Filling Station
201 N. Glassell St.
Orange, CA 92866
Sometime a repeat visit is deemed necessary. Some restaurants are more known for their breakfasts, rather than the lunches they serve, while sometimes just the opposite is true. This will be our second trip to the Filling Station. We made our first visit almost a year and a half ago for lunch. You can read that review here. The lunch was pretty standard, but I had heard that breakfast was the thing to get at the Filling Station.
Lucky for me, my usual dining partner when I am in Downtown Orange had morning tutoring to do at Chapman University, so Chris suggested we try the breakfast at the Filling Station. We got to the Filling Station at 9 on a recent Thursday morning. The weather was a little crisp, but we chose to grab a seat on the patio, just like the last time we visited. The patio borders Glassell, and has a great view of the downtown Orange hustle and bustle, (okay not exactly New York or Boston, but there are some people walking by).
For those of you that do not know, the Filling Station got its name because back in the day this used to be a gas station. Now they are more known for filling peoples stomachs, instead of filling their tanks. I was excited to try their breakfasts here, and wanted to see if they were worth all of the hype. Let's see how it all worked out for Chris and I.
If there is one thing I have learned about my Cousin Chris on our dining adventures through Orange, it is that he does not really eat a lot. Okay, he might eat like a normal person, but compared to me, he eats like a bird. Just kidding big guy. Chris opted to get the Belgian Waffle with Banana added ($7.25). This was a good sized waffle, but I could have finished this off rather quickly. Chris felt this waffle was better than average and that the banana was fresh. Other than that he really did not have too much to say about his breakfast.
Okay now this is more like it. I love breakfast, and if my breakfast doesn't come on two plates, then I don't feel like I have enough food to start my day. At the Filling Station I had three plates, so I had some high hopes that this would at least fill me up. The Cinnamon French Toast Breakfast ($9.75) comes with two slices of cinnamon french toast, two eggs, and either two strips of bacon or two sausage links. The bacon and eggs were okay here. It is kind of hard to make these two items stand out too much, unless it is really thick bacon, which this was not. The bacon was nice and crisp though. The featured act for this breakfast was to be the cinnamon french toast. I ordered this because many of the reviews on Yelp mentioned the french toast. They use Hawaiian bread for their french toast here. I liked the sweetness of the toast, but I did not get much in the way of cinnamon with this. This french toast was rather pedestrian. It did not really stand out too much for me. It was not bad, just average. To round out the breakfast, and get a serving of vegetables I ordered a side of Hash Browns ($3) These hash browns were nice and crisp which I liked, and they were not too greasy, so they were almost healthy for me.
The Filling Station was a decent place to have breakfast, but just like their lunches, they failed to produce that wow factor, that would justify a long drive to downtown Orange. If I were in the area again, and wanted breakfast, I would still come back to the Filling Station, but I would probably try one of their specialty items that they have listed on the menu, and forgo the french toast. The patio is a really nice place to sit, and if you can not be parted from your dog, the patio is canine friendly as well. Glad I had the chance to visit the Filling Station again, and it is always great to catch up with my cousin Chris.
Out of five squeegee's, (because I always seem to hit the gas stations that don't have squeegee's), five being best to zero being worst, the Filling Station gets 2.5 squeegee's.
For more information about the Filling Station, click here: http://www.fillingstationcafe.com/index.html
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