Blake’s Bistro

FOOD

The omelet station is the feature that gives Blake’s breakfast buffet a little more interest than a meal drawn entirely from serving pans. An omelet made to order puts a cooked-for-you egg dish at the center of breakfast, with the other buffet choices available alongside it. The particular fillings aren’t fixed here, but the station itself has been a useful reason to choose the weekend spread.

Eggs with cheese, bacon and sausage have also been part of the buffet. Together they make the traditional hot breakfast that many people have in mind when they sit down at a hotel restaurant. The cheese makes the eggs a more substantial choice, while bacon and sausage offer two familiar accompaniments. They’re ordinary breakfast foods, and that familiarity is part of their appeal on a holiday morning.

Grits add a Southern breakfast choice to the spread. Made from ground corn cooked into a soft porridge, grits are a different sort of accompaniment from the meat and eggs, especially for someone who likes a warm bowl with breakfast. Fruit and cereals provide the lighter side of the selection. That mix suits a table where one person wants a full cooked breakfast and another would happily begin with fruit.

The buffet’s strength is that combination of an egg station and familiar morning foods, enjoyed in the San Luis dining room. The current selection, including station operation, needs confirming for your visit. Blake’s broader breakfast menu gives a useful sense of the restaurant’s cooking, too, but those ordered dishes are separate from the buffet and shouldn’t be treated as included extras.

Among those à la carte choices, Bananas Foster pancakes bring a more elaborate sweet breakfast: bananas and walnuts with a brown-sugar rum sauce. The appeal is quite different from fruit and cereal, particularly if pancakes are the main reason to go out for breakfast. They belong to the ordered menu, so choosing them means making a separate breakfast decision rather than looking for them among the buffet pans.

Biscuits and gravy, breakfast tacos, and smoked salmon with a bagel offer other ways to order breakfast at Blake’s. Biscuits and gravy are a familiar Southern comfort-food dish, while the salmon-and-bagel combination gives you a cold, savory alternative to an egg-centered meal. The tacos fit the bistro’s wider Tex-Mex interests. These choices help explain the restaurant’s broad breakfast appeal, even though they don’t establish what is on the buffet.

The same distinction applies later in the day. Blake’s advertises a Texas Wagyu prime-rib special on Sunday and Monday evenings, served in individually priced portions with Yorkshire pudding, a choice of salad and a potato or vegetable accompaniment. That’s an ordered roast-beef dinner, separate from the weekend breakfast buffet. Breakfast is the recurring AYCE opportunity here; the rest of the menu gives you reasons to consider returning for a different meal.