Tryst – Arlington, MA

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Sarah

Tryst is a fancy-ass restaurant in Arlington that Talls and I had avoided partly out of concern for the price and partly because on the weekend we’re jeans and t-shirt people and this doesn’t strike me as a jeans and t-shirt place. But one weekend our friend Jenn was over, and we wanted to take her to a new brunch place but not, like, have to fucking drive or something crazy. So Tryst it was. Everyone who worked there was lovely, there were no comments on our attire, and the food was great. Also, it was Restaurant Week still (I swear it lasts for a month in the Boston area. This is not a complaint.) so it was cheaper than it would have otherwise been. Bitchin’!

Every morning should start with a fancy duck taco.

Every morning should start with a fancy-ass duck taco.

There were two courses, because fucking-a Restaurant Week menu, and I went for the starter that said “duck.” Like “maple,” “french toast,” and “bacon,” “duck” is one of my go-to menu words.

Talls was crunchy granola as he tends to be.

Jenn went for a peanuty thing.

For the main course we stuck with our buzzwords, but they were all fancy and delicious so it worked out well.

Me: french toast!

Talls: huevos rancheros!

Jenn: eggs n’ meat!

Jenn and I agreed the coffee was delish, and Talls loved the juice. The atmosphere was nice, and as we were there earlier it wasn’t packed. If you want a fancy place to eat tasty food that won’t bitch you out for sipping your coffee with a pinkie out, this is your place.

Sunset Cantina – Allston, MA

Posted on September 11, 2014 by Sarah

Sunset Cantina

We mistakenly had brunch here one Saturday, expecting to eat lunch but finding there was still and hour before their brunch ended. Judging from the menus alone it looks like their Sunday brunch is more of a thing (I mean, they don’t even have a Saturday brunch menu on the menu linked above), so perhaps I will cover that some time as well.

As I was expecting lunch I went with a savory meal of thick Texas toast smothered in egg, bacon, and cheese. Talls had a breakfast burrito.

So big I only ate half.

He, of course, finished his.

It was good… but. This is the feeling I am always left with after eating at Sunset. It’s not bad, but it’s not fabulous. They have a great beer selection and actually a decent range of ciders, and I feel like they slack a little on their food because most people eating there have had a pint or two and can’t fully taste anything.

Anyway, not a place I’d rave about, but it’s decent and will fill you up. I will have to go back for the Sunday Brunch to see if it’s more awesome.

Five Horses Tavern – Davis Square, Somerville, MA

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Sarah

Five Horses Tavern

I think basically the only reason I’m going to be somewhat meh on Five Horses in this review is that I ate here in the wrong order. One of our friends had recommended brunch both here and at the Painted Burro, stating that they were both good but that the Burro kind of blew this place out of the water. Like fools Talls and I went to the Burro first, and after that amazing food-based love affair were kind of spoiled for other Davis Square brunches that were trying to be in a similar league. If I’d done Five Horses first I feel like I would’ve liked them more because I wouldn’t have been having flash backs to fucking candied bacon. Let’s be honest: no one can compete with that.

kfc-style chicken breast, bacon marmalade, fried egg, cheddar, frisée. cornichons, creole mustard on toasted waffles with fruit salad

I got the breakfast club, which was a club-style sandwich thing made out of breakfast foods. I ended up having to take some of the layers apart to eat it without making a giant mess, but it was delicious all the same. The do some very fine fried chicken at this place.

black beans, eggs, potatoes, carrots, scallions, jalapenos, red peppers, served in a fried tortilla with salsa, guacamole and goat cheese sour cream

Talls got the Chimichanga which was much less blurry in real life. My phone camera skills have been lost! It was full of tasty things as advertised.

So yeah, the food was good, there was a tiny line when it opened (Like six people for a huge place. I am usually a line stickler and there was a woman in front of us who was all “I believe we got here first!” and I rolled my eyes at her back because seriously, there are plenty of seats and every damn one of us is going to be served at the same time. This is a time when lines do not matter.), and services was nice a quick. But it was not the Painter Burro, and this made me sad.

Brunch Up or Shut Up – Coffee vs Tea vs Juice

Posted on August 21, 2014 by Sarah

Welcome to a new feature on this here blog o’ vittles and bitchosity! Brunch Up or Shut Up is my musings on the eternal debates of brunch and an invitation for you all to blather right back at me in the comments. Are any of the options displayed here correct or incorrect? Technically, no. But in reality I will assume I’m right unless convinced otherwise.

What to drink with brunch? If your answer is “just water,” you can fuck off for this post and return another time. There isn’t anything wrong with water, but there isn’t anything right with it either. It’s less of a choice and more of a glass of neutral. Honestly, I assume most people all are also drinking water in addition to their cups of liquid they had to actually make a decision about. Drinking water only is pure laziness.

As I’m sure people have noticed, I drink coffee and Talls drinks juice – orange juice, specifically. There was a time now buried to current memory (a.k.a. before I went to grad school) that I hated coffee and drank tea exclusively. With this amazing range of drink consumption I feel I am fully equipped to settle the score on the question of coffee vs. tea vs. juice.

Contender One: Coffee!

Coffee is a breakfast/brunch/lunch/ohgodIneedcaffeine standard for a reason. It is full of caffeine! It can be flavored with lots of different things so it doesn’t punch you in the face with bitterness! It can not be flavored with things so you can be ballsy and savor the bitterness! It can actually taste good on it’s own! It can be hot or iced! It can julienne fries! It took me a bit to get into coffee because I am cheap and so the stuff I was drinking was often bitter, but my caffeine needs propelled me into the black arms of this dried, roasted, ground berry. I have had good coffee, and I have had bad coffee, but I will basically always order the coffee because my brain doesn’t switch on til I taste it. Seriously, I have a Pavlovian response going on and will feel more alert after drinking decaf even if I know at the time it’s decaf. Oh brain, you’re so dumb! But yeah, coffee has pushed tea largely out of my brunch life at this point. This is at least part due to me being a giant tea snob and thus struggling to find restaurant teas I like, whereas I’ll drink pretty much any brown water poured out of a carafe.

Contestant Two: Tea!

As I said above, I am a tea snob. I have teapinions. I want my black tea Indian and strong enough to stand a horseshoe up in. I want my green tea roasted with brown rice. Most tisanes (fruit or herbal tea with no actual bit of tea plant in them) are not my thing, aside from mint tea, which should be sharp and herby instead of sweet. I do not demand loose leaf, I just want to like what I’m drinking. Being hard to please I usually don’t drink tea outside of the house or I bring my own. I’m a little more reasonable with iced tea but I think that’s because my brain classifies it under “juice” instead. Dumb, dumb brain. But NO sweet tea! I’m not a hummingbird so that stuff is disgusting.

Opponent Three: Juice!

I was tempted to ask Talls to write an Ode to Juice for this, but I feel I have a firm foundation for my opinions here having sat next to and/or across from him as he drinks juice for as long as I have. I have even been known to steal a sip or two when he says it’s really good. The best juice? Passionfruit. Seriously. If you live in Boston or Framingham you can get it at the Padaria Brasil bakeries in Allston and Framingham center. It is worth it and their cheesey buns are also good. These are not brunch places, but they are a way to get damn good Passionfruit juice in the US, which is hard because it doesn’t ship well. Talls told me it was the best juice ever, and I laughed. And then I had it, and I laughed no more because I was too busy guzzling the stuff.

Second best, at least for the juice-loving gent I live with, is orange juice. There is a HUGE taste difference between fresh squeezed and not, so if you can get fresh squeezed (and are okay with the price), you should. Just like you should get citrus mailed directly from Florida if possible and eat your cherry tomatoes straight off the vine, fresh squeezed orange juice is simply fantastic. Talls has ordered juice so good I wished for a caffeinated version so I could forsake my coffee. Then I realized people do caffeinate juice and the offerings sound super gross. So let’s acknowledge that good orange juice is damn good, and leave it at that.

—-The Winner!—-

Coffee. Duh. I don’t drink it every morning because I think it sucks, people. Tea and juice are good and everything, but they don’t flip the wake up switch and make me feel cozy the way coffee does. Coffee “Let’s go!” that is just the right amount of punch and not too jarring. Also I can get it basically anywhere since I’ll drink basically any coffee. I care about the quality of my tea and juice, and that makes them less useful. I don’t want to not enjoy my drink at brunch, so coffee it must be.

But that coffee with preheated milk at the cafeteria thing in Brasil was hands down the best.

The Painted Burro – Davis Square, Somerville, MA

Posted on August 18, 2014 by Sarah

The Painted Burro

I would just like to say, for the record, that this place is fucking amazing and if you do not immediately stop whatever stupid thing you’re doing right now and get your ass into one of their seats so you can get their food in your mouth, you are a useless fool. Jesus Christ on a cheese-coated unicycle they have god damn candied bacon here people! Go eat there now and read this review later. Seriously. I’ll wait.

Let's get in the mood with some fabulous art.

Let’s get in the mood for food with some fabulous art.

It’s a nice place with a great set up, and as long as the weather is nice their gigantic wall of windows is open to street. That’s right: amazing grub AND ambiance. Seriously, why aren’t you eating here RIGHT NOW!?!?

French toast: egg-dipped brioche, caramelized plantains, mascarpone whipped, maple syrup

This pile of food was fucking delicious, and not just because I am addicted to real maple syrup and will always say yes to fried plantains. The french toast under all of that was thick, fluffy, and a little crisp on the outside. Perfection!

EL MONTANERO “SUPERBEASTO”:
2 fried eggs, chorizo con papas, pork charro beans, chicharron, fried plantain, burro rice, chipotle mayo, baja cream, crispy tortilla

Talls order this pile of deliciousness and, because he is tall and has extra stomach space in his legs like all tall people (look, it’s the only logical explanation of this), HE FINISHED THE ENTIRE THING. I manage to steal like a bite and even that was dangerous. This is a well named dish.

THICK CUT BROWN SUGAR BACON

I am totally just copying directly off the menu for the descriptions because even their capitalization is apt. Eating this was seriously like eating candied meat, and it was one of the most amazing gustatory experiences of my life. I’ve never really understood wanting to eat yourself sick on something until I tasted this. The Painter Burro saved me by not putting anymore bacon on that plate. Fuck, every bite almost killed me with happiness!

To sum up: GO EAT HERE NAO!!!

The Painted Burro is perfect and you need to go eat there, stat. Look, I left a physical comment raving about this place at the restaurant, and they fucking sent me a personalized thank you email. GO THERE BITCHES.

Hell’s Kitchen – Minneapolis, MN

Posted on August 12, 2014 by Sarah

Hell’s Kitchen

This post is written by my partner Talls who was at a conference in Minnesota recently. Thanks to covering brunchiness even when I was not there to bitch about it!

Well, shit, I think this might be our kind of place.

Hell’s Kitchen, besides being a neighborhood in New York City, is also a fucking great restaurant in Minneapolis.

It’s downstairs in a mall or something, which, I don’t even care, because fuck malls and just give me the food. Luckily you can enter from the outside.

The menu has all kinds of wonderful-sounding food. Thing like cornmeal pancakes, and a ham-and-pear sandwich, and Bison Benedict, and plantains, and lots of other stuff.

Also, huge bonus: this place believes in maple syrup. Really, truly fucking believes. You get pancakes? They come with real syrup. There is Maple-Glazed Bison Sausage. Their porridge (see below) has maple syrup in it. Yes. Win.

Sparkle Motion, bitches!

Enough of the seizure sign. What did I actually fucking order?

Yeah, so, I almost forgot to take a picture.

Luckily I only got a few bites in before I was like “Shit, I require photographic documentation as evidence of this fine-ass cuisine.”

At the top: real orange juice. Delicious.

At right: Mahnomin Porridge. It’s like if some extra-sophisticated motherfucker had looked at oatmeal and said, “Hold on, guys. We can seriously class this shit up.” Wild rice instead of oats, with dried blueberries and cranberries, hazelnuts, maple syrup, and cream. Delicious. Apparently they used to have to give this shit away, which I totally wish they were still doing.

Main course: Lemon-ricotta pancakes with fresh berries and maple syrup. These are among the best pancakes I have ever had. They’re up there with Gould’s Sugar Shack, and those made people ask if I was going to cry. Fucking awesome.

It wasn’t as cheap as Al’s Breakfast, but it was just as good if not better, and it wasn’t ridiculously expensive or anything. And I didn’t wait for an hour and 15 minutes, but that’s probably because it was ass-early on a Thursday.

In summation: you should go here and eat all their tasty food. If you have the bison stuff you should tell me how it was because I totally fucking wish I had room in my stomach for that, but it was too fucking full of other delicious stuff.

Al’s Breakfast – Minneapolis, MN

Posted on August 4, 2014 by Sarah

Al’s Breakfast – No website, link goes to Yelp page

This post is written by my partner Talls who was at a conference in Minnesota recently. Thanks to covering brunchiness even when I was not there to bitch about it!

How small is Al’s Breakfast?

It’s so small that the entire restaurant is 10 feet wide.

It’s so small that there are only 14 seats.

How small is it? Check out the picture from Google Maps:

It’s real fuckin’ small.

You ain’t kiddin’, pal.

I got there and there was a line with about 20 people outside the building, and maybe another 20 inside. (Yes, they fucking crammed a line into a restaurant that’s 10 feet wide.) That doesn’t sound so bad?

Remember: 14 seats.

It was just over an hour before I got to sit down. Either don’t go on a sunday, or bring a fucking book.

The place, as they say, has character.

Also dinosaur toys for kids.

For kids, I said.

Enough with the fucking decor, how’s the food?

Corned Beef Hash, pancakes, and juice.

On the down side, they think that stuff in the front is corned beef hash. It is not. It is hash browns that someone waved some fucking corned beef over. Some day I shall write a fucking tirade about how people cannot fucking figure out corned beef hash, but not today.

On the up side, those pancakes? Fucking delicious. Blackberry pancakes with a big pat of butter and maple syrup (which you have to buy, but is cheap). They did those fuckers right. It’s a good thing I got the water because I would have burned my tongue off with the delicious blackberries otherwise. The OJ is not fresh-squeezed, but is miles better than canned.

The omelets also looked amazing. I don’t have a picture because I didn’t want to be the creepy fuck who was like CAN I PHOTOGRAPH YOUR BREAKFAST FOR MY GIRLFRIEND’S EXPLETIVE-FILLED BRUNCH BLOG? but they looked great.

Oh, and in case you can’t read my bill upside-down, the whole thing came out to about $13. Fuck yeah.

So, short version: If you are in Minneapolis in the morning: go to Al’s Breakfast. Not on a weekend. Get pancakes. The end.

Main Streets Cafe – Concord, MA

Posted on July 28, 2014 by Sarah

Main Streets Cafe

We went here with my friend Julia who has managed to be her on undoing because she is so hard core that the only person worthy of being her nemesis is herself. This meant we needed to pick her up if we wanted to have brunch with her, and since she’s so fucking incredible we obviously did. She lives in the Concord area, so Talls and I packed her in our motorized chariot, begged her to try to rein in her glory so she didn’t accidentally destroy the car, and sped over to Concord center.

MSC has hella great drinks – good coffee, good tea, great fruit juice, and a mango smoothie that I believe Talls is now clinically addicted to. They also have incredible muffins that are huge and have some very interesting flavor combos, so if you’re passing through stopping to grab a muffin and a drink before heading on your way would be the appropriate thing to do. But we were there for brunch.

A buttery waffle

Brunch was… okay. It was a pretty standard affair, so if you like a basic, no-surprises brunch you’ll be fine here. I was bored. Helen’s across the way (which I have covered before) also does brunch basics but it isn’t dull the way it is here. Lots of Market Streets’ non-brunch fare is great: if you want lunch, skip the sit down restaurant and walk down to their burrito kitchen. Even their basic burritos are amazing. Brunch, on the other hand, is not their thing. I felt like they were just going through the motions. Their heart wasn’t in it.

Omelette. Hash.

It was fucking “meh” that when I looked at the pictures this morning to write this post it took me ten entire minutes to remember where the hell we had eaten. What clued me in? The chairs.

So yeah, this is not a rave review. It’s not rant of horribleness. This is a serviceable brunch, but if you have a choice go elsewhere. Or stock up on muffins and drinks and then go have brunch in one of the local graveyards. 100 extra fucking weirdo points if you do this while dressed up as a ghost!

Belated Instructions on how to 4th of Jbrunch

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Sarah

Step One: make some bitchin’ crepes.

Step Two: fill crepes with red, white, and blue filling of goddamn deliciousness.

Bluebs. raspbs, and homemade whipped cream.

Step Three: also put in some fucking crazy fruit cheeses.

Goat cheese with cinnamon and cranberry, and wensleydale with apricot.

Step Four: observe your partner through a gigantic fossilized turtle shell.

Talls and this shell can both be found at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.

And that’s how you do a true fucking 4th of Jbrunch in B-town.

Bondir – Concord, MA

Posted on July 14, 2014 by Sarah

Bondir Concord

My parents are great people. Really. They’re caring towards each other, and to me, and to other people. They raised me to love maple syrup, so the clearly did something right. They do not, however, appear to know how to determine if a restaurant serves brunch.

They invited me and Talls out to their neck of the woods for brunch and chose Bondir Concord because they’re fancy like that. Unfortunately, Bondir serves Lunch not Brunch. Goddamn it. I ordered the most brunch like thing they had and soldiered on.

My attempt at brunch – a ploughman’s lunch.

It has cheese, brown bread, and fruit preserves. That’s vaguely brunchy, right? It was presented quite fancily and was tasty enough.

And hey, the fucking latte was good.

So yeah. This wasn’t really brunch so I don’t have a lot else to say. The food wasn’t bad, but it was also pretty expensive so it’s not anywhere Talls and I would go on our own even for the meals they do serve. And Concord has plenty of great restaurants who do good food that won’t break the bank.

The place was done up pretty, though.

Brunch the Fuck Up

pretentious yet edible

Author Archives: Sarah