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Mimi’s Cafe serves up good reason for being “the best breakfast in Orange County” Fall 2004

Awarded Restaurant magazine’s Menu Strategist Award for Family Dining in 2002, the Nation’s Restaurant News Menu Master Award (honorable mention) for best menu revamp in 2003 and recognized by Child magazine as one of the “Top 10 restaurants for families” in 2004, Mimi’s Cafe celebrates over 25 years in business and the opening of its 81st store.

Howard Baldini, vice president of food and beverage for Mimi’s Cafe, talked to OPERATOR about what makes Mimi’s successful and “the best breakfast in Orange County.”

OPERATOR: What makes your breakfasts so special?

BALDINI: We offer a lot of twists on the usual. We have a blue crab benedict, for example. And several unique omelets: a spinach feta omelet, a Santa Fe omelet. And griddle items like our San Francisco French toast, in addition to the regular bacon and eggs.

OPERATOR: With over 80 restaurants in your system, quality and consistency are obviously important. How do you control that?

BALDINI: For our staff, we have quite an extensive training program. From a food perspective, whether the restaurant is in Florida or Kansas or California, we start with the same palette of ingredients and use the same recipes. The rest is training and execution.

OPERATOR: Do you get consistent quality from Farmland?

BALDINI: Oh yes, we have enjoyed a business relationship with Farmland for some years now. And the length and strength of that relationship is very much based on the quality and consistency of its product, from day to day and year to year.

OPERATOR: Your menu is quite diverse and includes bacon in everything from breakfast to salads to sandwiches to entrees. Why is bacon so popular?

BALDINI: It adds flavor to whatever food item you’re using it in. You take a basic American hamburger and add bacon. It adds the salt flavor, the smoky flavor, the sweet flavor. It’s almost guaranteed that an omelet with bacon will sell. An old standby, which has been on our menu for 25 years is liver and onions, and of course, 90 percent of our guests order it with bacon on top. Our cobb salad with mixed lettuce, turkey, bacon and avocado is the number one salad using bacon. And then, there’s the classic quiche Lorraine.

OPERATOR: There are lots of dietary trends that come and go — most recently, the Atkins-style diet. Are you seeing an increased demand for foods like pork?

BALDINI: Proteins in every form, we’ve seen an increase. What’s great about the whole low-carb Atkins/South Beach diet thing is that you can enjoy bacon with your scrambled eggs, guilt-free. There are so many more opportunities for more flavorful additions to the diet. So, it’s kind of an exciting time to be working with menus. It’s been great.

OPERATOR: Any plans to put a “Farmland BLT” on Mimi’s menu?

BALDINI: (Laughs) Who knows? We never say never.