"...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..."

We all get slammed. You get slammed, I get slammed, there is a general inevitable slammality of the human experience which I tend to hold against no man. But getting breakfast at Hello Toast yesterday took for fucking ever and yeah, that's going to count in the egg score. Half an hour just to get in, another twenty minutes to get coffee and a half hour after that for food. Sorry, not on my watch. No matter how much I like the eggs or the people, that's gonna count against you. WATCH HOW IT COUNTS! Yeah. Hire some fucking Sunday wait staff, Hello Toast.

There are exactly two things wrong with this eggs benedict. The first is the greens. The greens are terrible and unnecessary. I've seen greens work as a side dish for benny before, but this was not one of those times. Too bitter, and just a bad side-along for the flavours of the benny. (That's the real trick: come up with a side that actually complements the taste of the benny and I'll give you points up the yinyang. Try for it and fail, however, and my wrath shall be terrible and swift.)

Thing 2: overall, the whole deal was a bit too gooey. Not that gooey is essentially bad - sometimes, it works like gangbusters - but it seemed slightly at odds with the presentation here, like the eggs had (as is likely) spent about five minutes too long under the heat lamp while waiting for the other orders to be ready. There was a congealedness about the proceedings that I did not appreciate.

Otherwise, the motherfucker was tip top. Solid showing on the eggs, the peameal and the hollandaise were goddamn terrific, and the hash browns in this place are a fucking revolution of hashbrownly awesomeness. I don't think I've ever seen 'em done quite this way before - kind of reminds me of my mother's Nuclear Risotto - and it really, really works.

Too much wrong to give the meal a pass, but I'll review one of Hello Toast's benny alternatives next time I'm down there, and see if they can't improve their score. Two and a half eggs out of four!

Hello Toast is located at 993 Queen Street East, directly south from 3QF (as the crow flies). The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.