entrees offered, we both chose veggie omelets. There were no offers of biscuits or English muffins, just toast, with the waitress saying they were out of our favorite, rye. We drank the extremely weak coffee and noted the ominous absence of the local Paisley “morning coffee-drinking” folks.

The omelets with hash brown potatoes arrived fairly quickly. We noted they were “swimming in oil” looking extremely small on the large platters. One of the omelets was barely cooked and the other was burned black in places on the outside. The vegetables mixed throughout the egg were mainly onions with a token ripe olive or a piece of tomato. These could not have been the 3 egg omelets that are typically offered at most restaurants. The toast was one piece of extremely thin “balloon-type” bread. The shocker was the price of $7.95 each for our worst dining experience ever! In all fairness, we may have just been spoiled to the generous and wonderful meals thoughtfully prepared by John and Linda of “The Homestead” of bygone days.

It seems we won’t be venturing the 30 miles south to dine in Paisley again and will stay with our favorite establishment to the north, Froggy’s Pizza in Christmas Valley. It has the absolute best pizza we have ever had the pleasure to experience. On weekdays only, from 5:30am until 10am, Bob Erb, chef extraordinaire, cooks up delicious huge fluffy omelets full of anything you can dream up served with a homemade biscuit and gravy for only $4.95 with free coffee.

In the future when we see an announcements of a new restaurant opening in the Lakeview newspaper with what seems to be “glowing credentials”, we will no doubt wait for the neighborly gossip before trying a place on their opening date. In this case April Fool’s Day seemed quite fitting.