Every small town in America has THE spot for breakfast. Do a slow drive down the strip and you’ll find that one place with a jam packed parking lot and a huge, hopping line of people waiting out the door. It can be a diner, a shack on the side of the road, a hotel bar, a food truck, or a random restaurant on Main Street USA surrounded by a bunch of other random restaurants on Main Street USA—there’s no way to really predict. It probably won’t be anywhere centralized, or flashy or glitzy. It will probably not be very convenient. And most likely, it will be the last place you want to go since there will be about 9000 screaming toddlers, old couples with matching sweatshirts and college kids home for the summer who haven’t showered since last school year, all waited to get seated before you. This when you fight your instincts, turn off your big city brain and use every once of willpower to not run to the nearest Starbucks to get a scone. THE spot is worth it. 

• Who: Emily, Bridget, Andrew, Dan
• Where: Rockland, ME
• What: Home on the Boarder Omelet (Sauteed onions, roasted poblano, red & green bell peppers black beans and pepperjack cheese) with avocado and polenta, Flying Dog IPA

We decided to kill two birds with one stone on the Friday before Maggie’s wedding: find food and see a little bit of the cute town of Rockland.  The 15-year-old bellhop gave us a couple recommendations that sounded good (although he probably would have been better equipped to give us tips on where to smoke pot in the woods) and off we went to see the sites with our fearless driver at the helm.

Rockland pretty much has one major thoroughfare, which, shockingly, is a one-way just off of Route 1 called Main Street that contains everything you’d want to see or do. Like all seasoned tourists, we planned to just cruise down til we found one of the stoner bellhop places or something else that looked decent. Sounds easy enough, right? On our way into town, though, we passed a little place in a dirt parking lot that looked more like a house than a restaurant. It had no view, no scenery, and it certainly didn’t appear to specialize in lobster rolls. What it did have, however, was a giant crowd of people waiting outside, a million cars idling in the driveway and a porch filled with very content looking people scarfing down their food. It was clearly THE spot.

But then the brain kicked in. WAIT! WE’RE IN MAINE RIGHT ON THE WATER!! AREN’T WE SUPPOSED TO SIT IN SOME LITTLE CAFE BY THE WATER DRINKING MOXIE?? WHY WOULD WE WANT TO WAIT IN A LINE??!?! THIS IS OUR VACATION!!! So we kept going, convinced that stoner bellhop knew his stuff and we’d find something better down the road. 

Sorry, stoner bellhop. No such luck.

It took about 3 minutes of seeing Rockland (which, coincidentally only takes about 3 minutes to drive through) to realize that anyone who was anyone who was eating brunch in this town was at Home Kitchen Cafe. And back we went—to a scenary-free patio in the middle of a parking lot facing the highway to have one of the best brunches of 2011. A delicious menu to beat all menus. One avocado-based egg product after avocado-based egg product. Ignore the guidebooks. Ignore the 15-year-old stoners. Ignore your aversion to lines and crowds and kids and old people. Always go to THE spot.