"...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..."

I love Fire on the East Side, being that it's a current Friday-night expenso-date fave; and naturally, I also love any establishment whose brunch menu contains an entire section devoted to various eggs benedicts. As such, I've been looking forward to doing a FES BenChro for a good while now. I could wax philosophic about what went on here, but I think it better to start with a reading, from the Fire on the East Side menu. Ahem:

"Southern Benny - Fried green tomatoes / BBQ'd Jack Daniels pulled pork / poached eggs / orange-chipotle hollandaise."

If that doesn't sound like an actual transcendental orgasm in food form, you need to leave this blog now. Fuck, I'm getting hungry just transcribing it.

Now let's be serious about this: yes, they nailed it. How could they not? Have you ever had any meal involving pulled pork (let alone BBQ'd Jack Daniels pulled pork!) that was not among the greatest things you have ever tasted in your whole life? Because I haven't. As such it's sort of irrelevant to attempt to determine whether the FES benny is great because it's a great benny, or great because pulled pork sandwiched between any substance on the earth is still going to taste like god's personal cocaine stash. Throw chipotle into the hollandaise, chives onto the perfectly-poached eggs, and fried green tomatoes under the biscuit that has already taken the place of the english muffin, and you don't even have to stick a fork in me: I was done before I even got to the table. I'll reiterate the earlier metaphor: this thing is sex walking, the benny equivalent of a hot girl in a summer dress who isn't wearing any underpants. I'm loosening my collar right now.

The fries are fucking incredible, by the way.

The Southern Benny at Fire on the East Side costs fourteen bucks. That's high. It's the only downside, and it's substantial. I am of the mind that a) Fire on the East Side charges 15-20% too much for everything, and b) no benny should cost more than twelve dollars. Still, if any breakfast I have ever had was going to somehow rewire my spending faculties, this one was it. Do I even need to say it?

Being that theirs is a large-ish menu of "East Side Bennies," I should probably go back and establish a baseline by way of their house standard, before working my way through the rest of the variants. Looking forward to it.

Fire on the East Side is located at 6 Gloucester Street in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.