Some people wake up for brunch. Brunch lovers, wafting through restaurant doors for a beautifully arrayed spread of poached eggs, afternoon greens, brioche, grapefruit, gourmet bacon and the hair of the dog, cross a gradient of dining that I cannot. I get into debates when I try to preserve the line between American breakfast and American brunch, as if I were drawing it in sand. I’m not; yet, with every new brunch menu that hits the table, the empirical distance between the two semantic cousins becomes more and more palpable in ways that make me think that I hate brunch.

This turn has been a long time coming. As a newcomer to the world of comestible obsessions in Berkeley, I discovered the joy of breakfast at Ann’s Kitchen, an understated, high turnover corner joint with sticky tables, plenty of Bruce Louisiana hot sauce and an owner who could memorize the name and face of a customer after two visits. Ann’s breakfast plate, consisting of two eggs any style, two slices of toast with apple butter, and a molehill of the most impeccably crisped home fries in three dimensions, hit the counter five minutes after order for $3.45. It was food at its peak: brutally simple, yet impossible to replace.

As years passed and I found myself sharing more and more morning meals with friends, I discovered that my enthusiasm for the off-the-cuff familiarity of Ann’s was burnt crust compared to the student body’s lust for the brunch experience. Each time I joined a weekend excursion for the same old overdressed basics, I felt a little more disillusioned – by the long waits, the $12+tip price tags, and the over-seasoned, hyper-relaxed, late morning banter. What struck me most, though, was the feeling that the simplicity of breakfast was being slyly replaced. Before long, no one wanted to go to Ann’s with me. Sure, the food was good, the price was right, and Amoeba and Moe’s were right around the corner, but it just didn’t scratch that lazy, luxuriant itch that only a mimosa could pacify.

I went on with my life, avoiding brunch outings when possible and not quite knowing how to explain my aversion to the meal in certain terms. Then, on the suggestion of a good friend (ironically, also a brunch lover), I had breakfast at Stage Restaurant in the East Village.

If Manhattan was born with greasy spoon in its mouth, Stage would be that spoon: a short order holdover from a world in which entire meals are cooked on a griddle no bigger than the cook’s torso, and no one has ever asked for granola. Unaffected by nostalgia, the Stage is simply one long counter of history. Elbow room is the only room in this alleyway of a diner, and the diners whose elbows rub against mine range from a scruffy student annotating texts over pancakes to a barely comprehensible IEBW member who uses firm, stubby fingers to drive home his claim that Keith Richards is rock and roll’s greatest guitar player. “But you know who looked the best? Mick Jagger. He looked goood, man.”

At the far end of the counter, as if by cue, sits an old man whose newspaper is more important than humanity itself. A bulky, wall-mounted payphone just behind him rings for minutes at a time before Stage’s senior waitress decides to oblige the occasional telephone order. As she repeats the words coming across the wire, cooks in the back room slide hot plates of food through a service window, from which they shuffle their way to patrons at the counter. On the opposite side of the diner, blue collar workers and cooks from the neighborhood stop by on break, sweeping huge bags of food for their staffs from the counter and pushing off just as quickly as they had stepped in.

Breakfast, prepared to order on the griddle just behind the counter, is a winner here. For $4.65, you can have two eggs any style, a molehill of home fries, two slices of toast, breakfast meat of your choice, and a bottomless cup of diner coffee. The gourmet choice, as noted by Serious Eats’ Nick Solares, is corned beef hash, prepared in house and served scrumptiously under eggs. Thoroughly crisped on the edges, fluffy and pink on the inside, and seasoned with just the right about of black pepper, Stage’s corned beef hash, like a great burger, is a patty of victory for Americana (though, sadly, Stage’s actual burger has recently earned scorn from the very same Nick Solares).

Stage’s immigrant personality only enriches that victory. Despite the presence of a Russian language calendar and at least one Russian speaking staff member – I still haven’t figured out which one it is, but I’ve placed a bet on the behemoth short order cook, whose speech is indecipherable in any language that doesn’t involve the words “eggs over easy,” anyway – Stage is a solidly Polish-American establishment. Consequently, substitution of kielbasa for breakfast sausage and buckwheat kasha for potatoes (doused, if you like, with mushroom gravy and grilled onions) is a few words away. While a brunch menu would attempt to surpass the essential with gourmet flair, Stage is much more content with the natural beauty of cultural assimilation, connecting comfort food dots across international borders and serving up the result in a melting pot of grease.

Pierogi, latkes, blintzes and a number of other Polish staples are spot on at Stage, but they’re also overpriced. With even better Polish food at half the price just across the East River in Greenpoint, diners at Stage are better off asking what specials are on deck – homemade meat loaf, lasagna and a huge plate of egg noodles with sour cream are a few of the choices I’ve seen make their way across that counter.

The best representation of the diner’s Polish-Ukranian heritage is its soup – after all, any cook bred from Eastern European stock must benchmark her skills by the ladle. Stage doesn’t shy from the challenge, offering as many as four different types soups with a hunk of challah bread on any given day.

Cabbage soup here is a bright, tender and tart mix of kraut-like cabbage, potato and other vegetables. Lentil soup, with just right amount of vegetables and a parsley garnish, is also wonderful. Highest praise, though, goes to Stage’s zurek, a diner-grade bowl of the rich, savory fermented rye classic that comes with boiled potato and egg if you’re lucky. While my favorite bowl of zurek is still Lomzynianka‘s tangy, pure, rye-heavy blend, Stage’s soup tastes exactly like the zurek I would eat on the daily in random cafeterias when I was traveling through Poland. And, like fried eggs, it’s served all day, every day.

With places like Stage still making good on the promise of breakfast, I have little interest in the next iteration of eggs benedict. If I’m going to turn my weekend morning into a culinary experience, I’d much rather make a trip to Flushing to indulge in Taiwanese breakfast or play shortstop on an extended dim sum session. I could parlay my lazy hours into a wonderful, home cooked breakfast in the apartment with friends, channeling emptied hours into a richer form of relaxation. Better yet, I could head down to Shopsin’s and put my wages and wait time to their best possible use.

I suppose what Stage has taught me is that I really don’t hate brunch. Positively speaking: I love American breakfast, as food and as experience, and when I’m sitting at the counter at Stage, no aspect of brunch can supplant that experience. Wait lists, well spaced tables, cloth napkins, pristine presentation, individualized wait service and the mantra of leisure are all imports of fine dining that don’t add any value of mine when they latch themselves to a meal I love for its straightforward dishes, its workman’s character and its ubiquity. American breakfast is a meal that requires no special context, no special menu and no special timing to be relevant. It simply has to satisfy. For a five dollar meal, that’s the role of a lifetime.

This was freshman year, the final week of March and the first week of my triumphant return to omnivorism. I’d been playing vegetarian for two years, and everything was unfamiliar.

“Can you try this? Tell me what it is,” I said to my friend Bihn. As a childhood fan of Hawaiian pizzas, I had known all about the mysticism of Canadian bacon. This time, I was fooled. After two years, I’d forgotten how some things tasted.

Bihn took a quick bite, looked at me cross-eyed and said, “It’s bacon, you idiot.”

“Oh.” I squinted my eyes toward the ham-shaped morsels. Bacon. In two years, nothing had come close to that particular flavor.

The twist here is that, between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, I couldn’t have cared less – before I turned vegetarian, I didn’t really care for bacon. Actually, I didn’t care for the meat-inclusive culinary arts in general, and at the tail end of two meatless years, I hadn’t missed anything. People who know me now might be shocked to learn: Before I turned vegetarian, I was a picky eater.

That’s why the final week of March, 2003 turned out to be so interesting. Spending two years unable to try so many new foods inflamed my curiosity. For the first time, I wanted to try everything and for the first time in two years, I was able. My first meal was Thai duck curry, because I’d never had duck before. My second meal was pho, because I’d never had flank, tendon or tripe before. Each consecutive meal became another excuse to experience something new, and despite my inexperienced digestive system, I learned to love it all.

Of course, months passed, and by 2004, my carnivorous dining experiences lost their novelty. My meals would have sputtered into normality if I hadn’t come across the book Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo at around the same time. Confessions of Zeno is a fictional psychoanalysis by the lesser talented Italian friend of James Joyce. The first chapter of the novel (the only chapter I liked) is dedicated to Zeno’s unusual addiction to cigarettes. Zeno’s addiction was more specific than the usual smoker’s habit. After numerous attempts at quitting, Zeno learned to love, specifically, the final drag of his last cigarette each time he tried to quit. Soon Zeno realized that he craved that final drag more than the cigarettes themselves; he was addicted to quitting.

The confessions of Zach are equally melodramatic. Spurred by Italo Svevo and the memory of that last week of March 2003, I annually inconvenience friends and family to go vegetarian for three or so months. I forcefully abstain from some of my favorite foods, because, like Zeno, I crave the ritual of quitting. Going on and off a diet grants otherwise normal meals the status of such special occasions as “Last Smothered Chicken Supper” and “Carne Asada Homecoming.”

I go veggie for three to five months – as opposed to two years – because, well, I don’t want to abstain too long. Three to five months is about how long it takes for me to starting missing certain meals. For the first three months of vegetarianism, dining is just different. I make some new menu choices and write different grocery lists. After three months, I start to miss some basic American foods. Hamburgers. BBQ pork. Pollo mole negro. Once that feeling hits, I return to humanity’s meat-eating state before the next stage of vegetarianism can take its toll.

Given enough time, I can appreciate Chez Frankenstein’s attempts at recreating meat. Even if you haven’t lived the veggie life, you’ve probably come across a fair share of diners carrying Garden Burgers, Thai restaurants offering imitation chicken, taquerias with Soyrizo breakfast burritos, Vietnamese cafes featuring mock duck or supermarkets stocking Smart Bacon (pictured above). Call them creative ways to deliver protein to the herbivore, but don’t deny that they’re also catering to the ex-omnivore’s nostalgia.

I’ve ordered a BBQ pulled-wheat gluten sandwich before. I’ve had that long look in the mirror.

I don’t have trouble, then, sympathizing with Veg-N-Out’s creepy reconstruction of Carl’s Jr’s classic Bacon Western Cheeseburger. An eight dollar burger without the ironic title, it gives vegetarians exactly what they’re looking for… if they’re looking for a monstrously unhealthy meal that is reminiscent of southwestern-styled fast food. Veg-N-Out makes its own meatless patties, includes a decent array of ingredients and has a burger menu as large as that of any Island’s restaurant. The patty is good, but not beefy, and the fake bacon is… well, you know, even dogs know it ain’t bacon. A professional omnivore would be unimpressed and a part-timer like myself would be happy eating for half the price at Denny’s with a Boca Burger substitution.

I won’t begrudge full-time vegetarians for satisfying their faux-carnivorism at a place like Veg-N-Out, because I admire the commitment required to avoid a real hamburger for so long – on my best try, I only lasted two years. Once that nostalgic desire meal kicks in, I break my diet and go for the real thing, because sinking my teeth into a choice burger after missing the memory for some time is a wonderful reminder at how delicious an everyday meal can be.

I’m currently on my second month of this year’s veggie stint, and this time my girlfriend is joining me on my crackpot diet. I would never recommend my silly dining habits to someone else, but I can’t forget how much going vegetarian changed my life. Sometimes I have to stand idly by while people order the same thing over and over again – the dietary equivalent of a nine-to-five job – and I remember that I used to be that person. When I find myself standing in that line, I’m quick to recall that last week of March, 2003.

Then, like anyone else who approaches food Homerically, I take up Zeno’s Sisyphean pursuit of satisfaction and leap back onto the produce wagon. You know, for three to five months. Until fake bacon starts to taste good.

Veg-N-Out
3442 30th St
San Diego, CA 92104
619.546.8411

Accordingly, I doubt that Frank Sodolak, owner of Sodolak’s Country Inn, has ever set finger to keyboard in praise of one of America’s most essential foods. To the cook who simply cooks, bacon is immune to the passions of meta-criticism. However, as Sodolak has shown in his roadside corner of Texas, bacon is not immune to the creative spirit.

I learned this fact firsthand on a five hour road trip along state highways to the town of Snook. I had first learned of chicken fried bacon in 2006, when Bob Phillips‘ video review of the creation found its way onto YouTube. Judging from Phillips’ harrying soundtrack cues and and the general hype-for-hype of “bacon mania,” one might expect a dish so extreme that it defies all good sense.

Fortunately, the reality of Sodolak’s chicken fried bacon differs greatly from the fantasy that has propelled it into the limelight. Those who expect the extreme, the chic or the vulgar are bound to be disappointed by what is little more than an appetizer, albeit a calorically prodigious one. The process behind this dish couldn’t be more transparent: Coat six strips of raw, thin-sliced bacon in lightly seasoned batter. Deep fry. Serve hot.

While the interview comments from Bob Phillips’ review could easily be filtered as sound bite-sized jabs at southern obesity, they make perfect sense when the platter of gold coated curls lies at your fingertips. A testament to Sodolak’s sensibilities as a cook, this is a surprisingly delicate dish- and it does need more salt. The breading of the bacon goes just far enough to provide a satisfying crisp, but stops far before it reaches the crusting point of a chicken fried steak (which is also on the menu). Because the bacon is cooked quickly, each bite is airy and tender. The flavor of neither the meat nor the breading is strong enough to overwhelm, and the accompanying country gravy is as authentically nondescript as the potholed marquee that posts its place on the farm road outside. In its understated beauty, Sodolak’s creation separates the stupidly simple from the simply stupid and makes seconds on deep fried bacon an entirely sensible notion.

However, seconds on any appetizer would be foolhardy at the Country Inn. While Frank Sodolak might have made his name on chicken fried bacon, he’s made his living on the impeccable southern cooking that underscores his restaurant. Front and center is a behemoth ensemble of Texas steaks: The “extra small sirloin,” for example, weighs in at a solid pound and covers an entire dinner platter like a beef blanket. Boldly pepper crusted and grilled medium rare to order, it’s probably the best steak I’ve ever tasted. Not coincidentally, it’s also the most inexpensive: At a cost of only $11.95 (including fries and toast), Sodolak’s sirloin smacks Peter Luger with a king sized Texas backhand, daring any witness to sell steaks at a more lopsided flavor-to-dollar ratio. When I make my way back to Snook, chicken fried bacon is sure to land on my tab, but it’s pork chops and porterhouse that I’ll be craving most.

If there’s a clear image that comes to my mind at the end of a meal at this restaurant, it’s not the bacon explosion, but the Skylight Inn of Ayden, North Carolina. Like the Skylight’s Pete Jones, who at one point had a cholesterol count of over 800, Frank Sodolak has no reason to concern himself with food fads. He’s been chicken frying bacon for ten years and eating bacon since before we were born. His love for the craft of southern cooking and perfect awareness of its position vis-a-vis the American heartbeat shines through any amount of memetic sensationalism as a primary source. If this isn’t where bacon belongs, I’m more than ready to cut a switch and clear some more room in its defense.

Sodolak’s Country Inn
9711 Fm. 60 Rd E.
Snook, TX 77878

I’m not quite sure what popped up over my head when I was blessed with the idea for bacon corn dog ice cream. I only know what popped into my stomach: an urgent, perverse sense of hunger that may be the closest I’ll ever get to bearing a child. Suffice it to say, I discovered who my true friends were when I began spread the message of bacon corn dog ice cream and its potential benefits for human civilization. Meg and the Mathemagician immediately volunteered to help me realize this vision, and in two weeks I was mixing corn dog batter in their kitchen.

I used a disheveled Wikihow recipe for the corn dogs, replacing full sized frankfurters with cocktail wieners. My first few attempts were overcooked and uneven, but eventually I mastered the art of the coat-and-fry, turning out frank-filled hush puppies that plumped, crisped, and melted in my mouth in one ineffable bite. The main event, of course, was the groundbreaking submersion of mini corn dogs into a river of ice cream. To administer our great experiment, Meg prepared what would become the greatest ice cream I have ever tasted.

She followed a recipe for candied bacon ice cream, with two key changes. The first was to eliminate the candying process, instead frying and chopping the bacon to mix, unadorned, into the final product. The second change was to replace the butter in our ice cream custard with pure bacon fat. The results of this alteration were immense: while the taste of bacon emerged as a subtle undercurrent, the richness of the mixture was downright devilry. Sensations of maple, meat, and brown sugar streamed from the spoon in deceptively smooth ribbons of flavor, each more consummate than the last. The fresh bacon bits completed the picture perfectly, providing a savory punch and a scatter shot of focus for the bacon fat in the ice cream.

Having taken the penultimate step towards my black bulb thought bubble, I fried up a handful of mini-corn dogs, mixed them into my bowl of ice cream, and immediately lifted the spoon to my mouth. The freshly fried cornmeal batter promptly absorbed its host, not unlike the fried shell of tempura ice cream. My bite into the corn dog retained the crisp of its batter, which quickly gave way to a delightfully blended texture of crumbs and cream, all swirling around the pronounced bite of a cocktail frankfurter in its prime. While the intrusion of a streetwise hot dog into the more sophisticated realm of bacon fat and milk brought an abrupt end to the symphony of flavor, it remained reassuring to anyone who’s ever wondered if chicken fried bacon would be great or amazing, or jumped at the chance to taste a fresh batch of Kool-Aid pickles.

Surely this was not a dessert for all seasons. The Mathemagician joined in my revelry of a dream fulfilled, but Meg noted that the ice cream made her feel sick. This didn’t change the fact that it may be her greatest accomplishment yet and a feat I hope to outdo in some future act of culinary daring and unspeakable fat that redefines the meaning of the words, “American fried.”

In the morning, I go to Jodie’s. I ask for Something Different.

The kitchen crew grills two English muffins in butter. They adorn these glistening, crisp-edged, nook and cranny laced wonders with grilled sliced tomato and shower them with a mix of country hash browns and hearty, chopped bacon. Two flash-poached eggs are laid atop this medley of fried delight, and the entire entree is blanketed in a peppery, tangy hollandaise crafted by Jodie’s daughter. Eggs Benedict flee the scene. America wins.

On my most recent pilgrimage to Jodie’s counter, there was a misunderstanding with my order. I lounged outside the kitchen for an hour to have my taste of Something Different. As yolk flooded the plate and citrus and butter seeped into the bacon fat grinding away between my molars, I realized that something different had become something missing. After a year of vigorous homecomings, I felt only the fatigue of a long trip for the sake of a simple pleasure.

Indeed, as summer in Diamond Bar inches closer to sunset, my homecomings to the East Bay will soon fade out as well. Something different is in short order, but a short order of Something Different won’t be enough.

Jodie’s
902 Masonic Ave
Albany, CA 94706
510.526.1109

The Venetian is quite possibly the most ridiculous of Las Vegas’ super resorts. Featuring over 7,000 suites, 120,000 square feet of gambling space and a five acre pool deck, this larger than life paean to the City of Bridges turns history into opulence like an art-loving dictator. After we had parked beneath the superstructure of the miniature city, it took us almost half an hour to wend our way through a shopping mall, a casino, another shopping mall, and the main lobby of the Venetian Hotel. Once there, an elevator ride carried us up the final leg of the longest road to brunch I’ve ever taken.

Stowed into a spacious corner above the Venetian lobby, the illustrious Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bistro is worth the journey. After wading through a sea of poshlost’ posing as elegance, we stumbled into a restaurant that bathes comfortably in the true essence of the word. The atmosphere is refined and ornate enough to be classy, yet open and bustling enough to feel casual. Tables and booths bask in the sun, and the bar offers New Belgium 1554 on tap.

While I am a champion of breakfast, I’ve become skeptical of the brunch ritual: Overpriced eggs, the perennial lack of grits and the placebo-like worship of an idyllic atmosphere have been the foundation for too many late morning outings to convince me that I should pay more than $6 for anything short of incredible. Fortunately, our parting meal at Bouchon was incredible in all the right ways. This became clear when the first complimentary baguette was laid before us, dressed only with a white cloth napkin. I broke off a piece, adorned it with butter and apricot jam, and greeted the morning with the sweet, hypnotic crunch of perfectly toasted French bread, finally understanding firsthand what an old friend once told me about the joy of eating a fresh baguette with breakfast every morning during his tenure in the city of Lyon. Under other circumstances, I would have happily made a meal of these baguettes, but my appetite had been piqued and the menu was open.

We began with a dish of sugar and cinammon beignets. Delicately crisp and crumbly on the outside, ethereally weightless on the inside, Bouchon’s rendition of this brunch classic was as skillfully executed as its baguette. By hiding its mastery of textures and flavors in an innocently plain morsel of bread, it was as if Bouchon was deliberately highlighting the irony of its own existence behind the inflated facades of the Venetian. Likewise, the breakfast Americaine, complete with fresh squeezed orange juice, French pastry and pomme frites, made no effort to hide the fact that it was in fact nothing more than a well cooked breakfast. All of this grace still wasn’t enough to justify the platter’s $22 price tag, but for a fraction of that cost I did have a taste of its highlight: Bouchon’s country sausage, which was roasted to a level of flavor that dwarfed the peak of the Stratosphere.

My other selection was Bouchon’s bread pudding style French toast. Distinguished immediately by its artful construction, this dish selfishly robbed the rest of our entrees of their humble charms. Each rich, porous, buttery layer concealed near-melted slices of baked apple and thin blankets of custard, all married within a deep ribbon of sweet maple syrup and topped with impeccably shaped cuts of fresh apple and a dash of powdered sugar. Put romantically, it was an ivory tower of brioche peering over a land of indentured breakfast rolls. Of course, every tower of Babel must eventually fall, and I was happy to devour my elaborate edifice of a meal before its fragile folds could collapse of natural causes on my plate. If the Venezia Tower were made of brioche, I’d do the same for it as well.

There are many reasons why I could never live in Las Vegas. The staggering hubris of the Venetian is one of them. The warm weekend brunch at Bouchon is not. Nothing short of a robotic Michael Jackson will convince me to renegotiate these terms. Having affirmed this lesson in understatement, I said farewell to the bookhouse boys and drove off into the midday Nevada sun.

Bouchon Bistro
3355 Las Vegas Blvd. South
The Venetian Resort, Venezia Tower
Las Vegas, NV 89109
702.414.6200

When March rolls around, hundreds of music makers roll out to the city of Austin, flanked by armies of fans, suits, marketers and drunkards for the biggest weekend of live music in the world’s set list of mass performance. Parks become stadiums, bars become concert halls and holes in the wall live out their namesake in epic fashion as the entire city transforms into a boundless channel of song. The metamorphosis at once defies and embodies all commercial logic, tightening America’s proud grip on a culture of music that continues to grow new sets of wings as its body sinks further and further into the abyss created by its own evolution. In four short days, the amplified sound of this paradox fades away, vans and trailers fleeing into the desert as surely as they arrived for the onslaught.

I spend these four days not in the clubs of Austin, but on the streets, giving away free ice cream to springbound music lovers. Our mission is as improbable as that of the musicians: the massing and merging of happiness and commodity without a second thought given to profit. Bouncing between venues and street corners, we wave the banner of unwarranted happiness that has enveloped Austin. After 1,500 performances and over 11,000 free ice creams, South by Southwest 2008 has come and gone. It is a tiring triumph. All that remains is breakfast.

The Homesick Texan has already written extensively about her great big state’s great little secret. While central Texas at large has much to offer in the way of smoked meats, I shudder to think of anyone visiting the city of Austin with his hopes pinned on its mediocre BBQ offerings. The breakfast taco, distant Tex-Mex cousin of California’s breakfast burrito, is the capital’s true currency of flavor. Prepared on the daily at restaurants, taquerias and fast food outlets throughout Austin, these sunny pockets of the Lone Star fold any combination of eggs, meat, potato, beans and cheese into a wondrously bite sized building block of satisfaction. Whether they’re consumed as a prelude to a long day, in epilogue of a long night, or in the back of a 1969 Chevrolet Step Van atop a mountain of emptied ice cream boxes, breakfast tacos offer the diversity, value and convenience that cumbersome breakfast burritos only pretend to offer. They are the minutemen of hunger, bacon and chorizo peeking out from under a blanket of eggs and salsa, ready to offer their Tex-Mex style comfort at a moment’s notice.

After taking what may be my final bite of Austin for a full year, I throw my bags into Bessita and stretch out for the twenty hour drive to San Gabriel Valley. There’s gotta be a better way for me to tie this post into Supertramp’s Breakfast in America, but seeing how I’m still recovering from the trip, I’ll quit while I can still think.