Brunch at The Breslin with Urbanspoon

Urbanspoon, they of the review aggregation and recommendations website on which Feisty Foodie is featured, hosted a get-to-know-you brunch at the Breslin for around twenty food bloggers in the New York City area. Essentially, we ate our way through the menu, taking pictures and evaluating the dishes while looking at the changes coming to Urbanspoon. As The Feisty Foodie ate here a few weeks prior, I had a sense of what to expect through her earlier post.

What brunch shouldn’t start with pork products? The Breslin makes its own sausage in-house, and these were spiced just right, with a nice snap to the casing. Plus, they look really good.

So of course, we had to sample the house-cured bacon as well. This was excellent bacon, smoky, chewy in a good way, not fatty (as bacon goes). I could have eaten the whole plate without remorse.

Of the “selection of pastries” — a healthy muffin, pain au chocolat, cranberry pastry, and croissant — I tried a bit of all but the muffin. Flaky and moist where they ought to be, and the chocolate oozed as I wanted from the bread. Just as expected, though at $14 on the regular menu, I can’t see this as necessary.

I forged ahead to the goat’s cheese and leek tart, a very tasty, cheesy concoction adorned with more than its share of greenery. Really, my favorite non-meat savory dish of the day.

Meanwhile, frites — err, “thrice cooked chips” — with a side of dills, I believe, and a tasty, spicy mayo mustard, were well worth returning to repeatedly as I grazed from the rest of the dishes. Apparently three is the magic number, as these were a perfect crisp on the outside and still potatoey-chewy inside.

Is it possible to make a $16 grilled ham and cheese? The Breslin thinks so. This was a large, three-cheese, oven-baked, generously-hammed sandwich, to be perfectly fair. And it was delicious. Loved the toasted bread, for example, and the ham was salted, cured beauty. But it’s still a grilled ham and cheese.

Roasted potatoes, instead of the normal home fries that are a staple of brunch. These were as good as you might expect small roasted potatoes to be.

One of the more unusual brunch offerings — the fried peanut butter and banana sandwich with bourbon and vanilla — offered so much promise. The sandwich Elvis would have made had he been allowed to cook. And, well, it was different, and the aroma of bourbon hung in the air around it, though fortunately it was overwhelmed by peanut butter when biting into it. Everythhing was, really, and I suppose if you love that sort of thing, this is the sandwich for you. But it was just a little too thickly PB and not enough banana, in a fairly dense, sweet cocoon.

Another Breslin original (I hope), the peanut-butter pancakes with Concord-grape syrup sounded very interesting on paper, but in execution, besides being a mess, just didn’t work out as the deconstructed PB&J I think they were shooting for. The peanuts were a nice touch, though, and I appreciated the different textures in the dish, but peanut butter and jelly on pancakes doesn’t seem to be destined for greatness.

Surely a full English breakfast — two eggs, mushrooms, a bit of cooked tomato, sausage and bacon (no blood sausage though) — would work well. And it did; I obviously did not eat the whole plate, but it smelled inviting enough and judging from the morning’s display, eggs are certainly a strong suit of The Breslin.

The poached eggs with curried lentils, yogurt and cilantro eluded me, but talking to others, the curry was strong in this one, though the eggs were perfectly poached. It displays beautifully, though, and that’s another Breslin strong point.

The seasonal frittata, made with ricotta cheese, cilantro, and I believe spinach, was also well-prepared, and I wish I’d had more than a little sample. I do love ricotta for breakfast, after all. The crust was perfectly flaky, too, and the combination worked great.

Nearly stuffed, I spied this hot cross bun, and of course had to try it out before calling it a meal. I quite liked it — The Breslin doesn’t make these particularly sugary; it’s almost more savory than sweet. Then again, I can’t remember if I’ve ever had one before, so I guess I like hot cross buns.

I’d like to add that throughout the event, the servers came through continuously, bringing and removing dishes, silverware, and excellent, if muddled, coffee from large French presses. Once the logistics were settled everything ran smoothly, and we talked shop while cleaning the plates.

Many thanks to Urbanspoon for hosting us and giving us the opportunity to sample the brunch menu at The Breslin. I’m impressed that The Breslin innovates even at brunch (they were recently awarded a Michelin star, so someone’s watching). Though a few of the dishes don’t work for me, there’s plenty on the menu that I’d enjoy eating again. Granted, the prices are very high for brunch, and though it certainly takes a talented chef to pull off some of the items, I’m not sold on the idea of spending so much (at brunch) unless I’m trying to impress a girl or her parents. If you’re willing to pay that much extra for presentation and a rustic atmosphere with a decidedly non-rustic clientele, though, this is your place.