End of road trip

Eastside Road, April 24—

SUPPER AT HOME tonight, first time in a week. A pleasure, and a simple one: a couple of eggs fried softly in olive oil, an English muffin.

The day had begun in the town of Atascadero, which in fact has a pretty good café, where we had our first edgy Stumptown espresso in quite a long time — a powerful Portland roast that always reminds me of the early days of espresso in this country, at the old Piccolo Espresso on Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue, back in the 1960s.

Lunch: a BLT in a bleak but trendy-looking restaurant in King City, before the beautiful drive up Highway 25. Bacon lettuce and tomato qualifies as Elective Affinity and very nearly, but not quite, for Hundred Plates. With it, a glass of rather sweet Californa Riesling.

Mid-afternoon we stopped for the best coffee of the trip, in a café we'd discovered a year ago in San Juan Bautista. They roast their own coffee here, and except for the coffee I roast myself — Monkey Blend from Sweet Maria's, roasted to a Full City — the coffee here, coincidentally named Mountain Monk, is the best I know.

But the best meal of the day was the one at home, eggs from a neighbor's hens, English muffins from the Downtown Bakery. Life is good. Tomorrow we fast.

Cheap Pinot grigio

• Brū, 5760 El Camino Real, Atascadero; (805) 464-5007
• KC Bar & Grill, 200 Broadway Street, King City; 831-386-9006
• Vertigo Coffee, 81 Fourth Street, San Juan Bautista; 831 623-9533