"...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..."

My ladyfriend took me to Milestone's for brunch yesterday; nominally she hates Milestones, and after sixty or seventy Milestone's business lunches across from my office, I do too, but we were in the mood for ... well, something, whatever the fuck Milestone's is (it involves very large, heavy menus, and dance music), we craved it yestermorn. And so we went.

I feel sorry for whatever genuine benedict revolutionary the Milestone's food designers stole the Grilled Shrimp California Benedict from, but it's a damn good idea. This relatively extreme variant on the traditional benny (also offered on the Milestone's menu) displaces the peameal bacon for a ring of grilled shrimp, a few strips of regular bacon, and a pillow of "avocado salsa" which really just means "restaurant guacamole." It's a goddamn tremendous idea for a meal, and carried off well in this instance; if it weighs somewhat heavily in the "food management" column (i.e. getting all of the relative flavours onto one fork is nearly impossible due to their varying degrees of scoopability), it's still tastes wonderful. And it's actually possibly the prettiest benedict I've ever seen, all baby yellows and pale pinks and rich greens. Photography doesn't do it justice.

At $14ish, though, it's a small meal. The home fries are not the best and there aren't a lot of them, and that garnish is not enough to balance the other side of the plate. For the cost, you feel a bit cheated when you're hungry again 2 hours later. Nonetheless, grilled shrimp is a flavour I'd like to see in my benedicts again. I am awarding three eggs out of four.

The Milestone's in question is attached to the Scotiamount theatre at Richmond and John in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.