Half Moon Bay Coffee Co.

The cornerstone of HMB's strip lot, on the corner of the breakfast bagel's greatest hits.

HMB Coffee Company is simple by design; walk-in cashier who takes your order as you try to find your seat amongst the various sepia-toned tables and cleared-bottled syrups. It's disorderly, but not to the point where food is lost, regardless of where you sit, the food-carriers always find your seat with a smile on their face.

And I had to give a smile back on this occasion, as my custom-made bagel towered inches over the plate's rim, reminiscent of history's heaviest burgers. How does one review a restaurant based on custom food? I thought of this with regards to places like Subway which encourage people to customize their sandwiches to their heart's delight and a few things stick out in a custom order. One, the quality of ingredients, and two, the food's cooking.

Our first dish was the custom onion bagel complete with scrambled eggs, onions, mushrooms, Italian sausage, pepper jack cheese, and topped off with a chive cream cheese spread. And yes, it's as delicious as it sounds. The perfectly toasted bagel smooshed together with the creamy scrambled eggs and every bite resounded with the crunch of slightly toasted strips of onion. And did I mention the spicy sausage? It's spiced-oil hue cuts through the flavors and mixes perfectly with the melty jack cheese. This is a powerhouse of a bagel but it does have one fault, the mushrooms. Dark and mushy, I thought the mushrooms would help add that earthy flavor and rubbery texture needed to complement an otherwise mushy bagel, but they were unfortunately cold on arrival, suggesting they were likely popped on last minute. A true shame as this was easily one of the better breakfast bagels I've had. 4.3/5

The second dish suffered more profusely from the first's faults. A veggie wrap complete with whole-cut potatoes, spinach, extra cheddar cheese, and pepper/mushroom laden-scrambled eggs, this thing sounded great on paper. Unfortunately, the cheese was hardly melted when it first arrived and as such I had to ask the person bringing my food to reheat it. But once it came back, it looked perfect, piping hot with runny cheese. The cheese helped bring everything in the wrap together, giving the spiced eggs that extra bit of heat they needed to bring out their every flavor. But the one thing the cheese couldn't fix was the potato. Though not bad per se, they were desert-dry and kept taking my attention away from the rest of the wrap's cohesion. Though I didn't mind overlooking the potato disparity for the first half, I really had to force myself to finish the latter half of the wrap. Top notch ingredients put down by a subpar choice. 3.6/5