Duo visited 20 restaurants to help those hit by pandemic, to spend quality time together
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY – On a warm August morning, 13-year-old Calum Binder sits at a table on the second-floor deck of his family’s bayside home on Fourth Street. A big notebook is in front of him. His grandfather, George Knezek, sits nearby.
They are ready to unveil the findings inside Binder’s notebook, a wholly unscientific but fun study the duo conducted this summer to find the best breakfast in America’s Greatest Family Resort.
The mission was the breakfast comparison, but there were more important aspects at stake, namely spending time together before the young teen moves on to other pursuits and doing their part to help restaurants hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hinting at the true priority, Calum titled the project “My breakfast walks with grandpa.”
During July, Calum and his grandfather, who has owned a home in Ocean City for 20 years, went to all the restaurants in Ocean City’s northend to sample the fare – 20 in all.
This grandfather-grandson duo from Connecticut had a number of ground rules. They only went to places to which they could walk – which limited them from the Gardens to about 16th Street. And they only ate at restaurants that offered sit-down meals – no grab-and-go bagel for them.
“We had criteria,” Calum said. They had to be able to sit down and the menu had to include staples such as meat and French toast.
“We couldn’t just go in to get a bagel or a breakfast sandwich,” his grandfather added. “We eliminated some of the places because of that. We walked around and we hit every restaurant in that criteria.”
The walk was important too.
“We tried to go at least two miles each time,” Calum said. “I kept track in the notebook to see which one had the best food.”
His grandfather noted that when a restaurant was close to the home, they would trek all the way to the boardwalk, go down a block and then trek back to get their minimum two miles in.
“I had a lot of French toast,” Calum said. “I tried to have sausage and orange juice on the side so at least I could have one thing to compare with all the restaurants to compare.”
“I had a lot of French toast this summer,” he emphasized. At George’s (at Seventh and the Boardwalk), they make a really good Mallon’s French toast. We also went to Donny’s (Family Kitchen at Seventh and Wesley Avenue.) They have a really good S’mores pancake.”
“I enjoyed learning about all the different menus,” Calum said. “All these restaurants take one normal food, like French toast, and change it into all these different kinds of food. One place had doughnut French toast. I’ve seen a lot of sticky bun French toast. And then a bunch of breads they use for French toast, such as challah. It’s been very interesting to see the different ways they make it.”
Knezek is more of an eggs, meat and homefries kind of guy.
“Since you can’t get pork roll in Connecticut, believe it or not, I’m a pork roll crazy person,” he said. “Every place I went I had the pork roll. The pork roll and the coffee were my standards. Occasionally I would switch to a waffle or French toast. The pork roll and coffee were the two things I tried to compare at every place.”
How the restaurants prepared the pork roll and coffee were the deciding factors for him.
He and Calum agreed their favorites were Donny’s and George’s.
They discovered the quality of food was good across the spectrum of restaurants they visited and didn’t vary much based on price. They also rated the service, which they agreed was good.
Knezek said they made sure to go to breakfast early so the service wouldn’t be affected by the crowds, although there were occasions when service was slow even though there were few patrons. They understood staffing shortages could be behind the slow service, but that didn’t seem to be the case during the times they were sitting around waiting and servers were just standing around not serving.
“Other than that, service was generally very good and very friendly,” he said. “Places seemed very appreciative of people coming in because they were hurt last year by COVID and with shortage of help (customers) are a little irritable at times when they have to wait, but that’s fine.”
“One place we got there before it opened and the owner came out and said, ‘If you give me two minutes we’ll be open and you can come in and have breakfast.’ It wasn’t like, ‘Go away, we’re not open.’ They appreciated that you came and would wait a few minutes to have breakfast there,” Knezek said. That happened in a few places, he noted.
The spark for this adventure was from a generation earlier.
“When my mom was young, every Saturday she and her dad (his grandfather) would go for walks to a restaurant,” Calum said. “We decided since I had nothing to do this summer – all my camps were later in the day and I needed something to occupy my mornings – we decided to talk to breakfast every day.
“We also did it in hopes of supporting local businesses after they were hit hard by the coronavirus,” he added.
Calum also liked spending the time with his grandfather. “We’ve had enjoyable walks every day,” he said. On the way to the restaurants they would have fun conversations about the scenery and other topics, some of them silly or weird, but on the way back they would always talk about what they ate and what they thought about it.
“It kind of brings back when I did it with my daughter,” Knezek said about Calum’s mother, Meredith. “It’s fun just being able to spend time with him. My other grandson is 17 so he’s in Connecticut working so that ship has kind of sailed with him. I don’t know if this will be the last year, but it’s hard to figure out what they’ll do next year and what he will do next year. It gives me good time to spend some quality alone time with him and talk.”
While Calum’s grandparents, George and wife Bobbi, are staying longer at their Ocean City residence before returning to Oxford, Conn., Calum headed back to Connecticut, where he’ll be in eighth grade at Bethel Middle School.
For what he expects to be his first assignment of the school year, Calum is prepared.
“Every year at school they ask us what we did last summer so I know what I’m going to write,” he said.