Breakfast or Brunch

 CBS Sunday Morning News is one of my favorite programs so I was watching when a couple of Sunday's ago, they ran this segment,  Breakfast or Brunch, narrated by Mo Rocca.  All of a sudden I was off of the couch. Rocca was not talking about some New York City restaurants. He was talking about Houston. Not just Houston but my old neighborhood, the neighborhood where I grew up and where we bought our first home. He was talking about breakfast at the Tel-Wink Grill. It had been 40+ years since I had eaten at the Tel-Wink but so many memories came back.....going there with the kids when they were small or with some other families after church on Sunday night.....the booths, the pies, the milk shakes, the burgers. You know, the basic food groups.

 Then the segment compared a diner breakfast to brunch at The Backstreet Cafe. Another restaurant that I know and love but it is upscale food.  I don't have any photographs from The Backstreet Cafe although we did eat there one night last weekend. The food and the drinks were definitely a bit more refined than at the Tel-Wink but that bit of video had awakened my curiosity after all of these years about the Tel-Wink. Today we went there with friends for breakfast.

It was a strange experience. It looked like the Tel-Wink with an addition built on the back. Same booths, same ceramic coffee mugs, the same counter, different but the same waitresses, lots of the same things on the menu. But something was just different. I wondered if the Tel-Wink was different and I was the same or if the Tel-Wink was the same and I was different. I've since heard that they are in a different building just across the street from where they were. At any rate they served a hearty breakfast and I mean hearty. I haven't been hungry all day.

It was good to see such a humble Houston diner get recognition on national TV but out of all the diners that serve breakfast in Houston, how did Mo Rocca find the Tel-Wink Grill?