Palo Alto: Hobee's

I haven't been posting as frequently because, in getting ready to leave Palo Alto and Stanford, life has been rather hectic.  Anyhow, last Friday morning, Melissa and I met for breakfast at Hobee's in Town & Country.  I seem to remember Hobee's providing coffee cake before the Baccalaureate line-up last spring (has it really been almost a year since we graduated?), but other than that had heard only general positive opinions of the breakfast offerings.  This was my first visit to Hobee's, though Melissa was a little more familiar.

Over cups of coffee, for which refills are fortunately free, Melissa decided to go with the oatmeal bar, which offers thick-textured (as opposed to watery) oatmeal and an assortment of dried fruits, nuts, and other toppings like brown sugar.  Here is her very attractive bowl:

I chose the chicken-apple-sausage scramble, which comes with one's choice of toast, hash browns, and coffee cake.  The scramble had red bell peppers, mushrooms, and Gouda in addition to sausage slices, and given this combination's richness, I'd definitely recommend leaving the Gouda out.  As for the coffee cake, let us harbor no delusions about it being anything other than a dessert consumed at breakfast.  Dessert-as-breakfast and I have a solid history together, but Hobee's actually pushes coffee cake far into overkill territory by throwing a large dollop of butter on top, which is kind of artery-hardening to look at.  The cake itself is fluffy and thus pretty good; that said, I don't see why it is considered legendary.

The servers were friendly and refilled both water and coffee quite promptly.  We had a sunny table outside, since the inside looked pretty crowded, and so we got to bask in the fresh air and relative quiet of Town & Country around 9:00am.