'Breakfast at Brennan's' serves up rich memories
Atlanta Constitution
by Elliott Mackle, Dining Critic
In today's post-Prudhomme New Orleans, the words "Breakfast at Brennan's" are of more historic than culinary interest.
Like "Dinner at Antoine's" (the book title on which the well-promoted phrase plays), a leisurely breakfast at Owen Edward Brennan's famous French Quarter restaurant was once almost mandatory when visiting the city that care forgot and Mama warned us about.
That was back in the brontosaur '50s, of course - when we liked Ike, loved Lucy, sighed at the fate of Blanche Du Bois and were just getting acquainted with French cooking. In those days (and at Brennan's still) la belle cuisine involved considerable amounts of heavy cream, butter, whole eggs and alcoholic flavorings.
A typical Brennan's breakfast meant eggs with thick sauces, oysters with rich toppings, grits with fancy gravy, perhaps a baked apple or salad and either bananas Foster (a Brennan's invention) or crepes suzette.
More specifically, such a meal (we didn't call it brunch then) meant drinking in the morning without any good excuse, a definite no-no in the straight-arrow decade.
And afterward? For many, a nap.
This commemorative volume by Brennan's sons - they operate the restaurant today - includes recipes for the drinks and dishes that drew celebrities, travelers and even locals to Brennan's. From Cafe Brulot and the Sazerac cocktail to Rex salad, eggs Hussarde and Sardou, crab meat imperial, various crepe preparations, bread pudding with (Canadian!) whiskey sauce and - yes, indeed - bananas Foster, the ' 50s standards are all here.
The " . . . and Dinner, Too" section of the book includes mastodon food (beef Wellington, frog legs en croute) as well as dishes more in tune with the considerable culinary developments in New Orleans in the past decade. Oysters Rockefeller soup and Oysters Benedict, though hardly diet fare, are worth space on anybody's short list of party dishes.
Of interest to food generalists, the book begins with a history of the restaurant as well as its not so successful descendants (one of which in the building now inhabited by 103 West - was located in Atlanta).
Abundant color illustrations include early menus, promotional materials, photos and letters from influential customers such as Hedda Hopper, Elia Kazan, Liberace, Curt Gowdy, Robert Ruark and Lucius Beebe.
There's also a sanitized account of family squabbles: Owen's sister Ella Brennan, once his kitchen manager, tried to take over the restaurant after his death, was forced out and now - with another brother and assorted nieces and nephews - operates Commander's Palace and a string of other highly regarded eating houses.