Tag: breakfast

Breakfast…If You Insist

My disdain for eating copious amounts of carbs, fats, meats, sauces and sugars the first thing in the morning is well documented. (See previous post)

Packing in proteins, breads, and fat when you first wake up (when you’re not even hungry) is the stupidest thing to do in food.

What Americans have done to breakfast (and its unholy cousin/devil spawn: brunch) is unconscionable.

You want to know how disgusting breakfast food and America has become? Just check out this list of abominable breakfast creations from a few years back.

But hating breakfast as a meal doesn’t mean I hate breakfast foods. In fact, I love almost all of them.

I love a well-made omelet, hand-made pastries, and fresh-tooled sauces. Nothing beats a straight from the oven biscuit, a couple of perfectly poached eggs, or ripe, fresh fruit. And who among us doesn’t lust for the yeasty tang of a fresh buttermilk pancake, smothered in good butter and real maple syrup?

The trouble is, you will never find any of these things in any egg-centric restaurant, specializing in breakfast. You know the type: the ones with punny names like  “Hamlet and Eggs,” “Egg’lectic Cafe,” or “Great Eggspectations.”

Egg-centric restaurants use the cheapest ingredients possible and routinely massacre them.

Dollars to doughnuts, if the word “egg” appears in the name of a restaurant, it means the chili is from a can, the pancakes are from a mix, the sauces come from a freezer bag, and the pastries all fell off a truck. And you don’t even want to think about where the eggs came from.

A correlation to this rule applies to any joint advertising “soup, salads and sandwiches” — none of which has anything fresher than the cryovac’d meat they defrosted four days ago, or the rapidly browning lettuce being served one step ahead of the health inspector.

Anyone who eats “soups, salads and sandwiches” ought to have their head examined.

But let us not belabor the atrociousness of cheap breakfast food. Let us instead celebrated the few places where wonderful food is made every morning in Las Vegas by people using top shelf ingredients and cooking them the way your grandma did:

EAT – Downtown’s mainstay is better than ever. Get the hash (pictured above). Get the posole. And by all means get the pancakes.

DELICES GOURMANDS FRENCH BAKERY & CAFE – More of a small bakery, offering a few jaw-dropping pastries, plus quiches and a crêpe or two — every one of which is wonderful. Good coffee too. The only place in town I buy bread anymore.

ROSALLIE LE FRENCH CAFE – Best. Pastries. In. Town. Period. Wonderful quiches, with serious coffee as well. (See tasty snap at top of page)

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BOUCHON – The pastry basket is justifiably famous; eggs Benedict don’t come any finer, and the omelette would make Jacques Pepin proud.

Notice what all of these places have in common? None of them has the word “egg” in their name. And you’ll never find a bunch of sloshed women slugging down cheap mimosas at any of them.

I rest my case.

I Hate Breakfast

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I hate Breakfast.

Breakfast is a waste of time and calories.

I hate even the idea of breakfast.

Breakfast is good for only one thing: thinking about lunch.

Everything about breakfast sucks.

For one: it comes too early in the day. I mean, who wants to eat a lot of food when they’re barely awake? How well do your olfactories function, or your mandibles munch, when you’re barely ambulatory?

Secondly (and this is, by far, the most important thing): Who wants to eat when you’re not even hungry? I’ve never bought, for once second, that whole “break the fast” stuff that my mom tried to shovel down my throat. No one, and I mean NO ONE, is all that hungry when first they awaken. If you’re a fully-functioning, non-hung-over adult who is rising and shining at the break of dawn, there are only three things you want to do: 1) go back to sleep; 2) relieve yourself and then enjoy a warm or slightly cool beverage; or 3) sit on the iron throne and relieve yourself further of whatever you enjoyed the night before.

The only other thing people want to do in the mornings is watch or read the news — which (next to #3 above) is just about the most unappetizing thing on earth.

No matter how you slice it, consuming food in close proximity to any of these things is the last thing on your mind.

But year after year, from the time you’re a wee one until you’re so old you’re having trouble taking a wee wee, some authoritative voice is constantly shoving the idea of breakfast down your throat even though you don’t want it.

The only thing I hate worse than breakfast is brunch.

Brunch is inexcusable on many levels.

For one, brunch is never about the food. Brunch food is, by definition, even worse than breakfast food –nothing but carbs, fat and sugar, and ten times more of it than you might consume on your own during the week. Brunch is someone’s stupid idea of a weekend, daylight happy hour for people too bad at drinking to do it after dark like a real booze-abuser.

Brunch is populated by three things I loathe: drunk women in groups, bad omelets, and cheap champagne.

Women in groups are the worst — any time you see a group of “fun-loving gals” whooping it up with mimosas in their hands, you know you’re at brunch somewhere, eating one of the 400 different ways a chef can throw eggs and bread together and overcharge for it. It is a scientific fact: the more women you see living it up in a restaurant, the worse the food.

The only thing worse than brunch is brunch with music.

Brunch should be illegal.

Next week: If you insist, I’ll have a couple of brunch recommendations for you.

 

PUBLICUS is Open and Baking “For the People”

ELV note: Several of our loyal readers went by PublicUs today for lunch and found the place closed. Apparently a power outage forced a closure of the premises this morning and, as of his writing, the restaurant/bakery has yet to re-open. We at ELV shall keep you informed.

PublicUs means “For the People” in Latin.

PublicUs — the restaurant — means there’s another good place to eat in downtown Las Vegas. Hashtag: #DTLVEats.

PublicUs — the restaurant — is also a bakery. A bakery that’s baking its ass off like downtown Vegas has never seen before.

PublicUs opened its doors for the very first time at 7:00 am this morning. We were customer #3.

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