Out of Balance
Location: The Runcible Spoon
My best friend play his junior recital tomorrow. His mom flew in for it so we went out for a local dinner at The Runcible Spoon. Whoever opened this place also thinks its fun to combine gastronomic puns with literary references.
Start with fresh brewed coffee, an extensive loose-leaf tea selection, or a beer. Select from breakfast, lunch or dinner. The menu includes everything from pancakes to a salmon fillet served with friend mashed potatoes, black beans, and vegetables. Finish, with a fat belly and a somewhat fat wallet. The prices here are quite completive considering the freshness and realness of the food.
I got a serving of cardiac arrest with a side of “is that really my resting pulse rate?”
Dish: Lox Benedict
Who invented Eggs Benedict? Whoever it was, they were smart. Poached eggs, oh yeah. Ham and an English muffin, good choice. Hollandaise sauce, shit just got real. So whoever upgraded this humble brunch dish to its new “sacred-level” had divine powers. Consider the following.
Classical Form Eggs Benedict:
Poached eggs, ham (or bacon), english muffin, and hollandaise sauce.
The Runcible Spoon’s Lox Benedict:
Fried eggs, lox, cheese, a grilled croissant, and hollandaise.
It defies reason. It laughs in the face of logic. Foodies and celebrity chefs are always saying things like “balance the dish with an acidic accent” or “temper out the heat with a little sweetness”. The elements of this dish are all about the reverse. It throws balance out the window along with the phone number of your cardiologist.
Poached eggs are rich to begin with. The luxuriousness golden liquid of a yolk floating out of a pure white is sexy and sophisticated. But frying them? Is that necessary chef? Add lox (upgraded from the limp ham you usually get) and cheese and the richness level goes up another twenty points. But where this dish goes overboard is the lightly grilled croissant*. For those of you who don’t know, a croissant is basically butter. Thats how it puffs. And, on top of all of this, hollandaise. So the dish basically is eggs, butter, cheese, and lox.
Me, I’m all about balance. But in this case, indulgence is a winning strategy.
*When the Holy Roman Empire beat the Turks in 1683, they created the croissant to mock their opponents, I mean, celebrate the victory. And so, the Ottoman empire’s, the crescent moon, was turned into a flakey pastry, marking a grand culinary victory.
