The Benedict Chronicles: Bar Mercurio
by Matt Brown
March 28 2011
"...as plate after plate of fluffy poached eggs, cartilaginous peameal, and lakes of sunshiney goo continued to pile up over time, I realized that if I don't start catalogueing these excursions in some formal manner, a great field of human knowledge would be lost. Hence, the Benedict Chronicles..."
I read an article a while back about how intensely brunch-obsessed we have culturally become, and how the proportional dislike for brunch among the world's serving staff has likewise increased enormously. As such, I am generally sanguine when mistakes happen on an order during brunch-times - they are crazy, crazy times - but this ease of attitude is brought about more by a pragmatic awareness that there ain't nothin' anybody's gonna do about it, anyway. There was a time when, in restaurants, if you ordered one thing and something completely different came to your plate, the restaurant would execute double backflips to earn back your good graces - usually through reductions on the bill or promises of future free meals - but no more. Nowadays if you get an apology, you're lucky; you're more likely to get an explanation, i.e. "it was really busy, I guess I didn't hear you."
Anyways. This has little to do with Bar Mercurio, where I've had an excellent (non-Benedict) meal in the past. It's more to do with the other inalienable reality of an order screw-up: if you just accept your lot and eat what you get, you will endlessly compare it to the phantom ideal that lingers in your mind; if you send the order back, then the entire meal will be weighed against whether it was worth waiting extra time and kicking up the fuss over - to say nothing about the fact that an eggs Benedict prepared in haste is always going to be a dodgy, dodgy business.
This one is no exception. What is up with that hollandaise? Actually, I don't think in this case one can even use the term fairly: that isn't hollandaise on top of my eggs, it's an omelette, and tasted like one. I don't know if the meal was blowtorched, broiled, or put out under the sun, but sauce is supposed to be liquid, and mine wasn't. Adding to the weak faring was the ciabatta bun upon which the Benedict was based: it was too thick, and the Mercurio table knives couldn't make heads nor tails of it. The entire table shook when I tried to cut off a mouthful.
In the plus column, the eggs were flawless poached right into the velvety centre of "medium" that I like so well, and the asparagus was a nice touch. The hash browns, too, were surprisingly good; I'd have liked more of them. I chose the salmon Benedict for this review, and the flavour was delightful and salty, without becoming overpoweringly fishy.
I was made to pay $13 for this meal, which is the cost of the incorrect order that was brought to me first, and not the actual sticker price for the salmon Benedict, which is $14 - though I doubt my price was due to anything other than an unwillingness to change the order in the system. A few people thanked me for being so nice about everything... but that was after they saw me with my camera.
Two eggs out of four!
Bar Mercurio is located at 270 Bloor Street West in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.