I don’t know who Max Brenner is exactly, but I do know what he looks like. This sketch – a single, continuous line drawing – of his mug is splashed liberally about both his shops – restaurant slash chocolate bars. I’ve been here less than a handful of times – when it first opened, I stopped by with friends after dinner a few times to have dessert. It was never memorable, save one thing: both times I tried to order the popsicle fondue (which is vanilla ice cream, on a stick, and a few items to dip the ice cream in to make your own ice cream bar – M&Ms, melted chocolate, nuts, etc.) and both times, I was sadly denied. To this day, I still want this dessert…
In any case, about two weeks ago, StB, my lovely BF, and myself all headed over to volunteer at a soup kitchen early on a Sunday morning. Sorry to preach to you in a food blog, but I just find this a wonderful cause – true, it did entail waking up earlier on a Sunday than I do for work on a weekday, but the upside of doing the early shift is being done before noon, so you’re pretty up on your karma before lunch, even! If you can, please consider volunteering, they are short on people right now because it’s summer (a large number of volunteers come from high schools – my brother used to volunteer here in high school, actually). I now return you to your regularly scheduled program…
Afterwards, brunch beckoned. StB bade us farewell and pointed us in the direction of a couple of great places in the Union Square area, but BF had been promised – and was keen to cash in on this promise – that we would go straight to Forbidden Planet, one of our preferred comic book stores. On our way there, we passed by Max Brenner’s on Broadway, and BF peeked at the menu, declaring “I want to go here.”
I opted to start off with a mocha, which was in this impossibly annoying cup from which to drink. The mocha itself was smooth, creamy, needed sugar added, but otherwise tasty. I don’t think it was worth the $5 it cost, though.
I didn’t manage to snap a picture, but BF ordered a decadent milkshake whose name escapes me, but I think that’s what it was called – decadence, or something along those lines. Wonderfully thick, creamy, delicious… I admit I took more than a few sips… until he swatted my hand away, haha.
We both opted to get the “lazy breakfast” for $11.95 and holy cow, the amount of food they bring you is obscene. The menu’s description reads: “two eggs any style with your choice of the following two: bacon, mushrooms, ham, chives, tomatoes, onions, cheddar cheese; served with home fries, and a basket of country toast with pure melted chocolate spread, peanut butter, apple & brandy jam and butter.” (That means you get to choose two – while I was copying that, I thought “huh…” but realized it is just strangely worded.)
BF surprisingly opted for the double meat: bacon AND ham.
He liked his dish well enough. You don’t believe me this is a lot of food, hmm?
Despite the tomato scare, I opted for bacon and tomatoes. I was surprised that the bacon and tomatoes were chopped and mixed into even my sunny side up eggs, but it tasted good… except for one thing. I have to remind myself to stop ordering sunny side up eggs out – 99 times out of 100, it will come with the top undercooked. People, learn how to pour a teeny bit of water down and cover the whole thing for 30 seconds – it cooks up the top of the eggs and eliminates any chance of that nasty snot looking runny white on top! So much more palatable! Otherwise, fairly standard egg dish.
Still thinking “That doesn’t seem to be so much food though…”
Well, you see the four little dishes of spreads? (BTW, we took turns tasting the white one because mine was hard, his was soft, and I thought it was mayo or something – see the drips?! It was butter, though, I just couldn’t remember the darn menu.)
Well, we each got a basket of bread. Just like the above. That’s a ridiculous amount of bread!
I won’t lie to you. Though I’m no Atkins girl, I do studiously avoid copious amounts of carbs if I can help it.
I couldn’t help it.
I’m also not big on sweets, but the decadent and somewhat “not right” – in my mind, anyway – combination of not-sweet bread with the chocolate spread… found me ripping off the soft insides of the bread and dipping it liberally in the chocolate. I even took poor BF’s chocolate spread and began eating it as well. I tried the butter – meh, not salted; the jam – meh, not that great; peanut butter – mehhh, too hard to spread and well this is a LAZY breakfast, right? – so back to chocolate I went.
It was awesome. Decadent. Delicious. Yum. Heaven.
Then we went home and promptly took a long nap.
Our check came in this cute little tin.
The meal wasn’t cheap, though our main courses were. Clocking in at $4.95 for my drink, and $7.95 for his milkshake – yes, you read that right, nearly $8 for a darn milkshake!, then $11.95 each for our mains… with tax and a generous tip, our total came out close to $50. For brunch, that started off so cheaply… ah well. It was tasty.
Yvo says: While it won’t blow your socks off, you can eat brunch cheaply here – we just didn’t – and that alone is worthy of note. The prime location so close to Union Square, the UA movie theater directly across the street, a great comic book store, and everything add up to yeah, why not? I recommend this if you can’t get a table at any of the more popular spots nearby – we went around noon and there was no wait, and still a few more empty tables around us.
recommended for a casual bite, if you’re in the area
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