I'm gonna take you home to meet my mom.

Milo's City Cafe

Aw, Milo's.... you're the bloody my mom wants me to date. My mom does, in fact, love a good bloody mary- I'm certain I inherited my taste for the tomato & vodka drinkable breakfast salad from her. (Just don't tell her church ladies as much.) Erin and I found ourselves at Milo's after we ended things with Katie's, in an effort to try the other side- a clean, well-lit place with incredibly hot wait-staff, spot-on service, legendary benedicts and talk-of-the-town bloodys. All of what we'd heard came true at Milo's. Hot wait staff, fast service, perfect lemony-yellow hollandaise smothering my smoked salmon benny, and pretty delicious bloodys, even if they were on the weaker side.

But.... there's always a but. Perhaps it was the drinking I had done the night before. Perhaps it was the impromptu lesbian relationship counseling we (Erin and I- the two straight girls, mind you) administered to the friend we'd brought along on our Milo's speed date, maybe it was the throngs of breeding Portlanders and their criminally beautiful children inside the diner... but the fact of it is that Milo's is never going to be our weekly spot. You can't linger in a place where there is a line-up at the front door stretching around the block, all the hungry beady eyes of Portland's urban professionals attempting to stare me out of slowly savoring my tumbler of tomato-vodka goodness. The coffee refills, brought by an eager, overly cute waiter were fantastic, but you can only ask for so many refills before you have to admit to yourself, and cute barely-legal Jeff, that you are, in fact, not going to order anything else and you promise to promptly vacate the table for the Joneses standing in the doorway, glaring at us. And, Milo's, I can't afford you. Si quieres azul celeste, que te cueste ('if you desire the blue heavens, it comes with a price tag'), so the saying goes.

I will, however, bring my mom over to meet you. Maybe she'll treat, and after, she can forever voice loosely disguised directives like "honey, Milo's seems like such a nice place. I like that place. Why don't you just go there for bloodys instead of wasting your time on places where the waitresses have more tattoos than your brother and the rest of the patrons are drinking PBR at 9am in the morning?". And I will tell her she has a point, but you can't force attraction. If the chemistry isn't there, it just isn't there. It was a great one-morning stand, though.

Thanks, Milo's.

(Image by how_long_it_takes: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29311691@N05/4496229319/)