Aside from April Fool’s Day, it’s during April that we celebrate National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day, National Shrimp Scampi Day, National French Toast Day, National Blueberry Pie Day, National Prime Rib Day and – perhaps most iconically – National Eggs Benedict Day, which happens April 16.
That’s because April is also the beginning of the Sunday brunch season, which seems to reach its height on Mother’s Day in May. And is there any dish more closely connected with Mother’s Day than eggs Benedict?
It’s not a dish I grew up with. For those of us raised in a blue collar, working class neighborhood, even the term “eggs Benedict” was little known. My first impression of it was as a dish eaten by moms who wore white gloves in public, and had veils on their hats. (Indeed, women who wore hats from milliners – a word that’s as forgotten as those veils on the hats they created!)
For Mother’s Day, I’d take my mom out for pancakes and waffles – down-home chow a world apart from what was nibbled at fancy destinations of the day, with names like Schrafft’s and Patricia Murphy’s Candlelight Restaurants. (Seriously! “Candlelight” was part of the name!)
I can’t remember the first time I had eggs Benedict. But I do recall being struck by how messy such a fancy dish could be; when those poached eggs broke open, they spread all over the plate like a living thing. And of course, as ever, like many iconic dishes, the roots of eggs Benedict are foggy at best.
A Wall Street stock broker named Lemuel Benedict claims to have invented it in 1894 at the original Waldorf Astoria location in New York – at Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street, where the Empire State Building now stands – as a hangover cure. But it’s also been credited to Commodore E.C. Benedict. And to a regular, named LeGrand Benedict, at Delmonico’s in New York.
There sure are a lot of people named Benedict out there who apparently like their eggs atop muffins with smoked meat and hollandaise sauce.
And, of course, as ever, the original has evolved over the years in ways both tasty … and bizarre. Eggs Benedict is served over avocado toast. The Canadian bacon is substituted with salmon, both smoked and not. In the case of Eggs Balmoral, haggis replaces the bacon. Eggs Blanchard replaces the hollandaise with bechamel. In Eggs Chesapeake, crab cakes are substituted for bacon. Eggs Cochon are popular in New Orleans, where the meat is smoked pork “debris,” and the English muffin is a buttermilk biscuit.
Eggs Florentine adds spinach. In Eggs Hebridean, you’ll find black pudding. Eggs Omar might just as well be called Steak Benedict. Eggs Trivette is made with Creole mustard and crayfish. Eggs Woodhouse? Artichoke hearts, black truffles and beluga caviar. Eggs Zenedict uses toasted scones and vegan peameal bacon. Huevos Benedictos calls for chorizo and salsa. Irish Benedict is made with corned beef. And New Jersey Benedict unthinkably replaces the bacon with a Taylor Pork Roll. I’ll bet someone out there is making Eggs Spamedict. Why not?
Here in Southern California, we can find eggs Benedict old style … and new style. I haven’t come upon one mixed with sushi – probably because I haven’t been looking hard enough. In any case, here are some of my favorites…
Blu Jam Café
15045 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, 818-906-1955; 23311 Mulholland Drive, Woodland Hills, 818-222-1044; www.blujamcafe.com
When you eat breakfast and lunch at Blu Jam Café, it’s hard not to wonder what dinner would be like. Of course, all you can do is wonder because Blu Jam only serves breakfast and lunch.
But each of those meals is packed with dishes so substantial – and so crazy delicious – that dinner may well be a non-necessity. Or at least nothing more than a couple of sushi rolls, to tide you over. Beyond that, you’ll probably be digesting for hours.
Just consider the Argentinean Brunch Steak. For those of us who think of brunch as a fine time to kill a couple of bagels, some cream cheese and lox, this is a crazy big meal. It’s a grilled beef tenderloin, of considerable heft, with grilled spuds and grilled veggies, topped with an egg done sunny-side up (which is to say, perfect), with a house-made chimichurri sauce flavorful enough to drink as a beverage. Chimichurri with vodka? Why not?
Perhaps even more substantial is Kamil’s Breakfast, which allows you to begin your day with a platter of pan-roasted macaroni and cheddar, with scrambled eggs, bacon, ham and garlic. Put another way, it’s a breakfast (or lunch) of mac and cheese with scrambled eggs and pig meat. I need to take a Lipitor just thinking about it. And I have no doubt I’d finish every bite.
I certainly did when confronted with the Morning Hash, which instead of traditional corned beef is made of Black Forest ham, onions, spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, grilled potatoes and mozzarella to hold it all together. With scrambled eggs. Crazy – and crazy good.
Ordering can also take a while – because there’s so much to choose from, and so much of it sounds good and, far as I can tell, is good.
If you’re livin’ large, there’s the Brunch Carbonara, where pasta is replaced with Arborio rice, with bacon, peas, parsley and parmesan, topped with a pair of poached eggs and a green herb sauce. Along with the Black Forest ham-based Morning Hash, there’s a beef tenderloin-based Steak Hash, with a proper hollandaise sauce.
There are a trio of Benedicts – you’ve made hollandaise, you may as well use it the Classic Benedict, the Florentine Benedict (with spinach) and the Norwegian Benedict (with smoked salmon). And I do like the Tex-Mex classic called migas, which is kind of a kitchen sink of a dish – eggs scrambled with jalapeños, chipotle, chorizo, peppers, tortilla chips, mozzarella and salsa.
Leo & Lily
22420 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills; 818-222-6622, www.leonlily.com
Though the address for the wildly popular Leo & Lily in Woodland Hills is on Ventura Boulevard, the restaurant itself isn’t actually on Ventura. Instead, it’s on a narrow residential street just south of Ventura called Del Valle, which can cause a momentary bit of disorientation for those new to the eatery.
On a warm spring day, the place to sit at Leo & Lily is the outdoor patio, where the view is mostly of your fellow diners, who can be fairly colorful – especially late morning on a Saturday, as troops of teenage girls inhale calories before heading out for a serious day of shopping. (I am not stereotyping; the eight teens recently at an adjacent table were virtually hyperventilating over their impending trip to the Village at Topanga!)
But wherever you sit, Leo & Lily is the very essence of San Fernando Valley casual dining – a defining setting with big portions of tasty food served at reasonable prices by an affable staff.
The menu is just as affable, with culinary twists and turns that can’t always be easily parsed. There’s a breakfast sandwich called a “B.L.T.A.E. on a C” – which translates as bacon, lettuce, tomato, avocado, fried egg on a croissant with garlic mayo. And, yes, I know a few of the letters are missing. The bacon, as it is across the menu, is turkey bacon, which I regard as a distant relative of both turkey and bacon. The fried egg is overcooked. But otherwise, this is a pretty good sandwich, available with a Caesar salad on the side, which makes it that much better; I like a salad for breakfast, and a breakfast sandwich for lunch.
The menu lists a number of eggs Benedict dishes – one made with duck prosciutto, another with portobello mushroom, a third with smoked salmon. There’s one described as a “traditional,” though the presence of turkey bacon and braised leeks makes it something other.
There’s enough dairy and meat dishes on the menu to dissuade any thoughts that the cooking here is kosher. But the absence of pork products does move it into the realm of “kosher-style.” As does the much-loved Israeli breakfast dish called shakshuka – essentially a casserole of tomato, pepper and onion topped with poached eggs.
There’s also the stuffed Middle Eastern pastry called borekas, filled in this case with feta, asiago and goat cheeses. And you can trick up your salads with chicken or salmon flavored with za’atar. Though I describe the place as “American,” Middle Eastern or Mediterranean would do just as well.
More Than Waffles
Plaza de Oro Shopping Center, 17200 Ventura Blvd., Encino; 818-789-5937, www.facebook.com/morethanwaffles
Gazing at the non-breakfast dishes at More Than Waffles – the “More Than” of the name – is a bit like the section on the menu at Lawry’s The Prime Rib that’s not prime rib. It’s there because, well, somebody shows up at this quintessential breakfast hot spot wanting something other than breakfast.
But in the numerous times I’ve eaten at More Than over the years, I got to tell you that I’ve never seen tables filled with anything but waffles, crêpes, French toast, pancakes, omelets, scrambles – and Benedicts (nine of them).
The Benedicts include a corned beef hash Benedict, a lox Benedict, a Santa Fe Benedict with turkey and Ortega chiles … and two Benedicts served atop waffles. Classic Sunday morning breakfast food, this is not. It’s not a restaurant you go to if you’re planning to fit into a bathing suit anytime soon. But then, life is short, bathing suits are overrated – and these Benedicts are really good.
This is last meal food. This is the sort of chow that makes you thankful for Sunday afternoon football and the couch. God had these waffles in mind when he created the NFL. And big screen TVs. More
Though there is an indoors dining area, there’s a lot of outdoors, stretching into numerous corners of the back area of the grandly named Plaza de Oro shopping center. Indeed, when you pull into the center for the first time, you may wonder if you have the right address; More Than isn’t visible from the front. But meander to the back, go down the stairs and you’ll find yourself in Waffleland and waiting for a table, for the popularity of the place is … impressive, and a bit overwhelming.
With more than two dozen waffles to choose from, you can pretty much stay Belgian – which really has roots in Belgium, where the waffles (lighter and larger than their American cousins, with larger “pockets” for toppings) were first shown off at the 1958 Expo in Brussels, and then in the Belgian Village at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. (In Belgium itself, they’re served as Brussels waffles and Liege waffles, among others.)
The menu at More Than further tells us that they’re “served warm … their exceedingly light and airy texture causes a loss of heat, but not a loss of flavor or crispness.” Though with so many toppings, you may not notice that at all. These waffles are basically a delivery system for a whole mess o’ flavor.
I’m actually a bit disappointed that there isn’t a sandwich atop a waffle – a BLT on a Belgian. I guess you can always get one à la carte – and make your own.
Nat’s Early Bite Coffee Shop
14115 Burbank Blvd., Sherman Oaks, 818-781-3040; and Nat’s on Ventura, 22737 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills, 818-222-2350; www.natsearlybite.com
In case you don’t know the Kleenex-worthy story of original owner Nat Elias selling his restaurant to a former busboy (and then waiter, and head cook) named Victor Carlos, it’s a great American success story – pure Horatio Alger, and nice to think about as you wait for a table at the original Nat’s, where there’s pretty much always a wait.
Nat’s Early Bite isn’t so much a restaurant, as it is a way of life. Those of us who have been around for a while can’t remember a time when there wasn’t a Nat’s on Burbank Boulevard. Like Art’s Deli, it seems as if it was there before the Valley was the Valley.
And every time I’m there, waiting for that elusive table, I do have to wonder why the original Nat’s doesn’t have a counter. This is so very much a counter type of eatery. But … there isn’t one. And so, we wait. Eventually, a table will become available; the turnover here is brisk.
Though Nat’s is open for both breakfast and lunch, and the lunch section of the menu is actually twice the size of the breakfast section, I mostly think of Nat’s as a breakfast joint. This is, after all, Nat’s “Early Bite,” not Nat’s “Lunch Spot.”
Those early bites are a pleasure, awash with the sort of classic dishes that make the presence of several eggs Benedict variations (on a separate breakfast insert), come as a bit of shock. Though the Benedicts are done Nat’s style, there’s a corned beef hash Benedict, a turkey sausage Benedict and a California Benedict with avocado. The original Canadian bacon Benedict is found on the regular menu. I guess the newbies are separated so as not to mess with the regular menu’s relentless classicism.
The newbies run to a mix-and-match chilaquiles option, where you choose a salsa, and a meat, to go with the fried corn tortillas scrambled with eggs and onions. I think of chilaquiles as the Mexican equivalent of Jewish Matzo brei – which also is on the menu, made with matzo instead of tortillas, and available for a little extra with salami and onions. It’s as much a dish from the old country as the chilaquiles.
Along with the mix-and-match chilaquiles, you also can design your own omelet, out of 36 different ingredients. Chorizo and feta cheese? Why not!
And, like I said, there’s plenty of lunch to be found here – dishes as old school as anything served for breakfast. That includes a choice of five different club sandwiches – Nat’s Favorite is tuna salad, sliced eggs, bacon and tomato with mayo on toast. It’s fantastic!
Sandwiches dominate – French dip, Philly cheesesteak, a bacon and egg sandwich, a trio of Reubens, a tuna melt supreme. There’s comfort just being in Nat’s. And there’s comfort in so many of the dishes – an easy journey back to the way things used to be. I can understand being addicted to Nat’s. It satisfies the stomach, and it satisfies the soul. Or at least, it does once you land a seat.
Jinky’s Cafe
29001 Canwood St., Agoura Hills, 818-575-4216; 22818 Vanowen St., West Hills, 818-912-6895; 4000 Colfax Ave., Studio City, 818-308-8418; 14120 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, 818-981-2250; www.jinkys.com
With locations all across the Valley, Jinky’s Cafe is definitely doing its part to make sure we eat our breakfast. Indeed, even though Jinky’s is a fine place to go for lunch, and dinner as well, what the menu says on its cover is, “Better than breakfast in bed.” They’re right about that, though breakfast in bed doesn’t usually involve putting your name on a list and waiting for a table. But at Jinky’s, especially during high-volume times, a wait is inevitable.
As we’ve come to understand, the residents of the San Fernando and Conejo valleys like their breakfasts. It verges on a culinary obsession – and Jinky’s knows well how to scratch that itch.
The breakfast menu verges on the edge of encyclopedic. Indeed, it’s pretty darned extensive for every menu segment – lots of salads, a multitude of sandwiches, and more “gourmet” chili preparations than most of us go through in a lifetime.
Five chili flavors are served daily, drawn from a menu list of 20. Some have beans (marked by an asterisk). All have a parenthetical number warning of the spice level, ranging from (1) to (10). Served with garlic bread, they actually make a pretty good breakfast. But that’s me.
More normal folks head for more normal dishes. One of the joys of Jinky’s is that you can have breakfast for lunch and dinner, and lunch and dinner for breakfast.
Pancakes – both regular and gluten-free – come with so many sweet and creamy toppings, you could add a candle and sing the Happy Birthday song. There are a dozen omelets, both small and large; and nearly that many scrambles, both small and large.
Virtually everything on the menu is available as small or large. Jinky’s very well understands its diners; small allows us all to pretend we’re eating light. Or at least, lighter.
There’s another section of a dozen breakfast specials, and a pair of very well turned Benedicts – a classic and a lox model, which seems to be a standard in the Valley. (Oddly, there used to be half a dozen Benedicts. I guess the Jinky’s crowd likes their Bennies down-home and down to earth.)
There’s also a section of mac and cheeses, which comes right after the healthy bowls.
I know the phrase “something for everyone” is more than a cliché. But at Jinky’s, they really do offer enough to keep an army of tastes satisfied. It just takes that army a long time to make up its mind from a legion of choices.
Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email mreats@aol.com.
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