Maltby Cafe -- Its Reputation For Huge Breakfasts Has Them Lined Up At The Door

Maltby Cafe, 8809 Maltby Rd. Maltby (Snohomish). Breakfast ($3.75 to $7.95) 7 a.m. to 11:20 a.m. Monday through Friday and until 3 p.m. Saturday, Sunday. Lunch ($4.25 to $7.95) 11:30 to 3 p.m. daily. No dinner. Beer, wine. Major credit cards. No smoking. Reservations, information: 483-3123.

THE MALTBY CAFE IS A culinary throwback and a cultural enigma. It is, nevertheless, booming.

Founded by four female soccer players seven years ago, the cafe serves old-fashioned country breakfast to turn-away crowds (especially on weekend mornings and afternoons) in a little town that is no longer really a town at all.

Downtown Maltby is just around a bend in the Maltby Road (212th Street Southeast) between two rural highways heading north and east from Bothell/Woodinville. It consists of a collection of aging, Depression-era buildings - a former schoolhouse and a gymnasium - and two spinning windmills that are connected to nothing but the wind. It was all built in 1937 by the WPA, the kind of political make-work programs that the present Congress has little use for.

But the buildings, faded gray clapboards, windmills and all, are still standing, and the Maltby Cafe is in the basement of the old gym. The glowing worn pine floors suggest earlier decades, earlier tastes, and so do the breakfasts: huge, sumptuous and, by today's health-conscious standards, decidedly unfashionable. Which is to say: They are wonderful.

Extra-large egg omelets (one made with five eggs), slabs of honey-cured ham, fresh-baked buttermilk biscuits so light and fluffy that they almost fall apart under the gentle weight of a homemade blackberry jam.

Who eats this stuff anymore?

Eleven trim, athletic-looking women sat crowded around an adjacent table, laughing, chatting, taking flash photos on a small camera, eating mounds of high-calorie, high-fat food.

"We're all part of a tennis group," one woman explained as they were leaving. "Once a year we come here and stuff ourselves and then go work it off by beating each other's brains out on the courts all afternoon."

Three older women stood patiently in line at the entry, in front of a massive bouquet of peonies. One of them, spry on crutches, laughed. "We come up here once a week from Seattle, eating our way through our senior years. We love this place."

A little girl about 4 years old sat with a bright red-and-gold conical birthday hat tilted on her head and contemplated with awe an assembly of Strawberry Filled Swedish Style Pancakes ($6.50) topped with a volcanic mound of more sliced strawberries and a snow cone glacier of Maltby's Creme Fraiche. She looked dubious as much as delighted, perhaps for the first time in her young life comprehending the concept of too much of a good thing.

The Cafe celebrates its links, sausage and otherwise, to the past. An array of aging gas station signs from companies that no longer exist are nailed to the outside wall. The menu proclaims and celebrates "Roughneck Potatoes & Eggs, $6.75, country potatoes, bacon, mushrooms, onions, topped with Jarlsberg Swiss cheese, two extra large eggs, served with toast or biscuit."

Lighter fair is available. Single-egg breakfasts with a single slice of bacon and toast or biscuit for $3.65, or simply two poached eggs (extra large, anyway) on Maltby toast, also $3.65. The Maltby toast, incidentally, is a light whole wheat baked daily in house. Whether for toast or sandwiches, it's sliced thick and is locally praised.

Hot Oatmeal ($3.75) is "made the old-fashioned way," one bowl at a time, with raisins, nuts, brown sugar and cream.

The Cafe's Cinnamon Roll ($3.25) is a veritable conversation piece. "I swear they are bigger than last year!" exclaimed one of the departing tennis players.

The rolls are almost embarrassingly large. About the size of a wheelbarrow tire - and maybe a little thicker. Without knowing their dimensions, I ordered one to go, in a Styrofoam container. I figured on having it for an afternoon snack. Or possibly for breakfast the next day.

Four days later, I was still slicing wedges off it.

The Maltby Cafe was founded almost seven years ago, when Tana Baumier (originally a restaurant cook from Butte, Mont.) and three of her soccer-playing teammates dropped into a restaurant originally in the location.

"It was struggling and up for sale. I asked my friends (Sandra Albright, Barb Peter and Molly Merrill): `Hey, do you want to open a restaurant?' "

It took a couple of weeks to negotiate a price, but the women found themselves in business, preparing Montana ranch-size breakfasts and somewhat more reasonably sized lunches. The cafe has never served dinners and has no plans to.

Breakfast starts at 7 a.m. and stops at 11:20 a.m. sharp, except on weekends. Lunch service starts at 11:30 and runs through 3 p.m. It consists of about a dozen imaginative burgers ($5.50 to $7, with a choice of excellent French fries or a large green salad), hot and cold sandwiches and nine entrees, from $5.95 for a Vegetarian Stir Fry to $7.25 for a devastating Chicken Fried Steak, which my diet can accommodate about every six years (it's time!).

The Hawaiian Chicken Burger ($6.95) is typical. A boneless, skinless breast of chicken is dipped in Teriyaki sauce, grilled and served on a large bun with grilled pineapple, a slab of Tillamook Cheddar cheese, sauteed fresh mushrooms, a slice of mild, sweet onion, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise.

The Santa Fe Burger (same price) is augmented with Jack cheese, sauteed green chilies, avocados and a side of house-made salsa.

I found the Maltby Club ($6.75), with sliced ham, turkey, Swiss, bacon and lettuce, a little less satisfying. Mainly because the bacon was cold and slightly tough. Frying or reheating the bacon to order would make a better presentation.

The Cafe does wonderful pies as well as a Bread Pudding ($3.25) made from day-old cinnamon buns, cream and whipped cream. Their berry pies (usually marionberry) alone are worth the drive to Maltby.

(Copyright 1995, John Hinterberger. All rights reserved.)

John Hinterberger's restaurant and food columns appear in The Seattle Times in Sunday's Pacific Magazine and Friday's Tempo. Mike Siegel is a Times photographer.

MALTBY CAFE'S MARIONBERRY PIE ------------------------------------ SERVES 6

1/2 teaspoon salt 2 cups flour 1/4 cup shortening 1/2 cup butter 1/4 cup water with 1 teaspoon vinegar 4 cups marionberries or blackberries

3/4 cup sugar 1 tablespoon tapioca 1 tablespoon flour

1. Mix salt and flour in a medium bowl. Cut in shortening and butter. Slowly add water-vinegar mixture and mix with fork until dough forms a ball.

2. Divide and roll out into two rounds. Line an 8-inch pie pan with half of the dough.

3. Mix 4 cups marionberries (or blackberries) with 3/4 cup sugar. Add tapioca and flour. Gently mix and pour into lower crust.

4. Cover with top crust and cut vents in the top. Bake in a preheated 325-degree oven for 45 minutes.