Brunch - - Page 2

by Emily

Bacon Fit for a King…or Millionaire

I’ve written about the array of glorious brunch options in San Francisco before, so I’ll get straight to the point: I was back in the Bay Area last weekend and of course I enjoyed MORE brunches with MORE bottomless mimosas and MORE benedicts and MORE bacon. Millionaire’s Bacon, to be exact.

You can find this delicacy at a good handful of restaurants in San Fran, but we first encountered it at Blackwood, an “American Thai Fusion” restaurant in the Marina area. In spite of the name, Millionaire’s Bacon will just set you back a couple extra dollars on top of your $10-20 brunch plate, so it’s not a bad deal. Especially considering the fact that this is no ordinary bacon—it’s super thick and meaty, coated in sweet maple syrup and honey, liberally sprinkled with spicy red chile flakes. After this flavor explosion, I’m never eating regular bacon again.

You can make your own, too! You definitely don’t have to live in San Fran (and you don’t have to be a millionaire, obvs) to enjoy this ultra-rich bacon.

Millionaire’s Bacon

by Emily

Flautas for Breakfast?! YES.

I just wanted everyone to know that this is a thing that exists in our world. It’s a dish called, obviously, Breakfast Flautas. Big flour tortillas stuffed with scrambled eggs and cheese, rolled up and deep-fried, served with a massive pile of thick, cool whipped cream and spicy salsa for dippin’. Oh, and a slab of greasy spoon hashbrowns on the side. Ultimate hangover killer. Thanks for saving my life on so many post-party mornings, Linda’s Tavern. You’re a Seattle institution and no trip back to my hometown would be complete without you and your hefty pitchers of mimosas.

(And yeah, I know these aren’t the best quality photos, but they were snapped mid-hangover/re-tox binge in a dark hipster bar, what do you expect?)

in Breakfast / Eggs / Restaurants 0 comments

by Emily

San Francisco: Land of a Thousand Brunches

I recently went to eat some food – uh, I mean, visit some friends – in the Bay Area. Kidding, of course my friends are first priority, but obviously any time you”re visiting San Francisco you would be doing yourself a disservice if you didn”t take advantage of its awesome culinary scene.

One thing SF does really well is brunch. Not only brunch, but boozy brunch (and honestly why are you going out to brunch if you”re not planning on drinking?), particularly mimosas. Search SF Yelp for “bottomless mimoas” and you”ll get over 100 results. Preach! No self-respecting bruncher is gonna stop at just one mimosa, let”s be real.

Just as mimosas are an integral part of brunch, eggs benedict is the brunch dish to beat. It”s indulgent without being completely devoid of nutritious ingredients (eggs! They”re good for you!), and it”s just a liiittle too complicated to want to cook at home on a regular basis, so you feel justified paying $13 for someone else to whip up that hollandaise. When getting brunch in the city that overflows with brunch, where to find the best benedict? Here you go:

in Breakfast / Food Travel / Restaurants 1 comments

by Emily

Croque Madame Breakfast Hot Dogs

So, I have to run something by you guys. Apparently, in Texas, hot dogs are classified as a breakfast food. Usually in the form of pigs in a blanket. Don’t get me wrong, they’re also welcome at tailgates and evening barbecues, but if you want to start the morning with a dog, it’s all good down here. What is this?! Have y’all heard of this? I really thought I was being tricked at first.

I first heard of this phenomenon from my boyfriend, Rob, a born-and-bred Austinite who wanted me to make lil’ smokies for brunch one morning. I thought he was just being a funky meat-loving dude, but turns out he was onto something, because a few weeks later, someone brought a pastry box into work and told everyone to help themselves to breakfast. I assumed it was a box of doughnuts, so imagine my surprise… pigs in a blanket! So the stories were true! Rob explained (after a respectable amount of “I-told-you-so” banter) that Czech kolaches are quite popular in Central Texas. I still had my doubts (and had actually never heard of kolaches before moving here) but the Internet confirmed his story. Kolaches started in eastern Europe as a sweet, fruit-filled pastry, but over here they’re more likely to be stuffed with sausage and/or cheese (Wikipedia calls savory types klobasnek, but they’re all called kolaches here.)

Okay! Now you know how I learned to stop worrying and love the morning hot dog. It didn’t take much effort to accept it– in fact, I wanted to embrace it wholeheartedly and really kick up the breakfast aspect. One of my favorite, most indulgent brunch dishes is also bread stuffed with meat and cheese: the croque madame. Why not combine Czech with French to make the ultimate cheesy, meaty masterpiece? Thus, my monstrous hot dog creation was born. Kolache expert (and fellow croque madame lover) Rob gave it an A+, so I figure I must be onto something.

Croque Madame Breakfast Hot Dog

in Breakfast / Cheese / Eggs / Pig / Recipe 3 comments

by ML

Cocktail O’Clock: The Manmosa

For an unknown reason, I find day drinking more socially acceptable when it’s warm and sunny outside. Given the unseasonably warm weather we’ve been having for the past few months, my spring (and end of winter) have seen their fair share of drunk brunches. Even though mimosas and bellinis are synonymous with single 20s girl brunches (or at least that’s what twitter tells me), my weapon of choice is normally beer or bloody marys.

But on one particularly Saturday, after a morning of volunteering and sweating, my favorite brunch bartender suggested he make me a “manmosa.” His story is this: one day a bunch of big guys came in and ordered mimosas….but he figured he could do better, and make something a little better suited to these men. Apparently the real “manmosa” is supposed to be vodka, beer, and orange juice. Even though I love to drink, that is *not* something I can drink before 1pm without some serious consequences, or my “friends” calling me an alcoholic.

The “manmosa” I was served was better (and not modified for me! This is his recipe):

in Drinks / Endless Cocktails / Recipe 4 comments

by BS

Our Top 10 Favorite Mother’s Day Brunch Recipes

Cooking up Mother’s Day brunch this weekend? Check out Endless Simmer’s best bests:

10. Deep Dish Blueberry Maple French Toast

A can’t miss winner from the ES archives.

9. Nutella-Banana Pastry Pockets

This counts as eating fruit, right?

8. Asparagus and Goat Cheese Omelet

Taking the best of spring’s bounty…and submersing it in dairy.

in Breakfast / Holiday / Lists / Top 10 Lists 1 comments

by BS

Pop-Up Filipino

Everyone in the foodie world is always looking for the newest, coolest cuisine, and these days that usually means the weirdest. Well in terms of far-out food, it’s hard to beat Filipino. If you think Korean tastes are funky, wait ’til you try Filipino. These folks eat every part of their animals, they marinate their pig in soft drinks, and they prefer their eggs, um, shall we say…developed. More on that later.

So predictably, Filipino food is having a bit of a moment, with trendy new restaurants like Brooklyn’s Umi Nom and San Francisco food trucks Adobo Hobo and Senor Sisig. But it’s not a food trend until it has a pop-up restaurant. Enter Maharlika, which started a few months ago as a Saturday and Sunday only pop-up restaurant, serving brunch at Resto Leon in New York. This week it moved to the larger 5 Ninth, still serving only brunch.

The dish above is arroz caldo — a traditional Filipino rice porridge with shredded chicken, ginger, garlic and omasum (the third chamber of a cow’s stomach, if you must know). Hungry yet? Oh we’re just getting started.

in Breakfast / Eggs / Featured / Photos / Pig / Restaurants 2 comments