Star Stream's Belgian Waffle Is Instantly Addicting

John Birdsall

Star Stream waffle with turbinado sugar, $3.50.

​Her cookies and olive-cocoa nib wafers are so good it seemed like it'd only be a matter of time before Goody Goodie's Remi Hayashi inhabited a retail space bigger than the Folsom Street window she cracked open in June. Four days ago, Hayashi and Blue Bottle kiosk magnate John Quintos (Cento, Vega, Special Xtra) quietly opened Star Stream, a weekday café across Harrison from Best Buy. Super thin-crust pizzas, sandwiches, Goody Goodie's cookie line. The hoped-for vibe, Hayashi told Jonathan Kauffman earlier this month, was Roman espresso bar.

John Birdsall

​Maybe, though by Roman standards the place is big enough to house a couple of families. There's an open cooking line dominated by a gas-fired deck oven, the dishwashing setup, and Quintos' espresso station and drip bar. Something you won't find in a Roman caffe:
Liège-style waffles ($3.50), browned and fat, glazed with sugar and seeded with clumps of semi-molten turbinado that pack your molars. The one pictured here, swaddled in a paper coffee drip-cone liner, was fantastic, a confluence of crisp and leathery, eggy and chewy. Three-quarters of it disappeared on our walk to the car. By the time we got back to the office it'd cooled, its sugar lumps turned semi-solid. We polished it off anyway.

Star Stream: 1830 Harrison (at 14th St.); open Mon.-Fri. 8 a.m.-4 p.m.