"...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..."

Flo's Diner in Yorkville had an Italian Meat-Lovers Benedict on the specials menu last Saturday. Since I am both Italian and a meat-lover (and no, those things are not mutually exclusive, homophobes!), I thought this right up my alley. It is a nice idea, and lord knows I never tire of Italian sausage (aaaaaaannd we're firing a gay joke per sentence now; this review will go well). So, in spite of what I would call the high end of pricing for an eggs benedict ($11.95), I went for it.

What was missing here was - wait for it - balls. You know what? If you're gonna go to the trouble of pairing delicious, spicy Italian sausage with a traditional eggs benedict, go all the way. Thin-slice the sausage and put it under the egg; revel in the collision of tongue-simmering spice with the fullsome flavour of pork. But no, the Flo's concoction puts two strips of sausage alongside the benny, and is otherwise an utterly standard benedict (albeit with crispy bacon in place of the usual peameal). The result is a moderate underwhelm on the potential of the piece: much more was possible here.

Tell them how it tastes, Steve! OK, let's do it! This benedict was not badly prepared, and in warmer economic climes I would probably be inclined to grant it a healthy three eggs even at the price. The poached egg was right in the batter's box of gooey goodness, and the hollandaise was lovely. But the unimaginativeness of the overall conception, coupled with what can rightfully be called a shameful scarcity of hash browns, makes $12 a joke for this benny, and knocks an egg off this meal's score. Two eggs out of four!

Flo's diner is located at 70 Yorkville Avenue, in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 8:02 AM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

Is it possible for a breakfast to be boring? That's what the Eggs Benedict ("classic") at Eggspectation was: fuckin' dull. I'm getting snoozy just thinking about it.

Admittedly, I could have helped matters by trying any of the 8 variant bennies available on the Eggspectation menu, but I wasn't feeling it. And frankly, if your core benny can't pass muster, what are the other ones really going to offer me?

The only thing the Eggspectation benny contributes to the Beneverse is the use of gruyere cheese on pretty much every offering on the menu. It's interesting, but the flavour is sufficiently subsumed by the rest of the meal that it doesn't even add the looked-for "spike" which would take the dish out of the mundane.

As a general rule, if your restaurant has "egg" in the name I expect better things. Instead, I'm getting bored just writing this. Time to give my single egg out of four, and go.

Eggspectation is located at 220 Yonge Street, in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 10:50 AM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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.

Posted by tederick at 1:26 PM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

Many moons ago - or, apparently, pretty much exactly one year back - I visited Egg Cetera in Guelph, and found so many bennies on their menu that I fairly well had no choice but to go back. Well, then Home Fries moved outta the Goo and it all went to hell, until today: me and HF made a special pilgrimage back to Guelph to, uh, do stuff, and we hit Egg Cetera on the way out of town.

The menu continues to offer a stunning overwhelm of benny variations, making it initially challenging to pick one from among the multitude. I finally settled on the Pancake Benny, and Home Fries went for the Mexican Benny. Mexican Benny adds cheese, adds guac, adds hot peppers. Pancake Benny, meanwhile, loses the English muffin, loses the ham, and adds SOME FUCKING PANCAKES. Holy sweet doodly pop, that's nearly preternatural symmetry with my darkest, most fervent wishes. I mean, some days, I just wake up wanting pancakes. (Some days, some midnights, some middle of the afternoons...) But it is rare that I get within striking distance of a brunching establishment without also wanting a benny. At Egg Cetera, it all came true for me.

I was initially trepidatious about this - as you can see in the photo above, the meal comes with maple syrup, which is probably expected given the situation, but after the McGriddle fiasco of 2003, I wasn't particularly up with the notion of tossing syrup on my pancakey, Hollandaisey eggs and living with the consequences. Fortunately, though, no McGriddlish disasters took place. Pancake, when taken under egg and Hollandaise, tastes like turkey. The best turkey dinner you've ever had, with stuffing, lots of gravy, and cranberry sauce. And then when you've finished up all the egg and sauce that's been afforded you, the maple syrup is there to help you enjoy the pancake remainders. It's like fucking rocket science, in breakfast form.

The wait at Egg Cetera remains appalling (about a half an hour to get a table, followed by another half an hour to get the eggs); by the time the meal arrived, Home Fries and I were both so frickin' famished that we disappeared into the egg zone and, five minutes later, I surveyed my empty plate and remarked, "What just happened?"

Four hugely satisfied eggs out of four.

Egg Cetera is located at 200 Victoria Road South in Guelph, Ontario (a.k.a. "The Goo"). Home Fries is the code-name for my sometime BenChro companion, Rebecca J. Wood. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 7:01 PM in the benedict chroncicles
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SPECIAL! A few weeks ago, Tim asked me to write one of blogTO's Best of Toronto posts - the Eggs Benedict one, of course. Feels a bit like the completion of a life's work, except that obviously I have many, many bennies yet to consume.

The fifteen best benny establishments in the city as voted by the blogTO readership are.... here!

EDIT: The article also appears in the Toronto section of today's National Post, for those who do the "printed news" thing.

Posted by tederick at 11:21 AM in blogTO & the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

Nothing satisfies that post-Thanksgiving jeez-my-belly-grew morning hunger like an eggs benedict, so after taking in some fine puppetry at Queen's Quay with Home Fries, we walked up the street to that Cora's that always has a line of people streaming out the door every weekend (or holiday) day. There are three "Eggs Ben et Dictine" at Cora's, and I went for the real killer: the one that substitutes the ham for brie and mushrooms.

Now that's a good idea. I wish they'd named it. Ladeling hollandaise over brie is a bit like complementing chocolate with more chocolate, but there's no denying it's an effective benny, if rich as hell and somewhat frightening from a health perspective. Cora's attempts to defray this guilt with a truly spectacular outlay of fruit alongside the meal, where shaved kiwi beats at the heart of a boat of diced apple and juicy canteloupe.

Home Fries had the regular benny and I tried a bit, and we both agreed that the ideal course for the meal would have been for us to order our respective breakfasts and then swap an egg apiece so that we both ended up with the same quantity of both versions of the meal. The brie benny is a tad too thick to be truly enjoyable as a complete meal, and the ham benny a tad too thin; if Cora's figures out a way to do both on the same plate, they'll be printing money.

Three and a half eggs outta four.

There are Cora'ses all over the place, but the one I went to is on Blue Jays Way in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 9:27 AM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

They call it the Heart Attack Benny, and it costs $13 (taxes in), and it lives up to its name. It's worth publishing a snap of the menu from Disgraceland here, because it says the story better than I can:

Son'bitch. So first off, we're doubling up on pork: you've got the peameal and some ham. Second, skip bread products altogether and replace the English muffin with slices of fried tomato, which adds a peculiar acidic bite to the initial impression but also makes you feel less like a painted whore when the meal's done.

Oh there's cheese on it - oh boy is there cheese on it. And chipotle hollandaise, which is as trendy these days as vitamin water and going gluten-free combined. And them hash browns don't suck either.

On the whole I'd say the Heart Attack Benny is well-named. It is not perfect - for one thing, it is so skull-fuckingly excessive in its pursuit of gluttonous decadence that it comes off a bit like a car crash in the mouth. The twin porks fight each other like Mickey Rourke in Sin City vs. Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, i.e. not terrifically different in characterization but boy howdy, are they gonna wail on each other until one of them is down. Additionally, the freshness of the tomato might save the soul a bit, but it certainly distracts the mouth in the overall cavalry charge towards creamy, salty death that is the rest of the meal. And to pile insult onto edible injury, all the grease makes the HAB frustrating from a flavour management perspective - just you try to get all of the food elements together onto a single fork. It's like eating a triple decker sandwich made of mayonnaise and gravy.

Still, I am impressed by the bravura and am willing to award points on style, and just for having survived the fucking thing. Three and a half eggs out of four!

Disgraceland is located at 965 Bloor Street West in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 9:24 AM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

What says the gaybourhood, re: benny? Let it never be said that I am a man averse to experimentation, even in the wake of that gorramned horrible filet mignon disaster at Fran's last year, the one that resulted in me awarding stains of virgin's blood instead of eggs out of four to represent my displeasure. No, I'm a fella who, when confronted with a new and bizarre incarnation of the salty old Benedict war-horse, is gonna pony up to the trough and have an equine go at a solid gallop straight to the stables, or whateverthefuck. So I went to the Village Rainbow Café and had the Eggs Iceland.

"Eggs Iceland." Not an unappealing name, if you're into volcanic rock and crystal clear water, and/or Dave Tebby. I am. I'm also fond of those instances where someone inventively changes one of the key components of a benny and rebrands the name. (Eggs Blackstone, they one where they swap out the bacon for smoked salmon, is the gold standard. Boy, I could go for one of those right now.) In this case, Eggs Iceland means that they've Blackstoned the benny - salmon instead of ham - and then promised some caviar on top.

Caviar's another thing I really don't mind. Actually, in the right circumstances, I'll eat my weight in it. But here, as with the filet mignon disaster, I really shoulda known better. Don't ever order caviar in a diner, ok? The "caviar" in question turned out to be that unappealing smear of crimson in the photo above, which unfortunately was painfully reminiscent of the aforementioned virgin's blood, and therefore put me off my meal rather a lot. Once again, the fault was entirely mine: ain't no two-dollar dive in this town gonna give me actually worthwhile fisheggs to put on my breakfast. Fuck no. This is what I get for having faith in stuff.

Anyways, the only other thing worth noting here is that the Village Rainbow Café uses the exact same canned hollandaise on their bennies that the Golden Griddle uses. Which means that either a) this non-hollandaise goo is available in bulk somewhere and I must have some, or b) the Griddle makes a sideline selling their shimmering hollanpaiste out the back door. Either way, I was pleasantly delighted.

I shall tar the Eggs Iceland at the Village Rainbow Café with a frigid one and a half eggs out of four, but at least we're not counting in blood.

The Village Rainbow Café is located at 477 Church Street in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 3:17 PM in blood & the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

That photo turned out sorta crappy, but that's the camera on a smartphone for ya. No matter what certain organizations (ahem) may say, it's pretty piss-poor to put all your gadgets on one device. Anyways, piss-poor was the order of the day with this lacklustre benny at Clinton's, whose only real fun is found in saying "CLIN-TON'S!" in the same commanding basso profundo voice perfected by Harry Shearer on that Simpsons Hallowe'en episode.

The problem with this eggs benedict is its everything. The entire thing pretty much sucks. When the plate showed up Sarafina looked at me and said, "that looks pretty thin." She needn't have vocalized; a silent look would have said more than this meal ever could have. The soupy, barely-off-white Hollandaise, which leaned far too heavily on the lemon, and the laughably undercooked eggs did little to disguise the rough, chitinous peameal beneath. God help any benny this difficult to cut - sure, the cutlery at Clinton's doesn't exactly boast Ginsu level edgecraft, but the food was doing the knives no favours this morning.

The salad that came with was so lackadaisical that I didn't bother with it after a few bites, and the home fries were rather enjoyable if only for their trashiness. The fruit salad was like a sad commentary on our societal need to inject "healthy" alternatives into thoroughly unhealthy lifestyles.

Crappy. Just crappy. One egg out of four!

Clinton's is located at Clinton and Bloor, in the Annex in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 5:48 PM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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.

Posted by tederick at 4:38 PM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

Sometimes I don't find the bennies; they find me. What's a fellow to do on a brisk Vancouver morning besides gather the co-workers and scour the streets of downtown Vancouver for something - anything - that looks like breakfast? In fact, with the time change in my favour, this really should have been a 5 a.m. benny. Instead it was 9:00 (PST). But I digress.

88 Juice was one of the 3 breakfast establishments recommended by the hotel staff at the Sheraton Wall Centre as being "in the area." We walked in circles for about 20 minutes before we actually found it, so I don't even want to contemplate what would have happened if we'd looked for one of the others. The location itself proved a bit underwhelming, and the menu was limited... I went for an alternate benny, because the regular benny was served with "black forest ham" (American-styles!) instead of peameal. In fact, I don't think there was a peameal option anywhere on the table. Maybe they don't do that shit in BC.

Anyways, mine had tomato where the bacon should be, and that's not a bad idea. It made the meal light and tasty, but not terrifically satisfying from a full-belly perspective. Plus, the side bacon and the home fries just basically sucked. The benny had the look of something made very rarely and therefore not entirely up to spec - every single piece a bit too separate and not enough of a "whole meal." The only thing I can't argue with is the price: $6.95 for the whole deal. That's lunacy, that.

Let's give it an egg and a half.

88 Juice & More is located at 785 Davie St in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 10:48 AM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

Illicit bennies are like other illicit activities: the more inappropriate your taking the time out to do it, the better it tastes. Mmm naughty. This was certainly the case with Noon, a sleepy little breakfast place just north of the Annex on Bathurst, which shocks the world by serving bennies all day all the time - and any place you can get a benny to satisfy that insta-craving on a weekday morning is, IMHO, worth its weight in golden hollandaise.

So, on the advice of my ravishingly beautiful brunch-mate, we sought out Noon while the workaday world went about its merry business. The benny costs $12, which is a bit of a stunner - that's high for any such meal as far as I'm concerned, and the value didn't quite hit the quality on this one. But again, it was exactly where I needed it exactly when I needed it. So who's complaining about a couple extra bucks?

Innovation alert: the Noon's eggs benedict is, like the one at the Last Temptation, served on a croissant. Unlike LT, however, Noon gets it right. The croissant is split open and served open-faced, lightly toasted and pleasingly buttery. That's good.

The hollandaise was marginally over-citrused and the eggs were marginally under-cooked. The home fries, too, looked goddamn gorgeous but didn't really come together in terms of flavour. I didn't bother much with the salad because I just wasn't feeling it. So, pretty much, the croissant and the accessibility saves this meal - it's a base-hit as a benedict, but I'm still giving it three stars out of four. Hell, I can taste the croissant just thinking about it right now.

Noon is located at 1088 Bathurst Street West in Toronto, just south of Dupont. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 9:35 AM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

Get ready for a wild and rollicking good time here, Internet, because the Concord Café does not serve an eggs benedict. They serve an eggs florentine, which is so entirely not the point of this series, and is in its way the benny equivalent of your strange cousin who comes to family Christmas and announces he's a vegan. Have you ever wanted to hit a man because of diet? I have.

No, seriously, florentines are fine. They're not usually my bag, but in this case I was advised that the hollandaise that the Concord serves on their florentine is in fact spicy, so I thought to myself, "that's worth looking at." I ponied up to a table with my stunningly attractive brunch-mate, and hit eggs florentine for $7.95, with a cup of coffee that was definitely above-average.

Spicy hollandaise? Genius! In this case the spice was achieved by fortifying it with chipotle, resulting in that kind of hot that starts mild and then slowly grows on the tongue to a zesty mid-scorch. Quite satisfying and very effective. Almost makes up for the complete and utter lack of peameal bacon, anywhere in my meal.

The eggs themselves were goddamned gorgeous on this thing - cooked straight to that "opening a vein with a straight razor" gooeyness, without going over into congealy grossitude, or under into runny oblivion. These were some damned satisfyingly perfect yolks running this way and that on my plate. Add to that the first, I think, ever side salad that I've enjoyed as much as the meal itself, and I'd say that for a non-benny, the Concord's florentine is a pretty damn good benny. Giving it three and a half, out of generosity and a lack of quarter-eggs.

The Concord Café is located at 937 Bloor Street West in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 4:48 PM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

"Do you serve eggs benedict?" - Home Fries
"The best in the city." - An Original's employee who obviously had no idea who he was up against

Me and Home Fries went to Original's for an impromptu benny a few months ago, but I didn't have my camera, so no review. Nonetheless the gap between the waitstaff's promise on that day, and the reality of their serving, became a sort of mini BenChro legend, so I resolved to go back. Home Fries abandoned me this morning (worst sidekick ever) so I went to Original's all by my lonesome, fully intending to rip those bitches a new puppet-hole.

Now here's the irritant: the benny was a lot better this time. In fact I worry about this a lot with BenChro because there can be such variance in quality from month to month on certain bennies (the Sharkey's experience still sticks in my craw) and there was a demonstrable improvement between this Original's benny and the last. It still wasn't great. The hollandaise was mealy and over-citrused, and the side of pineapple and tomato was just goddamned baffling.

Nonetheless, the eggs were well cooked - maybe slightly overdone, but I can live with that. And the peameal was decent, as were the home fries, though the latter weren't among the best I've ever tasted. They let me keep my Starbucks coffee instead of subjecting me to theirs. So it was a pretty satisfying meal, I guess.

On a normal review I'd therefore be compelled to give Original's three eggs out of four, but for sheer hubris I'm still knocking them down to two.

Original's Santa Fe Saloon is located at 1660 Bayview Avenue in Toronto, mere steps from The Big Stretch. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Editor's note: the error that lead to Home Fries' failure to appear at this morning's breakfast was later determined to be mine.

Posted by tederick at 5:37 PM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

Last weekend when I was in the Goo, Bex grabbed me by the collar and took me to Eggcetera, the Goo's local egg haven. Rightly fucking so. This meal was tip top. It was a bit like the benny they serve at The Tulip, but even better.

So anyways, me an' Home Fries hit the Egg Cetera with TJ and made with the benny. It was hard to choose because they had like fifteen fucking bennies on this menu, meaning that if I go to Egg Cetera every time I go to the Goo for the rest of my life, I'll still probably not get to the bottom of the list. Why, oh why, did we only start going to this place when my friends were about to graduate? It is our tragedies that define us.

The benny itself is freaking solid, but what really sells this meal is the home fries - that weird deal where they apparently just chop potatoes into a bunch of random shapes, shove 'em in the deep fryer, and then pull them out and season them. It works every time. If there was one downside to this meal it was that the peameal was enormous and the eggs and hollandaise were struggling to keep up, but this didn't seem to affect the flavour at all, so I en't complaining. Yeah I'd call this one of the best ones I've had so far doing this BenChro dealie. I'll definitely be going back.

Egg Cetera is located at 200 Victoria Road South in Guelph, Ontario. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 1:47 PM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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 went and had this benny with Matthew and Leah a couple of days before the film festival started. Why did I wait seven weeks to review it? Because it was fucking awful. I mean Jesus, even thinking about it right now I'm getting nauseous. Fuck Eggs Princess, Internet, fuck it (her?) hard. God Jesus fuck fuck, I don't even want to be doing this. Let's get through it fast.

NEVER GET ANYTHING AT A DINER THAT CLAIMS TO HAVE FILET MIGNON ON IT. I guess that's the "key learning" here, as we'd say at the office. You know what filet mignon is? Delicate, that's what. You can't keep it in a Fran's freezer for a month and then sling it on a benny in place of the peameal and expect the motherfucker to taste good. It does not. How could it? Christ's bandages I don't know what I was thinking ordering this thing.

Eggs Princess gets rid of the peameal for filet, and throws a few wilted pieces of asparagus on top, and costs a goddamned insane fifteen dollars for its awfulness. Stay away. Do whatever you have to do to never, ever consume this meal. I can't give negative eggs to convey my displeasure, so instead I'm giving this thing four splatters of virgin's blood out of four, i.e. it is the worst fucking meal I have ever had, ever. FUCK.

My perennial Fran's is located at College and Yonge in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 8:44 PM in blood & the benedict chroncicles
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"...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.

Posted by tederick at 2:23 PM in the benedict chroncicles & tiff 2007
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"...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.

Posted by tederick at 7:07 PM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

Last week when Matty Price and I got lost on the way to Philadelphia, we swerved the car to the side of the road when we saw the sign for The Egg and I. Though thoroughly packed on a Sunday morning and mercurially slow of service (over a half an hour after the order before the food arrived), the place was friendly enough and we had a good time.

The benny, however, while offending in absolutely no definable way, also failed to deliver any single element that pushed it past a straight middle-of-the-road effort. Although everything about the benny was as expected (decent peameal, decent hollandaise, decently cooked eggs, decently toasted muffin), and the hash browns were also - to repeat the phrase again - decent, there was nothing particularly great about it, either. In the end a really great side, or a spectacular cup of coffee (this one boasted neither), might have elevated the score but I was slightly disappointed by such an engaging restaurant's failure to really give me something memorable in the benny department. I'm hitting it with 2 and a half eggs out of four.

The Egg and I is located at 1760 Upper James Street, outside Hamilton, Ontario. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 8:47 AM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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 met Daniel after work the other day at the Last Temptation in Kensington, and couldn't help but notice the eggs benedict displayed prominently under "brunch" on the menu. It was about 6:00 on a Tuesday afternoon, though, so I had to pose the trepidatious question: "Do you by some miracle serve brunch all the time?"

They do indeed!

Benedict at the Temptation is a strange, tangled affair. In fact in proper terms I might not even be able to define this as a benny. It's basically a fried egg and ham croissandwich, that comes with hollandaise on the side. When it came out, I was delighted. DIY hollandaise has scored highly in the past, and besides, croissandwich! Sliding a croissant into the traditional home of the english muffin was a bold play indeed, and ultimately became the best thing about the benny. Unfortunately everything else was a bit of a mess.

The hollandaise: thin. The eggs: fried instead of poached. The ham: cold cut. And there was lettuce on the mo-fo. I'm all for experimentation and whatnot but this thing just did not come together in the final analysis. The fries might have upped the overall score but they were pretty weak too. Still, I hold a level of affection for this bold venture into uncharted waters. You can't make a benedict without breaking some eggs.

Benedict at the Last Temptation costs a mere $5.95, so at least the experiment is low-cost.

Two and a half eggs out of four!

The Last Temptation is located at 12 Kensington Avenue in the eponymous used fashion/hippie/beatnik district of Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 8:57 AM in the benedict chroncicles
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I get up around seven
Get outta bed around nine
And I don't worry about nothin', no,
'Cause worryin's a waste of my... time
- Guns N' Roses

I've been wanting to get back to the Brownstone and do a Benedict Chronicle for a while now. We had a few production meetings down there back when we made Project Six in 2001 (long, long ago), and I remembered liking the benny. It was on the "must get back to" list.

The Brownstone staff was a bit... tetchy when I showed up solo at noon on Saturday and asked for a table during the brunch rush. I guess that's to be expected, but hey, if you're only going to serve brunch on the weekends and only for a few hours a day at that, a sociaphobe like me has little option. I bellied up to the table and ordered the "Classic Eggs Benedict" and a cup of coffee and glass of water.

Classic my ass!! If this is how they did it in the old days I'll eat my hat. Actually this entire benny plate was notable only in the number of ways it was different from the regulars. It used ham (but expensive, fancy ham) instead of peameal; it went light on the hollandaise; and it came with home fries covered in rosemary, like the ones you used to have with roast beef when you were a kid. Beefy breakfast? Crazy.

As benedicts go, this one wasn't great. The eggs were perfectly cooked but someone went salt-happy in the hollandaise, and the overall result wasn't as nice as it could have been. There was a lot of salt in the home fries, too, so on the whole the entire meal left you gasping for your glass of water. I'm a fucker what admires a sense of uniqueness, but this plate wasn't worth the $9.95 it cost. If I were feeling more charitable this meal mighta got to a pair of eggs out of four just because I like the place and suspect this wasn't their best effort due to the rush, but on an objective level I can only give this benny an egg and a half.

Brownstone Bistro is located at 603 Yonge Street, at Gloucester. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 6:24 AM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

The Benedict Chronicles returns for the first time in 2007 with a review of the Bloor Street Diner. I was craving benedict last week for the first time since the incident so when the sibs and I found ourselves at the Manulife Centre with a powerful need to eat, Adam suggested the Bloor Diner, saying that it was on the pricey side but very tasty. And to my delight, there was an all-day benedict on the menu. Brilliant.

Pricey is right - the damn thing costs $12. And the coffee came with milk instead of cream - most disgusting. And I specifically asked for home fries and got salad - what the fuck. Yet in spite of all these factors, this was a powerfully satisfying benedict. The eggs were a bit on the smallish side but the hollandaise favoured the butter, resulting in a creamy concoction that was light, fluffy, and goddamned tasty as hell. The peameal was right in my zone even if the eggs were slightly underdone. (I can't complain about th eggs, though, because the degree to which the medium-easy yolks exploded into collusion with the hollandaise was a large part of the meal's success.) Even the salad I didn't order turned out to be a really decent accompaniment to a luncthime eggs benedict, and I'm not much of a salad fan generally so that's really saying something.

On the whole I have little choice but to award the Bloor Diner's benny three and a half eggs out of four.

The Bloor Street Diner is located at 55 Bloor Street West, on the first level of the Manulife Centre. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 9:32 AM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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 father has become a devoté of the Benedict Chronicles over the last couple of months, and wanted to get in on the action. He noticed that the Homeway, a diner at Erskine & Mt. Pleasant (very near where I grew up), recently got one of those genuine, sponsored-on-TV restaurant makeovers, and now looks like the cat's pajamas. So this morning we saddled up to see what they could do with eggs benedict.

Dad ordered a couple of fried eggs over easy with a side of Mennonite ham. Mennonite ham was all over this menu (though not actually on the benedict itself), but when we asked the waiter what Mennonite ham was he just said "It's, you know, ham. From up north." Whatever. I choose to believe that genuine Mennonites were indeed directly involved in this ham and that they are excellent at it. Mennonite ham gets the job done. Not quite as enjoyable as their peaches, but I'd call it the best ham I've had in a very long time.

Meanwhile, I got the eggs benedict. And guess what? Brilliant, perfect, wonderful. I couldn't ask for more from a breakfast than this. On the menu they call it "Sinful Eggs Benedict." Cue the obvious segue: the only truly sinful thing here is just how freaking good these eggs are!

Our meal arrived in about five minutes flat which seemed a bit lean to whip up a batch of hollandaise and poach some eggs (see this entry for the dangers of quickly-prepared meals), but whatever they did in the kitchen to achieve this miracle, it worked like gangbusters. This benedict was velvety. The eggs were on the easy side of medium, the hollandaise was spare but flavourful, and the english muffin and peameal were both cooked but not to the point of crunchiness. The result was a pillowy-soft meal that went down like a good single-malt scotch. It came aligned with some of the best home fries I've ever had - salty, herby, crispy - and a decent cup of coffee.

Initially my sole complaint was that the portion size was about 20% too small. But you know what? This meal turned me around on that thinking, too. This is breakfast, people. Do you really want to come out of a breakfast full to bursting? No. You want to feel like you've eaten something substantial and had a good start for your day, but not bloated or lethargic. Those are my current feelings, so well done.

Eggs benedict at the Homeway costs $10.95, coffee included. A superlative meal in every regard, it earns my second four eggs out of four.

The Homeway is located at 955 Mt. Pleasant Road, at Erskine. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series. No, Matt did not eat two eggs benedicts this weekend like last time. He just wrote two reviews.

Posted by tederick at 11:41 AM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

A lot of years ago, when we'd get done playing poker at Erik's old place on St. Clair, Courtney and Matty Price and I would occasionally figure we were close enough to the airport that taking a midnight station wagon ride out there to go to the Perkins for some food wasn't a particularly big deal. The other day, having had our Mamo plans stuffed back a bunch of hours by commitments and circumstance, Matty Price and I decided to do a midnight show over eggs... and chose Perkins as the venue.

Perkins has a lot of benedict variations on their menu. It would actually be worth going back a few more times to try some of the other ones, like the Double Bacon Benedict. But for this go-round I stuck with the classic, figuring that you can't really explore variations until you've established a baseline. So look for potential future Perkins BenChros to explore the rest of the menu.

The regular benny ain't bad. It's not brilliant, but it gets the job done. I suppose if you're going to go cheap crappy and disgusting you're better off with the strange non-thing that is Golden Griddle's plastic benedict. Perkins sort of falls in the middle ground between too good to be crappy and too crappy to be good. I don't like the home fries much, because they're those weird shredded dealies that I don't understand. I do like the addition of toast, especially given that they butter it for you. And the hollandaise is pretty freakin' good, I must say.

But on the whole this one just doesn't come together well enough to get a recommendation. And the coffee was terrible. So for a $9.50 benedict, I'm going to hit it with two and a half eggs out of four and call it even at that.

This particular Perkins is located at 600 Dixon Road, out by Pearson International Airport. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 11:20 AM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

In our last episode, Captain Picard was being held captive by the Borg, Locke had blown open the Hatch but we hadn't gone down inside yet, and Bex and I had eaten some truly atrocious eggs benedict at a dive called McSorley's on Bayview. We had only ourselves to blame, being as how sheer lethargy had kept us from walking to the Fate Bistro (our first choice). At the end of our McSorley's meal, Bex and I looked at each other and then began weighing the pros and cons of going over to the Fate and having the benny anyway.

Reason, health, and common sense would seem to suggest that this was a horrible idea.

So off we went!

Now, Tederick.com does not advocate the wanton consumption of eggs benedict. This shit is not good for you. Do you have any idea how much butter goes into a hollandaise sauce? I do. I've made it. I'm damn good at making it actually (I will post my benedict recipe in a future BenChro for your perusal). So do you think it's a particularly good idea to eat a meal that consists of no less than four eggs (two poached, two hollandaised) and half a stick of butter, twice in one day? It is not. Kids, play safe. Use condoms, and don't try this shit at home.

Fate's eggs benedict runs you $7.50 and is already a significant improvement over the McSorley's garbage. There's not enough hollandaise, to be sure, but it's served on a well-toasted english muffin, with well-fried peameal bacon, and the poached eggs are to die for. Cooked a smidgen under a medium to allow for some runniness (but not too much runniness... think blood rather than water. Damn why have the last three posts made reference to the consumption of blood? What the funk?), and white and fluffy as can be.

Hollandaise very decent, and side salad was all right if I hadn't just eaten another full meal an hour prior. The real gold star here goes to the coffee - this is the best coffee I've ever been served alongside a benny. It was worth it for the coffee alone.

Fate is a nice place that can't quite escape its office spacey vibe, but it serves a solid benny and I wish I'd just gone there in the first place, rain or no rain. Three eggs out of four!

Fate Bistro is located at 214 Laird Drive in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 4:59 PM in blood & the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

Today Bex and I decided to undo any physiological value of our yoga session and go get some eggs benedict. She enjoys "seeing Tederick.com in action." We were going to go to a place called Fate Bistro that's over on Laird, but it was raining when we left the Yogashoppe, and a place called McSorley's was only a few doors south and offered a benny. So in we went.

It may have been the largest mistake ever.

Look at that picture: does that look right to you? The bennies (she had one too) arrived not five minutes after having been ordered, which is never a good sign. The hollandaise, though plentiful, verged upon brown. Brown how? How do you achieve brown when you mix something yellow with something white? Was there baby blood in this hollandaise? Or was it - as may have been the case - entirely made up of mustard? Mustard in hollandaise??? There was a definite mustardy tinge to the proceedings which made the meal highly suspect, but it was but the first of a series of affronts.

The ham in this benny was ham. Like, cold cut ham. Like, the chef walked up to the A&P a block south of the restaurant and bought a packet of sliced ham and then put it, uncooked, in the eggs benedict, on top of a not-toasted english muffin and under a easy-medium poached egg. It was gross. I'm getting sick just thinking about it. The egg was all right, I guess, but it couldn't save the benny from itself. We have finally arrived at the Worst Benedict Ever.

This benny cost $6.99, which follows through on the "you get what you pay for" maxim. It came with home fries. They were good home fries. Bex said of the home fries, "Yeah, they mean business." But in yet another ignominy, there weren't nearly enough of them. And the coffee in this dive? Terrible beyond human understanding. So there you have it: not a single element of this entire meal succeeded.

McSorley's gets the Benedict Chronicles' first 0 eggs out of 4. Here they aren't:

Bex and I, by this point, were horribly unsatisfied and felt that our decision to not go to the Fate Bistro was a gigantic error in judgement. Nauseous, disspirited, and not even all the way full. Only one thing could solve this horrifying debacle.

Oh no.

Oh yes....

McSorley's Saloon and Grill can be found at 1544 Bayview Avenue in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 4:47 PM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

Oh glorious day off-ness! I woke up around 8:30 figuring I'd do a Benedict chronicle to get the day started, so I googled "Danforth all-day breakfast" and pulled up a blogTO article about a place called Meggie's. It's not on the Danforth, but what really got my attention was the picture: it clearly displays a gravy boat of hollandaise being served separately from the rest of the benedict. Sold: I rode north.

Meggie's is just a bit too far west to be called comfortable walking distance from Yonge & Eglinton, which is going to hurt it. When I arrived, there was nobody there. I mean nobody - not even a serving staff. Turned out the owner was in the back. The place has a nice tea-shoppy sort of feel, probably due to its being reno'ed from something that was decidedly not a restaurant... or maybe it was just because of the liberal use of paisley. Regardless, I took a seat by the window, cracked open The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and ordered a coffee, a water, and the eggs benedict.

Even if it were not for the sheer fetishistic glee of the do-it-yourself aspect of pouring hollandaise from the gravy boat all over your perfectly-poached eggs, this would still have been the best benny I've had in several years. I was giggling while I was eating this thing. The poached eggs were pitch-perfect globs of fluff cooked at a medium, neither too runny nor too hard, and they exploded in your mouth if you bit them just right. The peameal was flavourful and chitinous. And there was just a bit more hollandaise in the gravy boat than I actually needed, which is the way to do it.

And those fries. Holy frick. Those are the best breakfast fries I have ever had, bar none. They were light as air (probably given that they were special-ordered for me, being as that I was the only customer), the portion was flawless to compliment the two benny halves contained within, and they were just so fucking good. The fruit, too, was appreciated: I can't think of a better finish on a plate of eggs benedict than, in turn, two pieces of watermelon, one of pineapple, and two of canteloupe. Very refreshing.

The whole thing runs you $10.25, which is high for this sort of thing, but who the fuck cares: the proof is in the pudding on this one.

I hang on to this idea that the best benny I've ever had was the first time I went to Sharkey's a couple of years ago. The second time I went, not so much. I can't recall if there was a third. I've had it in my head that I need to go back there at some point to really test the mettle, especially when confronted with meals like the one I had today, but there's a lot of emotion and memory locked up in that Bloor West Village establishment, and having roused from an evening of nightmares to go write this review, I don't know if my fortitude is there yet. But it'll happen someday. Until then, we have a new champion:

Meggie's eggs benedict gets my very first four eggs out of four!!

Meggie's All-Day Breakfast is located at 174 Eglinton Ave. W., in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 12:18 PM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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 had a dream on the weekend where all the eggs benedicts I've reviewed over the past few months were being served to me in succession and I was being forced to eat them all. Naturally, I woke up and drove me and Bex to the Tulip to have the greasiest eggs benedict available in the Western hemisphere.

You want grease? This is grease. If grease relieves your hangovers, then the Tulip's benedict is the holy fucking grail. If, on the other hand, grease causes migraines for you, then this dish will actually kill you. It's impossible to get this much grease on a benny without actually soaking it in the fryer for ten or fifteen minutes, which they might very well have done in this case. My benny was so soggy it came apart like fall-off-the-bone ribs. Mmmm grease.

Sometimes, that's exactly what you want. Other times, it reeks of excess. This instance was square in the middle of those two situations. In fact what I ended up enjoying more than the eggs themselves were the greasy greasy has browns. Boy howdy were those all right. Served for $7.95 and armed with a cup of coffee and a glass of water, the Tulip's benedict was a pretty solid start to a Saturday morning in Toronto. Eggs were well cooked and the hollandaise was decent if a bit pale. The goo factor in the english muffin and the peameal was a bit gross, but again, you get what you go in for, and I went in for grease. Three eggs out of four!

The Tulip is located at 1610 Queen St. East, near Coxwell, in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 2:16 PM in dreams & the benedict chroncicles
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"...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..."

As the family lore goes, about an hour after I got popped screaming into the cold green hallways of Women's College - thirty years ago this very day - my father ducked a block or two east on College to get a much-needed bite to eat at Fran's. Shortly after picking up my TIFF programme three weeks ago, I did the same, and out came the benny.

Unfortunately, I've had better bennies, and I've had better bennies at Fran's. The service on this particular occasion was absolutely top-notch and the benny was by no means bad, but it was also on the low end of the scale of what I've seen Fran's deliver, so I was disappointed. The eggs were overcooked - in itself not a bad thing - and the hollandaise was just on the verge of curdling into utter instability. Also, strangely, I didn't feel like I was getting enough food overall - the benny seemed disproportionately small, particularly taken alongside the massive mountain of hash-browns.

The major Fran's invention is that they season the benny with what I have to assume is actually paprika. That's a new one. It works pretty damn well though so I'm not complaining. I had this benny with a steaming cup of surprisingly decent decaf, as it was 5:30 in the evening at the time, and read my programme book and considered myself a well man.

But I must give the food itself a paltry two eggs out of four. Fran's can do better than this.

The Fran's in question is located at College and Yonge in Toronto. This entry is dedicated to my mother and father. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 11:53 AM in the benedict chroncicles
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"...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 think it was Tuesday or Wednesday night, I was nackered, and Matty Price and I were looking for a place to eat before the Midnight movie... and arrived at Yonge Street to find almost no options. It was raining outside. Frankz was closed, Popeye's was closed, so we ended up at the Pickle Barrel and, admittedly against my better judgment, I ordered the benny for the sake of the column. And just look at that thing. That is the saddest eggs benedict I have ever fucking seen.

To be absolutely fair: we snuck into the restaurant 15 minutes before the kitchen closed, so this might not be their best effort.

But this benny is a disgrace! Undercooked eggs and ham and english muffin - wait a minute, that's undercooked everything - and lumpy hollandaise. Oh, and the presentation looks like a three year old did it. The latkes that come with the benny weren't bad, but the whole thing cost $8.95, which is way, way too much for product this poor. And that fruit? Don't even get me started on the fruit.

One egg out of four, and that egg is given grudgingly.

The Pickle Barrel is located just north of Yonge and Dundas in Toronto. On weeknights, the kitchen closes at 11. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 1:14 PM in the benedict chroncicles & tiff 2006
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