Harvest, Cambridge

You can have brunch a la carte but only in the (dingy) indoor bar area. You can sit in the nice outdoor patio but you need to order the prix fixe full brunch menu with more food than you really want to eat. No... wait... OK, you can sit in the patio and order only what you want. But first you'll have to explain it a second time to the next snooty waitress who will tell you, once again, that you can't, etc, etc, until eventually you wear them down. Welcome to Sunday brunch at Harvest.



The food is pretty good. The service needs work.

Union Bar and Grill, Boston

Cod cakes. Eggs Benny New England style.

Clio, Boston

I was half expecting hollandaise foam when I sat down for breakfast at Clio, 370 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, Tel +1 (617) 536-7200. A quick flick through the Clio photo gallery reveals that Ken Oringer is quite the foam fan-boy. A trick he picked up from the godfather of foam, Ferran Adria, no doubt. But my farm eggs were foam-free, and smothered instead with a generous amount of Piment d’Espelette hollandaise. Spicy.



As innovations go, it worked quite well. A little touch of the Basque Country and a little extra kick. All perched on a bed of ham and sweet potato hash. Very nice. And at $17, so it should be.

More frugal options include old fashioned Irish oatmeal with "red & gold" raisins and brown sugar (a mere $8), or French toast with berry compote ($11). They also serve waffles, a couple of omelettes, and fancy-sounding crispy galettes of organic grains and banana with French salted butter and Vermont maple syrup. French salted butter? I thought the French preferred their butter sans salt?

For a power-breakfast venue, service was a little slow and clueless. But at least they won't be in your face while you discuss the finer points of the deal.

Glo's, Seattle

Slow food is all hip and trendy these days. Not at Glo's, 1621 E Olive Way, Seattle, WA, Tel +1 206 324 2577. It's just classic diner food that happens to come out slowly. Very slowly. So come early and be prepared to sit around and wait. Because breakfast at Glo's is worth the wait.



Despite being a humble diner, Glo's is most famous for eggs benedict, the show pony of the breakfast world. They serve five different breeds of benny: classic Canadian bacon; smoked salmon; Florentine (with spinach); Californian (with Avocado); and Blackstone (with strip bacon and sauteed spinach). Most importantly, the house made hollandaise is very good, and the hashbrowns are delicious: soft and crispy cakes of shredded spud. Yum.

Harvard Club of New York

So, the burning question: was the Harvard Club's eggs benny better than the Yale Club?

Quaff, Toorak

Toorak, home to Lou Richards, Eddie McGuire and Nathan Buckley (you just can't find a good mansion in Collingwood these days), is also home to a restaurant called Quaff, 436 Toorak Road, Toorak, Tel +61 3 9827 4484. They only do breakfast on weekends, but they do serve a very respectable Eggs Benedict.



Nice toasty muffins. Very good hollandaise. Good ham and good (but not great) eggs. The side of sauteed spinach was also very nice. And if plain old Benedict seems a bit dull, they offer Chili Eggs, which is a bacon Benedict served with chili concassee (whatever that is).

The menu is pretty much all eggs, with a couple of exceptions: toasted fruit bread or pancakes with vanilla bean ice cream and maple syrup. Bad luck if you want something exotic, like muesli.

The venue is dark and plush, a bit like the interior of the 2008 Range Rover Sport LE. So the local toffs can cruise down from Clendon Road in the "tractor" and feel like they never left the 4 car garage.

13/20 "what, no muesli?"

Lumiere, Surry Hills

Even personal trainers have PR consultants in Sydney, as I discovered during breakfast at Lumiere, Shop 13, 425 Bourke Street, Surry Hills, Tel +61 2 9331 6184. Such are the joys of breakfasting alone. You get to hear some of the funniest things.



I was planning to have breakfast at a place called Sage, to which the SMH gave a glowing review, and which has a very snazzy website. Problem was, the joint is closed. Gone. So I went to Lumiere instead.

Not that I'm complaining. My poached eggs with spinach, prosciutto and hollandaise was very good. I still prefer ham or bacon with my eggs, but at least they used good quality prosciutto. And the hollandaise was excellent.

Nice menu, too. Four fancy omelettes: roasted tomato and caramelised onion; ocean trout, creme fraiche and dill; haloumi and wilted spinach; or mushrooms, chorizo, chives and parmesan. House made toasted muesli with nuts, seeds, baked rhubarb and yoghurt. Eggs benny with smoked trout. And ricotta hotcakes with sour cherries, honeycomb and marscapone (an interesting twist on the Bills version).

15/20 "fancy omelettes"



Eggs & Bacon $12.00 BB100 +20%

My Dog Cafe, Port Melbourne

With the benefit of hindsight, today might not have been the ideal day for a visit to My Dog Cafe, Station Pier, Port Melbourne. It was blowing a gale. It was raining cats and dogs. And a scary number of Melbourne's Greek community decided it was a nice day to jump off the pier and go for a swim.



But a bit of rain never hurt anyone. And Honey and Pippin weren't to be denied. Where else can you get a dog-a-cino with carob sprinkles and your own seat at the table? Who else serves doggie muffins and petit fours?

There's no doubt about it: My Dog cafe is very dog-friendly. But how do they treat the humans?

My eggs benedict ($14) was so-so, but perfectly edible: the eggs and hollandaise were very runny, the toast a little stale and the ham ungrilled. Nothing to get excited about. A better choice is the scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and dill marscapone, served on sourdough and a bed of rocket. They also do a good job with plain old eggs and bacon ($11), also on sourdough. And our sides of sauteed spinach and mushrooms were both good (although the mushies were very salty).



If you're not into eggs or dog food, you can have sourdough toast with jam ($5), hazelnut & fruit toast ($6.50), or toasted muesli with yoghurt and honey ($8).

All brought to you by one-time fancy chef Andrew Blake and My Dog (part of the Mars food empire). Surely it's only a matter of time before they open a schmackos bar, for pooches who like to party.

12/20 "one for the dogs"

The Fitz, Fitzroy

The Fitz is on the fritz. At least that's my impression after this morning's visit to The Fitz Cafe, 347 Brunswick St, Fitzroy, Tel +61 3 9417 5794. Despite being a stylish and buzzy venue, there were too many cock-ups with the service and food.



First, some positives. The coffee was good. The bacon was done just right. The spinach was soft and tasty. The hollandaise was fine. And, as mentioned above, the venue is great: plenty of outside tables under a nice big tree; and a slick (if slightly grungy) interior with sheer black curtains, oversized wicker lamp-shades; and a well-worn polished concrete floor.

But things went wrong. Too many things.

I ordered the Fitz Breakfast with one substitution: spinach instead of tomato. Not a complicated order. When it arrived, I was presented with the Veggie Breakfast, with chili jam, no hollandaise, and no tomato.

After a moment of confusion, I explained that this wasn't what I ordered. Rather than ask what I did order, the waitress disappeared to "check". She returned to say that this was indeed my order, of a veggie breakfast with spinach, and no tomato.

I said that I ordered the Fitz Breakfast with spinach, not the Veggie Breakfast. She disappeared again to rectify the situation. It only occurred to me later that the Veggie Breakfast already includes spinach, so it would be impossible and illogical to "add" spinach.

Eventually, my Fritz Breakfast arrived, except that there was some unwanted chili jam, and still no hollandaise. I asked for the hollandaise. My waitress disappeared again to fetch a side of hollandaise. Before leaving, she also asked if I want cracked pepper, to which I said "yes". The hollandaise arrived, but the pepper grinder never made an appearance.

I started to eat. The eggs were underpoached, with raw whites spilling out like frog spawn. The mushrooms were wet and leathery, and tasted like crap. I pushed them to one side. The chili jam tasted like molasses.

The final straw was the bill. I was charged full price for a Veggie Breakfast, plus an extra $2 for the Spinach (which is already part of the Veggie Breakfast, even though that's not what I ordered). So, rather than charge me standard price (treating the substitution of equally-priced extras as price-neutral), they figured out a way to charge me extra, so as to arrive at the highest possible price. This approach to billing is a great way to annoy the customer, and it worked a treat today. I complained, the bill was corrected, and I left. I won't be back.

11/20 "on the fritz"

Don Vincenzo, Fitzroy

If someone wrote a scathing review of Artie Bucco's pasta at Nuovo Vesuvio, would Tony Soprano care? I'm hoping not. I'm also hoping that, despite the name, there are no mob ties to Don Vincenzo, 301 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, Tel +61 3 9419 6204. Otherwise, what I'm about to say might have negative implications for my health and general well-being.



Expressed in simple terms, the Eggs Benedict at Don Vincenzo was crap. The menu said "soft poached eggs" but mine were rock hard. The menu said "shaved ham" but mine was thin-sliced and fried. The menu tempted me with a side of "sauteed spinach" but mine was pretty much raw with a light coating of warm oil. It was all presented in a flashy way, with a muffin-ham-muffin-ham-muffin-ham-egg stack, but that only made it difficult to eat. Not alot better than a Bacon & Egg McMuffin, really.

Other options include four types of omelette, "oven baked" pancakes and Chef's toasted muesli, plus all the usual toast, eggs and extras (including sauteed sweet corn and avocado).

Service was OK, and they were apologetic when I bitched about the crappy food. My compensation was a free coffee, which was funny, since the coffee was about the only thing worth paying for.

9/20 "go to Mario's next door"

Pronto, Melbourne

So light. So airy. Who knew hollandaise could be this fluffy? Two nicely poached eggs smothered in a thick yellow blanket on some equally fluffy toast. They give good Benedict at Pronto, 335 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, Tel +61 3 9629 5453. Good Lavazza coffee too.

European, Melbourne

After a visit to European, 161 Spring Street, Melbourne, Tel +61 3 9654 0811, even the tossers at Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Guide could see they were in trouble. How to reconcile such magnificent food with moronic review rule #3: "A breakfast menu is often the sign of a compromised restaurant". Get rid of the rule, perhaps? No... with all the credibility of Jessica Simpson commenting on a G8 summit, they blurt it out anyway, then cobble together some feeble exception. People like that don't deserve such fine Eggs Benedict. The best I've ever had.



It wasn't quite perfect, but it came close. The poached eggs were flawless... with deep, dark-yellow, soft-centred yolks (free range of course). The hollandaise was excellent. The muffins were fresh and toasty. And the thin-sliced ham had been grilled just right. The only thing missing was the potato, which, as I've explained before, is very much an optional extra when dining down under.

Other highlights of the menu include scrambled eggs, goats cheese and asparagas on sour dough; huevos madrilenos (baked eggs with black pudding and chorizo); Croque Monsieur (with a gruyere bechamel); and corn cakes with chutney, avocado and sour cream. Or, for a bit more fibre, try the toasted or bircher muesli with stewed apples and rasberries.

To round out the breakfast experience, European has excellent staff, serving very good coffee in a welcoming, wood-panelled environment. Just the place for a breakfast meeting if you happen to be up the Paris end of town... even if it is a tad expensive ($15.50 for my eggs).

18/20 "Best Benedict"

Bathers' Pavilion, Balmoral Beach

If Bills is the place for "Sydney Food", then the Bathers' Pavilion, Tel +61 2 9969 5050, is the place for a "Sydney Experience". It's slick, expensive, and on the beach. Balmoral beach, to be precise. You'll struggle to find a better brekky venue.



For me, this was a step back in time. My first childhood memory of a weekend breakfast treat was the "Balmoral Schooner" of eggs, bacon, etc, etc, at this very same spot. These days the signature fry-up has the rather more boring moniker of "Balmoral Breakfast", but it was amazing how familiar the place seemed over 25 years on. Same light and airy buzz. Same outlook to North Head. Same shark nets across the beach (although they looked much bigger when I was a kid).

Today I went with the Eggs Benedict, with an excellent side of hash browns (soft cakes of grated potato, well-grilled on both sides). The poached eggs were good (but slightly underdone), the hollandaise was tart with just a hint of sweetness, and the bacon and muffins just right. All in all, a very satisfying meal.

The coffee was good, the service excellent (and swift), but at over $30 for breakfast and two coffees, this place ain't cheap.

16/20 "best venue"