Euro Nosh
Brunch may be as American as pie à la mode, but these days midday menu prospectors are panning the Continent for distinctive and flavorful nuggets.
Meryle Evans reports.
Bored with eggs Benedict? How about smoked scrambled eggs with brandade at Lacroix, the soigné restaurant in Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Hotel, or Neapolitan-style purgatorio ("eggs from purgatory"), eggs poached in tomato/fresh oregano sauce, a favorite at New York City's San Domenico.
Pancake selection ho-hum? On Sunday mornings chef/owner Rick Tramonto is flipping frittelle, Italian crêpes topped with blood oranges and vanilla mascarpone, at his brand-new Osteria di Tramonto in the Westin Chicago North Shore Hotel in Wheeling, Illinois, while in New York City's Greenwich Village at Kurt Guttenbrunner's Wallsé and Blaue Gans, chefs are shredding fluffy pancakes for Austrian Kaiserschmarren, topped with cinnamon apples and rum-soaked raisins.
Brunch may be an American institution, but menus at this relaxed hybrid weekend repast are going global, ranging from eclectic international to the cuisine of a particular region or a country whose inhabitants link Sunday to a proper lunch. Less serious than dinner, lighthearted but not lightweight, brunch is the ideal razzle-dazzle meal to focus on new flavors and experiment with dishes that often find their way onto the regular menu.
"It's not the traditional brunch, and that's why people come in," says Michael Fiorello, executive sous chef at Lacroix, explaining the restaurant's lavish prix-fixe Sunday buffet that begins in the dining room and continues in a "really beautiful, impeccable kitchen" where guests have a chance to chat with the chefs while they check out the array of gratins and carving stations.
"When you walk into the restaurant," Fiorello continues, "there's a raw bar, a caviar station, and a huge table filled with hors d'oeuvres, and because everything is small, you can sample little pastries like the Venezuelan chicken salteñas, Moroccan chickpea barbajuans, or jambon croissants, along with demitasse soups including cucumber/spring pea with tomato compote and wild rice popcorn, gazpacho consommé, or a shot glass of summer melon gelée with Champagne foam." To ensure that the patron who comes when brunch starts at 11 a.m., as well as the latecomer who arrives at 3 p.m., receive the same quality experience, Fiorello keeps small trays on the buffet and does a lot of cooking á la minute in the kitchen. The many international selections at the hot table include lamb tagine with lemon scented couscous and grilled Vietnamese-style wild boar loin with ginger jus. For the eggs with brandade, the yolks and whites are put in a pan in the smoker with hickory chips, then softly scrambled and served with a gratin of salt cod that has been marinated overnight with garlic, bay leaf, and thyme, then slowly cooked in cream and whipped with extra-virgin olive oil. Pastry chef Fred Ortega orchestrates his own dessert extravaganza that features a "liquid nitrogen station" for a dramatic frozen curry/coconut foam with citrus gelée.
The kitchen remains off-limits to guests at the Ambassador Grill in the Millennium UN Plaza Hotel across the street from the United Nations in New York City, but, behind the scenes, chefs of all nations are preparing The Most International Brunch in Town. Executive chef Scott Rossi explains, "We have Jamaican, Asian, Indian, Spanish chefs—a pretty good cross section—so when I started planning brunch menus, I realized these guys all have something to bring to the table. They re-create the authentic dishes they grew up with and eat at home—real tandooris, jerk chicken, Peking duck with steamed buns." At the Tuscan antipasto station there are platters of melon and prosciutto, grilled calamari salad, and an array of Italian crudo, cheeses, and salads; the carving station offers prime rib with Yorkshire pudding, horseradish cream, and bread sauce. British breakfast lovers appreciate Scottish smoked salmon, applewood smoked bacon, and English bangers. From western Europe, Austrian cider braised chicken, beef Stroganoff with spaetzle, and Parisian mille-crêpes continue the international theme. "We play with the menu every week," says Rossi, "and when something goes well, it shifts to our regular menu. Right now we have an appetizer of seared sea scallops in a tropical fruit sauce with fried plantain chips that was born at brunch."
Scallops also morphed from brunch entrée to dinner appetizer at Dona in Midtown Manhattan, where executive chef Michael Psilakis highlights Mediterranean cuisine, with an emphasis on Italian and Greek. "My parents came from Greece," says Psilakis, "so for the brunch menu I thought about what we normally eat and tried to interpret that for Americans." The seared sea scallops on Dona's three course prix-fixe brunch sit atop a warm salad of cauliflower braised with cinnamon and are served with very thin wild asparagus imported from France, wilted spinach, and a tart cherry/caper/sage/brown butter sauce.
Another example is an appetizer of Black Mission figs stuffed with whipped feta, Gorgonzola, and tiny chiles, wrapped in prosciutto, and grilled, so you get "this chewy salty sweet funky flavor, enhanced by a small wild green salad tossed in a light vinaigrette and some rusk toasts that are brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with a little cumin, fennel, salt, and clove, and toasted in the oven." Even the sheep's milk pancakes, served with sour cherry preserves, toasted almonds, clove spiced honey, cinnamon, and zabaglione cream, have a distinctive flavor profile. But, Psilakis cautions, preparing for a once a week meal means changing the mind set in the kitchen. "You don't do eggs and waffles during the week, so you have to wipe the slate clean every Sunday."
Another challenge is to create a successful mix of ethnic fare and American brunch classics. At Italian establishments like New York City's San Domenico, a cream of borlotti bean soup with unshelled spelt coexists with blueberry pancakes and maple syrup; bomboloni, zeppoli, and panini vie with a New York bagel and stracchino cheese that accompanies a platter of smoked fish. But the star of the Sunday show is proprietor Tony May, who has turned over the reins of the restaurant to daughter Marisa May but still comes by on the weekend to whip up organic egg dishes in the dining room. "The brunch is something my dad dreamed of for many years," says Marisa, "but we only started a year and a half ago." In addition to the Neapolitan purgatorio, there are frittatas of artichokes, zucchini, or onions with potatoes, a variety of omelets, and more unusual dishes like carpaccio of beef with thin slices of goose liver and essence of raspberry, plus wonderful Italian sweet breads.
Tramonto, another breakfast fan with an Italian background, admits that by having a dinner-only restaurant, Tru, for eight years, "I never made breakfast except for my three kids." Now he's indulging his enthusiasm at Osteria di Tramonto, with an open kitchen and wood-burning oven, focusing on his family's Old World favorites as well as recipes gathered on a recent trip to Italy. Sicilian-style eggs (poached in a spicy tomato sauce, similar to purgatorio), D'Aosta-style frittata (with Italian sausage, greens, fingerling potatoes, and fontina), and wood-roasted artichokes with poached eggs, spinach, and pecorino dolce are among the reasonably priced à la carte items on the menu, along with doughnuts filled with ricotta and raspberry jam for dessert.
While the menu at Osteria di Tramonto is tightly edited to only eight items, executive chef Daniel Amaya at Dino in Washington, D.C., offers a large à la carte brunch that includes listings under Piatti Americani (American dishes), Piatti Piccoli (little dishes), Piatti Grande (large dishes), and Contorni (sides). A wide range of Italian dishes include, in the small plate category, lightly braised meatballs, saltimbocca, roasted whole garlic with Gorgonzola and tomato mostarda, and fried squid with a creamy mustard aïoli. Pasta is prominent on the big plate menu: wild boar ribbon pasta with a traditional spicy Tuscan sauce of boar, onions, and herbs, topped with pecorino, and lasagna with fonduta and crispy smoked veal bacon.
It's all small plates—i.e., tapas—at hot Spanish spots like Jaleo, executive chef José Andrés' Washington, D.C., gastronomic home base, where five dollars and change will produce butifarra Catalana con setas, crumbled pork sausage with mushrooms and fresh thyme, or, a Spanish classic, huevos a la Cubana, fried egg with white rice, fried ham, fried banana, and tomato sauce. At Toro in Boston, chef/owner Ken Oringer says, "People want to have fun when they go to brunch, so traditional dishes are too limiting. You have to cover all the bases. But I'm not an egg eater, so I came up with hamburguesas de Kobe, mini Kobe beef burgers with smoked tomato aïoli and pickled red onion, and pressed buccadillo, a sourdough sandwich filled with Marcona almond butter, quince, and bananas." For patrons who do equate brunch with eggs, huevos revueltos, farm eggs scrambled with lots of finely crumbled chorizo, diced precooked potatoes, and onions on grilled sourdough has been popular since the à la carte brunch debuted last summer.
If hamburguesas can snare a spot on a Spanish brunch in Boston, then why not cornbread at another beantown restaurant, the French Provençal Sel de la Terre? "I won't lie," confesses chef/owner Geoff Gardner, "I'm a New England boy, and sometimes my roots surface." But the focus has always been France at this casual harborside spot, where, Gardner comments, "I try to think about things that are familiar to people but then do different twists." Among them: an eggplant/goat's milk cheese puree with olive oil and toasted black walnuts; crêpes with toasted caraway seeds, smoked chicken, Brie, and mushrooms with Mornay sauce; and niçoise salad with seared peppered tuna.
In New York City, where bistros and brasseries abound, restaurants like Les Halles, Orsay, and Pastis lavish omelets and poached eggs with classic sauces. The venerable Capsouto Frères in TriBeCa adds another element: soufflés, a weekend crowd-pleaser for over 25 years. "We always have half a dozen savories," says Jacques Capsouto, one of three brother/owners, "such as salmon and mushroom/cheese. The sweets are switched seasonally, except for chocolate and hazelnut, which are always available. People come from all over just for the soufflés."
A different sort of soufflé, Austrian Salzburger Nockerl, is the signature dish at Wallsé. Chef de cuisine Paul DiBari spreads a layer of huckleberries in a gratin dish, then tops it with three mounds of pastry cream made with stiffly beaten egg whites (representing the three hills of Salzburg). Baked in the oven, "it soufflés up a little so it's brown on the outside and soft inside, probably one of the best desserts I've ever had," says DiBari. Wallsé's waffles are on the savory side, served with smoked trout, whitefish mousse, and mâche salad; for really hearty appetites there's sliced steak with spiegelei (fried eggs) and the shredded potato pancake known as rösti. At the more casual Blaue Gans, guests tuck into chef de cuisine Martin Pirker's sandwiches of wiener schnitzel or pork belly on sourdough bread, pork/veal weiswurst with a companion pretzel, and kaskreiner, a pork/beef sausage with horseradish and mustard.
Sausages also abound on the menu at nearby Alfama, but the accent is Portuguese: chouriço, the traditional pork sausage, flambéed tableside with the sugarcane-based alcohol aguardente; caldo verde, the national soup made with potatoes, collard greens, and chouriço; and a scramble of eggs and diced tomatoes delicately flavored with farinheira, a pork/flour sausage, served with a side salad and paprika dusted fries. Because so many local Portuguese flock to Alfama on Sunday, salt cod is de rigueur, and executive chef Luis Caseiro's bacalhau Espiritual is a velvety gratin of cod with shrimp and a São Jorge cheese crust. "Our philosophy, basically," says co-owner Tarcísio Costa, "is that while people in Portugal go to lunch on weekends, being in New York, we, so to speak, do as the Romans do. We switched to à la carte, with heartier dishes that appeal to our Portuguese clients and lighter ones for Americans."
That freedom is expressed in myriad imaginative brunch menus that are expanding the repertoire to offer what Guy Beringer, the Englishman who coined the word brunch in the 1890s, called a meal that is "cheerful, sociable, and inciting…and sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week."
