The Benedict Chronicles: The Bloor Street Diner's Sunday Buffet
By Matt Brown
March 7 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..."
This is a weird, irresistible entry in the Benedict Chronicles. I've looked previously at the standard Eggs Benny at the Bloor Street Diner, which is the à la carte option you can order any day of the week - except Sunday. On Sunday, the Bloor Street Diner becomes a Dickensian madhouse as a couple hundred Yorkville patrons make like the Mandarin taught 'em and get their all-you-can-eat on. The brunch buffet at BSD on Sundays is a freaking gustatorial marvel - chocolate fountains, fresh omelettes, heaps of noodles and cakes and sausages and pies and great joints of meat.
And it could not escape my attention, the first time I was there, that there was a small warming oven full of single-serving Eggs Benedicts. It runs so contrary to the very nature of the Benedict - hollandaise is a finnicky mistress, and eggs under heat lamps are prone to armed revolt - that it becomes a sickening lure, in and of itself. I can't say that these little mini-Bennies are "good" in the classic sense, but like the non-hollandaise they use at the Golden Griddle, they're almost unsusceptible to the same rules anyway. They're a species unto themselves, and occasionally marvelous.
I've had 'em both ways. I've had 'em when they're fresh out of the kitchens, and I've had 'em when the Benny I've scooped up is the last one in the tray, before the tray heads back to that selfsame kitchen. It should come as no shock that the trick is to come in somewhere in between these two extremes. Fresh from the kitchen, they're just weak-assed mass-produced Eggs Benedict, and left too long they're the same thing, but cold.
But the middle zone? Oh baby. Gooey, syrupy, velvety, melted-pizza-cheesey awesome.
It's a hard balance to strike, and obviously your mileage may vary. Honestly I'd say all-you-can-eat at the Bloor Street Diner is worth your $25 anyway, so why not? But hit that middle zone on the Bennies, if you can. If you get just the right one, as I've become accustomed to doing, you'll be in the three eggs out of four range.
The Bloor Street Diner is located at 55 Bloor Street West, on the first level of the Manulife Centre. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.