"...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..."

While I was in North Carolina, clearly, I was gonna hit some benny. I woulda done it the first morning we were there except that I hadn't bought a camera yet, which stalled me until the Saturday. We ate at the 501 Diner both days, a little greasy spoon just up the street from our motel. Eggs benedict at the 501 cost about US$6.49 or so, which given the current strength of the Canadian dollar, makes it the cheapest benny I'll probably ever have.

Unfortunately, in this case I sorta got what I paid for. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with this benny, but there was nothing intrinsically right about it, either. What the Americans call "Canadian bacon" is ham. Just fucking call it ham, because it's ham. I know what ham looks like; I'm Canadian. Also, in this case, the eggs were slightly under-cooked, and the accompanying hash-browns were sub-par. At least the coffee was good.

The hollandaise erred on the citrussy side of life, but we've all made that mistake so I'm going to let it slide. At least there was plenty of it, which I always like; I want my benny to be essentially invisible beneath a shroud of saffron goo. But there's no getting around the fact that this benny is lucky to score 2 eggs out of 4. I expected better from the gluttony-driven insanity that is the United States of America.

The 501 Diner can be found at 1500 North Fordham Blvd. in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Good luck getting into the parking lot, it's tricky. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.