My Second Time with Miss Shirley
I spent a weekend in Annapolis a few weeks ago, and I went back to Miss Shirley's Cafe, which I've reviewed already. However, this experience was a bit different. I -- gasp -- actually have a few negative things to say for once in a brunch review. I take some of the blame in this though, as most of the problem stems from my dish selection.
In my last review of Miss Shirley's, I grumble about price, which I still believe is a downfall of Miss Shirley's, as my meal today was a whopping $16. I ordered the B'More Breakfast Trio of Sliders. It sounds exciting, right? One is BBQ, one is bacon and one is goat cheese and spinach. And it comes with hash browns!
My decision wasn't made in a vacuum though. I was going to order the Coconut Cream Stuffed French Toast, but we ordered the Chocolate-Dipped Monkey Bread as a starter, and I'm not trying to develop diabetes in one brunch. I liked what I got last time (the avocado sandwich), but needed to try something new. Their skillet sounded excellent, but since I got hash the day prior at Fado, I thought it best to venture further. Then when my mom ordered the chicken and waffles, I decided to be different and get the sliders.
While waiting for the sliders, I was unimpressed with the coffee. It tasted fine (if not a little burnt, but that's not the real issue), but the cups were basically double shot glasses, and the waiter was doing half pours into each of our cups. He was slow on the refills too, so I probably only got 3/4 of a normal coffee cup the entire time. Sigh.
The monkey bread came out, and was amazing. My nana talked about it for a week straight, which is what prompted us to order it, and I can see why she obsessed over it! It was excellent. I didn't want to eat a lot of it though since I wanted to save room for my sliders.
Then my sliders came out, and I regretted not packing on the monkey bread.
While almost every review I write emphasizes the size of the dish, this dish is unimpressive. The buns are tiny and the toppings are meager. If I were to guesstimate, if you combine the 3 sliders, its the normal filling amount for 1/2 sandwich. There was literally a single piece of spinach in the middle one, with a tiny fleck of goat cheese. I'm NOT the person to send food back because it looks unimpressive, but I almost sent it back. It was that depressing.
Slider-time sadness.
I mustered up some excitement, because it was going to be better than it looked. Right? Okay you guessed it, it wasn't. It was just dry. Super, super dry. They all could have used some sort of sauce or aioli. I ended up pulling off all the eggs and just eating it with the hash browns because the rolls were so bready, flavorless and dry.
It was $16 for rubbery eggs, a steamed piece of spinach, a fleck of goat cheese, maybe a tablespoon of BBQ and 1/4 a piece of bacon. Very, very not worth the price, especially since I ended up not eating most of the bread.
My strong, strong suggestion would be to order almost anything other than the breakfast sliders at Miss Shirley's. My mom's chicken and waffles were heavenly. She got three large chunks of perfectly breaded chicken with three perfectly savory waffle circles. They were coated in aioli and cheese, giving the plate both the zest and size you'd expect at brunch.
My brother's skillet (the Baja Skillet) was awesome and I was envious. It was loaded with ham, potatoes, onion, cheese, avocado mash and more. I was pretty depressed looking at his choice and then mine. And my dad got the white chocolate raspberry pancakes that made me salivate.
Let's just say that Shirley's sliders are not her strength.