The Benedict Chronicles: The Westover
By Matt Brown
August 22 2010
"...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 visited Stratford with my parents a few weekends ago to see Christopher Plummer kick sweet usurper ass in The Tempest, and we stayed at the Westover Inn, where Plummer himself used to stay “back in the day.” There are pictures of him everywhere, which might be called alarming. I call it awesome.
I can sniff out a Benedict on pretty much any menu; the fact that one was not formally listed on the Westover’s breakfast menu was only a trifling concern. They serve poached eggs on smoked salmon on a latke, drizzled with lemon hollandaise; that’s a Benny in my book.
The breakfast room at the Westover is bright with large windows and the place settings are immaculate. They make their own banana jam which is not part of the Benny itself, but can be ordered as a side. It’s among the nicest places I’ve ever been served a meal.
The not-quite-a-Benny itself suffered only moderately by the fact that in general terms, the smoked salmon substitution (called Blackstone elsewhere) is not my favourite thing. Nonetheless, it was beautifully handled here, with huge pieces of smoked salmon under a pair of perfectly poached eggs. The potato latke, too, is a fine substitution for the traditional English muffin.
A surprising disappointment were the side-along tomatoes, which really should have nailed the meal but did not end up impressing me. This was only a minor concern.
The Westover Inn is located in St. Mary's, Ontario. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.