Saturday morning breakfast at Hi Desert Roundup, 2010...

We walked over to Ruff Rock Run Café for breakfast on Saturday, May 29th, 2010, shortly after the sun came up, and shortly after the restaurant opened for breakfast. Despite the fact that we'd enjoyed a feast of t-bone steak dinner the night before, we were starving - there's something about camping in Stoddard Valley that makes you hungry, or maybe it was the anticipation of running the Blue Moon trail.

Photo: Chef Andy's Ruff Rock Run Café, on this crystal-clear Saturday morning, at Hi-Desert Roundup, 2010.

If you love breakfast, Chef Andy's Ruff Rock Run Café is the place to be at Hi-Desert Roundup, as the restaurant has an extensive breakfast menu, including eggs to order, hashbrown and home style potatoes, breakfast burritos, pancakes, waffles, sausage, ham, and new for this year, country sausage biscuits and gravy. Imagine this: You're camped in the beautiful Mojave Desert, about forty-five minutes from town, and the nearest restaurant, you're hungry, but you don't have to cook or do dishes! We love Hi-Desert Roundup for many reasons, but one of the more compelling reasons to attend Hi-Desert Roundup is Chef Andy's restaurant, as he not only serves a delicious breakfast at a fair price, but you can leave your cooking and cleanup duties at home, and enjoy what you came to enjoy: Four wheeling!

Photo: Robert and a couple of other guys wait for their food to be served, inside the spacious tent. Food is served cafeteria style.

Matthew was in the mood for a ham and cheese breakfast burrito, so I got to watch as Chef Andy deftly placed a 12-inch flour tortilla on the griddle, and broke a couple of eggs beside it to cook. He scrambled the eggs, and when they were semi-ready, he placed diced ham and shredded cheese on the eggs, and mixed them all together, so the flavors could blend. He then flipped over the flour tortilla, and when the egg/cheese/ham mixture was done, he scooped it up with a large spatula and placed it on the tortilla, and then in just a few stokes, folded up the tortilla and, voilà! Matthew's breakfast burrito was ready, and placed on his plate.

Photo: Chef Andy shows the camera how to cook a perfect omelet in the Mojave desert.

Photo: Matthew eyes his breakfast burrito that Andy is cooking on the griddle.

I chose a more conventional approach for breakfast, as I ordered my usual favorite: Two fried eggs over easy, hashbrowns and sausage. After paying for my breakfast and receiving my plate, I moved over to my right, received my hash browns, my two sausage patties, and then I had the pleasure of watching Chef Andy cook my eggs. The mark of a good breakfast cook is to cook eggs over easy without breaking the egg yolk, or cooking the yolk so it's hard, and Chef Andy passed the test, as my eggs were cooked perfectly. Chef Andy knows what he's doing, but he's been providing quality breakfasts for many years at Hi-Desert Roundup and Panamint Valley Days, and he learned his trade well, while serving in the U.S. Navy.

After my breakfast plate was full, I made my way over to the condiment bar for a bit of hot sauce to garnish my eggs and hashbrowns, as after a full Friday night of drinking, hot sauce seemed like the thing to do to get my morning started.

Photo: My breakfast of two perfectly cooked eggs over easy, two sausage patties, and home style potatoes. I added a bit of picante sauce, for a bit of morning zest.

As Matthew and I dug into our breakfasts, he commented to me how delicious his breakfast burrito was, and I made up my mind to order one for my Sunday morning breakfast. My eggs were cooked perfectly; ditto for my hashbrowns and sausage patties.

There is no better way to start out a morning than to enjoy a delicious breakfast from Chef Andy's Ruff Rock Run Café!