The Benedict Chronicles: Early Girl Eatery
by Matt Brown
April 9 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..."
In sunny downtown Asheville, North Carolina, there is a place called the Early Girl Eatery. It is not the Easy Girl Eatery, as my deprived eyes initially suggested; that is a different argument. Breakfast eating in North Carolina is one of the key parts of its charm, as 90% of it involves grits, and grits are a good thing, in spite of what you may have heard. Even the Early Girl's "Eggs Benny" invoked the g-word. How? Why, it was served on grit cakes.
Grit cakes add to the experience measurably. For one thing, you don't spend even a minute of your eat-time clawing your way through a toasted muffin - in fact, you don't get called upon to use your knife at all. This increases your shovelling speed. If anything, the largest trouble with this Benny was simply that I gobbled it down like the building was on fire; but then, that's good food for ya.
Granted, the "Eggs Benny" at the Early Girl does not, in my view, technically qualify as a Benny. It's a damned good meal regardless, but with no hollandaise, no English muffin, and no peameal bacon (though an alternate, incorporating black forest ham, was offered), Early Girl's Benny is in fact absent every single Benny-distinguishing ingredient with the exception of the poached eggs - but who cares? It's $7.95, making this the perhaps the last civilized price for a Benny on earth, and in a world where breakfast can tend so easily towards the heavy, it was pleasingly filling without feeling like lead in the belly.
Like much of the cooking in Asheville, for reasons I've yet to suss out, this Benny is vegetarian-friendly, and I suspect it would also be gluten-free. Actually, I think it's the most veg I've eaten since I crossed the border. The "Benny" is composed of 2 poached eggs, tomato, spinach, tomato gravy, and avocado, over those grit cakes. It comes with a biscuit on the side, and I augmented the meal with a side order of biscuits and (bacon) gravy.
The result becomes a big multi-coloured mess on the plate with just the slightest invocation of a fork, but this Benny sings its business and sends you off with a smile. The eggs were cooked perfectly and the rest of the meal comes together without too much saltiness, and the flavours are brought out wonderfully by a few dabs of the Early Girl's table-ready hot sauce.
Three eggs out of four!
The Early Girl Eatery is located at 8 Wall Street in Asheville, North Carolina. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.