Chapter 10 – Like a Big Old Red Barn

Mad Rooster Cafe – 4401 W. Greenfield Ave., Milwaukee

There was a fast food restaurant in my home town called “The Red Barn”—am I remembering this correctly?—maybe I should ask someone—it was built to look like a big old red barn, and I kind of despised it, because I knew it wasn't a real barn—like the old, seriously haunted barn in my neighborhood. Now, of course, that place (The Red Barn) would seem absolutely charming. Anyway, I'm thinking this was why I had just pretty much ignored the Mad Rooster—which is constructed to look like a big old red barn—until someone told me they had excellent breakfasts. Finally I ate there—and realized it's pretty much a family restaurant with a country theme, but locally owned (I think), and with infinitely better food than Cracker Barrel. On this, my return visit, I rode my bike out the Hank Aaron Trail, and then on a convoluted maze of back streets, to try to avoid the big roads (essentially like Interstate highways with legal U-turns) it's on the corner of. Fortunately I went early, got a booth to myself (it's one of those places where there is never a person dining alone), and by the time I left, people were lined up around the silo. It's a big menu, and they do have gluten-free pancakes. This is not at all a Mexican restaurant, but they do have some Mexican breakfast options on the menu, including Huevos Rancheros—which I always find amusing for some reason—and I kind of want to start an entire separate project that's just about Huevos Rancheros—but I'll save that for another day. I had “Mad Morning Tacos”—three tacos in one of those metal taco holders—necessary, because they're totally overloaded with chorizo, scrambled eggs, tomatoes, peppers, onions, and avocado. Potatoes on the side. They get major points for using corn tortillas, but then lose those points because the tortillas were not good—weirdly like all different—one was too gummy, the next one was dry and unheated, and the third was like heated too much, in oil, and partially hard. This was strange in itself, and I'm thinking just an anomaly, so I'll go back sometime—when I know I want to eat a lot. You can't eat these tacos like tacos, you just have to be resigned to eating them with a fork. That strikes me as a potentially eminently useful and perhaps even killer metaphor—but I have no idea, at this point, for what.