Though Mondays are notoriously slow days for restaurants, the lunch rush starts early at Ah Huevo! in Santa Rosa. By noon, there’s already a wait for tables and the kitchen is firing on all burners with orders of pancakes, chilaquiles, waffles and the steaming breakfast molcajete flying through the pass-through. In less than 10 days since opening, local social media influencers already made the wildly Instagrammable café a hit.
The name Ah Huevo! is a play on ahuevo, a slang way of saying “Hell Yeah!” or strong agreement in Spanish. Huevos are the Spanish word for eggs, among other things. Suffice it to say all puns are represented.
This is the third Ah Huevo! restaurant — with two more in the works — for owner Jose Lemus, a former machine shop operator. His mother’s recipes were the basis for the original menu of posole, menudo and barbacoa.
That later expanded to include a laundry list of American and Latin-inspired breakfast dishes, including 12 kinds of chilaquiles, Benedicts, scrambles, French toast, Belgian waffles, crepes, and a morning molcajete with red and green chilaquiles, steak, sausage, bacon, eggs and sour cream.
At 2 p.m. the menu switches to an equally outlandish choice of dinner entrees with tacos, burgers, asada fries, Mexican-style fried sushi rolls and a whole red snapper.
The real showstoppers, however, are mimosas. Yes, you can have a single glass or a flight, but sipping a 3-liter Royal ($59.99) in a 15-inch tall wine glass with bendy straws broadcasts the kind of week you’ve had — or weekend you’re about to have.
Open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Monday; closed Tuesday. 1016 Santa Rosa Plaza, Santa Rosa, Instagram.com/ah.huevo.oficial
You can reach Dining Editor Heather Irwin at heather.irwin@pressdemocrat.com. Follow Heather on Instagram @biteclubeats.