The Benedict Chronicles: BOOM's Oh Canada Benny
October 13, 2011
"...as plate after plate of fluffy poached eggs, cartilaginous peameal, and lakes of sunshiney goo continued to pile up over time, I realized that if I don't start catalogueing these excursions in some formal manner, a great field of human knowledge would be lost. Hence, the Benedict Chronicles..."
Like a pleisiosaur staring witlessly at the faraway and incomprehensible sun, the Benedicts of the world are challenged with a single imperative - evolve. Ten years ago, Eggs Benedict was a stable, but largely untapped, part of the also-stable-but-largely-untapped overall brunch experience. Now that brunch has exploded every which way but loose in popularity, especially here in Toronto, menus are expanding as well. Where once there might have been an "Eggs Benedict," now there is an "Eggs Benedict section," and where once I might have had to review a restaurant once, now I can safely review many of them several times.
Which is a long way of saying that me, Stretch, and Ki-Adi went to the BOOM near Yonge and Eglinton - the very spot where, once, I awarded my first four eggs out of four to a previous tenant sadly no longer with us, Meggie's - and I had another one of BOOM's Bennies. This was my first time at this BOOM, though I had previously visited the one down on College. In that case, I went for one of the Benny variants; in this one, I fired a pitch straight down the middle of the plate. They call it Oh Canada, but what they mean is: the Benny you're used to.
This Benny is carved atop a mighty hunk of peameal, and I found the peameal good, and - frankly - a warm reminder that regardless of whatever dilly-dallying I might do on the pathways of Benny variations, peameal is still the best way to go. BOOM's home fries remain a collossal winner, and they poached their eggs well. I wasn't blown sideways by the hollandaise, finding it somewhat plain, and I was blown even less sideways by the garnish, which - according to Old Toronto Law - must be edible. A word to the multifarious diners attempting to sneak around this convention: wilted, crappy-ass fruit struts on the dangerous borderline of "edible."
In any event, it was a satisfying meal, though it left little lingering impression beyond "yeah, they got that job done." I'm giving it three eggs.
The BOOM in question is located at 174 Eglinton Avenue in Toronto, though there are two other locations for the franchise in the city. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.