The Mouth: Australians all too often get eggs Benedict wrong

Once upon a time it was a special treat you’d dress up for. Now it’s everywhere, overpriced, and (generally) kind of crummy, writes The Mouth.

Eggs Benedict is sort of like food’s answer to air travel: Once upon a time it was a special treat you’d dress up for, now it’s everywhere, overpriced, and (generally) kind of crummy.

Indulge, for a moment, a trip down memory lane.

As a child, this column remembers older family members talking about his grandfather’s eggs Benedict.

He wasn’t much of a cook, but about once a year he’d take over the kitchen in his outer suburban compound, a strangely Japanese bit of domestic architecture built around a courtyard and stuffed with trophies from a career adjacent to the public eye.

When the spirit moved him the whole family would turn up and he’d be there behind the pans, whisks flying, double boilers burbling, vinegar reducing, butter clarifying.

Eggs Benedict seems to be the one thing cafes can’t get right, writes The Mouth.

Considered “too rich” for small children, it was something of a rite of passage when you were allowed at the table for this feast.

Fast forward an unmentionable number of years and that child is now a man who found himself the other day in the presence of a café “Benny” with flaccid hollandaise served on cadaverously grey hash browns the size of Whopper patties.

Oh, and for some reason, there were jarred jalapeños of the sort you may or may not put out on Taco Night tucked under the eggs.

At that moment we understood why Anthony Bourdain had such a contempt for brunch in general and this dish in particular.

All in all it’s been a pretty big climbdown for a dish that was invented by a hungover stockbroker (Lemuel Benedict, don’t you know) who as per the Wall Street Journal stumbled into New York’s Waldorf Hotel and ordered “ “buttered toast, crisp bacon, two poached eggs, and a hooker of hollandaise sauce.”

This of course asks as many questions as it answers (how did English muffins and ham become the new orthodoxy, for one thing) but it is also a testament to the power of slow evolution.

Sunday Brunch - Eggs and bacon Benedict at the Velo Precinct, Victoria Park. Picture: Dianne Mattsson

For this column’s money, Australians all too often get this wrong, serving it atop a paving brick of dry toasted sourdough (brioche is actually the go here, as is a proper hollandaise made by clarifying the butter first and not just throwing it in holus bolus in chunks).

Paradoxically the places that turn the greatest volumes of the dish tend to serve the worst examples – think hotels where everything comes in paint drums.

Alternatively one can find near perfect variations at any of a number of small cafes around town, but it takes a bit of (happy) research.

For our money the best in town at the moment is at the Pig & Pastry at Petersham, and we wish our grandfather was around to give his verdict.