"...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..."

Since we last visited Fran's for a BenChro, they have diversified their Benny menu. (Benu.) They're serving a Blackstone now which I'll get to as soon as I can; I wasn't feeling the salmon this time, though, so I went with the "Chicken Classic Benedict." It's basically the exact same meal as their standard issue, only with a slice of chicken instead of the peameal.

It was goddamned well done, man.

I can't say that the chicken necessarily changed the overall presentation of flavour in the benny much, but it certainly made some difference. The meal was, you know, chickenier. Plus on the whole it was just a better-prepared benny than the last one I had at Fran's, so I was pretty satisfied. This was up to the Fran's standard as I perceive it. (The Frandard. Boy I'm all about new words today.) Plus I think I cracked the code: there's cheese of some kind involved in this thing, I could tell when I started taking apart the eggs. Maybe they melt a bit of cheddar or parmesan on top of the hollandaise or something. Who knows? It works.

The only problem with the chicken benny that I can see is that it costs a full two dollars more than its antecedent (thereby $10.95). That just seems silly to me. Is chicken that much more valuable than ham? No sir. Not where I'm from.

A muscular three eggs out of four.

The Fran's in question is located at College and Yonge in Toronto and serves as the traditional launching point for my TIFF season. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.