My March Madness began at the Bijou.

Cafe, that is, downtown Portland at SW 3rd and SW Pine. My table where I waited right about 7:30 a.m. Thursday, March 15, for my favorite restaurant breakfast which I knew would keep me from getting hungry too soon at the Rose Garden Arena. My goal, to enjoy all four NCAA March Madness Second Round games that day, feeling a minimal amount of hunger and a maximum amount of college-basketball-induced joy. I rode the 12 bus from home and willingly walked two blocks to the restaurant through the rain because I knew that my plan was a really good one.


My favorite restaurant breakfast, the Redwood Hill smoked goat cheddar French-style omelette. Inside the perfectly cooked, fluffy eggs, you find three ingredients. Crumbles of Redwood Hill smoked goat cheddar--maybe it's been riced, I don't know, but it's teensy pieces of big-flavored goat cheese. Small rectangles of crispy bacon. Slender, perfectly-formed ovals of paper-thin green onions. It comes with the crunchy salad greens you see here or with chunks of potatoes which taste like they were actually grown in the earth. And the muffin of the day or toast accompanies it. I always go for the muffin which I take with me in a square paper sleeve provided by the waitstaff. I always order one outta-sight-best-ever buttermilk pancake upon which I put two pats of butter and a small amount of maple syrup which I pour into slight grooves that I cut into the top of the pancake once the butter has melted. That lets the syrup soak right on down into the pancake, doncha know.

As I savored my first bite of the omelette, I turned to my right to face the counter behind which the cook(s) work steadily, smiled and flashed the cook the A-OK sign. He smiled back and said, "Thanks." After a fine meal, I walked in the rain again, this time three blocks, to catch a MAX train to the Rose Garden Arena, site of my planned college-basketball-induced joy.