"Placerville omelette" just doesn't have the same appeal.
No knock on the California city, which long ago changed its name and linked its fortune to gold prospecting rather than frontier justice, but it's hard to match the romance of a waitress's singsong call for a Hangtown fry ($13.95). (When she taps your order silently onto a touchscreen, a vivid imagination is very helpful.)
Since New York is well-supplied with bacon, eggs, and oysters, the three essential ingredients, I'd wondered why this dish doesn't appear on any Manhattan menu. I'm guessing that the large, moist, briny "Washington" oysters (the most descriptive name my waitress could offer) are the key; the generally smaller and firmer East Coast varieties are probably too chewy to fill the bill. That said, any enterprising New York chef who compensated by chopping the bacon into the omelette, rather than crisscrossing it on top, would find me at the table in short order.
John's Grill
63 Ellis St. (Powell-Stockton Sts.), San Francisco
415-986-0069
www.JohnsGrill.com
