>>> VOTING CLOSED FOR MARCH 25 <<<

Sixty-four South Sound breakfast joints were selected and seeded by readers throughout February for the Tournament of Breakfast, which is now 11 days into the competition. Brackets have been wheat pasted on buildings, sleep has been lost, friendships have ended and back fat has emerged. Everyone is discussing Benedict variations and oatmeal thickness. It's been more fun than a bowl of Ordinary K.

Yesterday's Tournament of Breakfast Results

Here were the match-ups:

Alfred's Cafe (Tacoma) vs. Ricky J's Restaurant (Puyallup)

Poodle Dog (Fife) vs. Johnny's Dock (Tacoma) 

Puget Sound Pizza (Tacoma) vs. The Hub (Tacoma)

A Renaissance Cafe (Tacoma) vs. Dirty Oscar's Annex (Tacoma)

Analysts agree, a key factor in determining Tournament of Breakfast success is experience. Restaurants playing in their first tournament game often have that "deer in the headlights" look. Meanwhile, experienced teams seem to be able to hold their composure in any situation. Alfred's Café and Bubble Room made it to the second round in last year's Tournament of Pizza. The Tacoma Dome District restaurant fell to eventual pizza champion Katie Downs. You can't buy that experience. And although Ricky J's has an amazing hangover breakfast, at least according to its loyal fans, experience catapulted Alfred's café to the Scrambled 16 with a whopping 70 percent of the votes.

We can only imagine the heated conversations last night around the bridge card game tables: "Confound it, Johnny's Dock's Dungeness crab and shrimp omelet is leaps and bounds above the Poodle Dog's blasted bennies. The Poodle Dog serves a cream waffle? What in tarnation is a cream waffle?" In a couple months, all will be forgotten and friendships will mend. This retro breakfast match-up was close until the final hour of voting. In the end, the Poodle Dog took the game with 52.8 percent of the votes. It was a fun game to watch.

Another fun game to watch was the battle of neighboring breakfast-serving joints Puget Sound Pizza and The Hub. The Hub grabbed a huge lead after the opening buzzer. In an era when star dishes often spend just a year or two on special menus before heading to the main menu, the Hub's breakfast pizzas are rarities. Both have seen their roles increase each year, as they have grown from doughy ideas fighting for minutes to chiseled dishes that, like yesterday, have seemingly willed The Hub into championship contention. Even with an amazing afternoon run by Puget Sound Pizza, no doubt due to its noon-awaking crowd, The Hub, behind its star breakfast dishes, managed to eek out a win with 53 percent of the votes. Both restaurants can hold heads high today.

A blowout Tournament of Breakfast game is usually over by 4:20 p.m. Dirty Oscar's Annex's beatdown of A Renaissance Café yesterday was over in the opening minutes. After scoring the first 18 votes of the game, DOA ran away with a 110-vote victory over the Museum District cafe. It is the first time in Tournament of Breakfast history a restaurants has beaten an opponent by 100 points or more. This No. 2 seed has analysts running back to think-tanks.

Let's take a look at the stack. The following are advancing to the next round:

• Alfred's Cafe and Bubble Room
  
• Poodle Dog
  
• The Hub
  
• Dirty Oscar's Annex
  

The daily breakfast battles here on Spew are sponsored by Shakabrah Java on Tacoma's Sixth Avenue.

OK, let's check out today's Second Round breakfast battles. Vote for one breakfast joint per battle. Voting for today's breakfast battles ends at 11:45 p.m.

Filed under: Tournament of Breakfast Food & Drink Olympia Tacoma Fife Puyallup