Breakfast at Brennan's - A New Orleans Eye-Opener
The Ledger
by Trent Rowe
Bacon and eggs, biscuits and sausage gravy with grits, eggs and scrapple.
Breakfast is different everywhere you go, but nowhere is it more different than at Brennan's in New Orleans.
You eat in a converted mansion built in 1795. The entrance to the 550 seats in 12 dining rooms is the old carriage-way of the house at 417 Royal St., in the heart of The French Quarter.
Now it leads to a courtyard where you wait for a table while sipping a libation, most too strong to be enjoyed before the sun is over the yardarm.
Breakfast, when your reservation is called and you better have a reservation - is a thing of beauty and a joy to the credit card company.
How about $25.75 for ham and eggs, or $35 for steak and eggs? A three-course prix fixe meal is $35. It is an appetizer, an egg dish and dessert.
As a meal, it's too much. As an experience it's worth every penny.
Enjoy your time in the courtyard. It's part of the charm.
Magnolia trees shade the iron tables and chairs, and paddle fans create a breeze. Gas lights take you back in time, and a fountain and pond with fish and turtles take you to another place.
Don't jump when a leaf falls in your drink.
Linger too long and you will be salivating from the smell of crusty French bread baking inside.
Listening is very important as you wait for your table to be called. Someone answers to our name and we wait 45 minutes to get another table. We get apologies, a drink on the house and a table on a first-floor terrace looking out on the courtyard.
Where else but at Brennan's could you sit down to breakfast at a table set with three spoons, two forks, one knife and butter on a plate over a silver bowl of ice. Baguettes wrapped in a napkin sits across a bread basket.
We are near the station where a pair of waiters melt sugar and flame liqueurs to make Bananas Foster and Crepes Fitzgerald.
The smell should be illegal - or bottled and sold. Bananas Foster was invented in the restaurant kitchen in 1951, and now the restaurant flames 35,000 pounds of bananas a year. Two bananas make a portion.
Our waiter, Mario, is brother to Carlos. They come from Mexico and have been serving breakfast at Brennan's for decades.
"They call us the Mario Brothers," he says.
The hardest part of breakfast at Brennan's is choosing what you will have-from 14 cocktails, seven "omelets," 10 egg dishes, nine meat dishes, five seafood selections and three desserts.
The easiest way is to pick from an inclusive meal.
"A Traditional Brennan's Breakfast" is oyster soup, eggs Benedict, sirloin steak with fresh mushrooms, hot French bread, coffee and Bananas Foster for $50.
"A Typical Creole Breakfast" has Egg Sardou (a poached egg dish), Grillades and Grits (sautéed baby veal with Creole sauce and herbs, and a bowl of grits), hot French bread, coffee and Crepes Fitzgerald. That's $45.
"A Typical New Orleans Breakfast" has a baked apple with double Cream, Eggs Hussarde ( a poached egg dish), hot French bread, coffee and Bananas Foster. That sets you back $35.
My wife starts with the Southern Baked Apple in Double Cream. It doesn't look like much, all brown and soft, and it's not sweet. But there's lots of cinnamon flavor. The inside is pink from the skin, and the lightly sweetened heavy cream tops it beautifully.
They poach a lot of eggs in Brennan's kitchen. They do it in water, not a steamer, so the eggs don't look like yellow bull's eyes in perfect, white hockey pucks. The edges tend to be a bit ragged.
What they are on, and what's on them, is what makes different dishes.
I try Eggs Bayou Lafourche. That's poached eggs on spicy Cajun sausage - called andouille on Holland rusks, topped with hollandaise sauce.
My new truism: He who hesitates has cold eggs.
There is a hint of lemon in the sauce. The rusk (a slice of dried bread) helps get all the sauce.
The andouille I had the night before this meal was spicy, but Brennan's version tastes good without the hot spices.
We have a little show on the side as one of the Mario Brothers melts sugar with butter, splashes in banana liqueur and flambes a pan of Bananas Foster on a burner beside us. It gave another tourist a chance to get his picture taken with an authentic Brennan's waiter doing the bananas thing.
Loaves of bread are like large bread sticks. We devour two of them while waiting for the main attraction. They are messy but good.
My wife's Eggs Ellen, is two home-style poached eggs perched on a tender filet of red salmon. The fish is - as too many menus say in error - cooked to perfection, moist but done. Broiled tomato is the garnish.
Grillades and grits is three thin pieces of veal in a platter with lots of bits and pieces of onion, and peppers and some hot peppers. You know when you bite into a seed from a hot pepper.
Our half of the Marios had brought a clean knife before the main courses, but I don't need it for the veal. My fork just about falls through it.
I'm spoiled for grits forever after this bowl. These are as smooth as cream and have tiny dots of yellow. A little brown sugar and I could almost forget Bananas Foster - almost.
Things are done right here. Our waiter crumbs the table before dessert.
Crepes Fitzgerald was invented at Brennan's. It's thin crepes filled with cream cheese and sour cream that's flambéed with maraschino liqueur.
Mario melts butter in a pan, then adds sugar and strawberries that had been marinated in orange juice and lemon juice. A splash of liqueur and a tilt of the pan ignites the alcohol. It's as much fun to watch as it is delicious to eat.
The smooth, cool filling contrasts with the hot berries, bringing out taste and texture sensations.
Bananas Foster comes in a glass dish spread over and around a mound of vanilla ice cream frozen into a cupcake shape. The result is heavenly.
Creole Chocolate Suicide Cake is a gift from the waiter. Folks at the next table were given it, too. It's three layers and three chocolates with a roll of chocolate and a truffle on top in a pool of white sauce.
There is so much variety on the menu that you could have breakfast at Brennan's every day for weeks and never repeat the meal.
I have a big box at home where I am squirreling away coins so the next time we are in New Orleans we can again enjoy breakfast at Brennan's.