The "B" Word | Photos by Matthew Filipowich

I have always been a bit hesitant towards the word myself. I thought brunch was a typically bothersome title given to a meal that didn’t fit within the standard pre-planned three-meal mold of childhood. My youth rarely gave me the opportunity for such late-morning explorations and when the word was finally introduced to me, I didn’t really understand the concept. I was confused that people would try to cram a meal in before lunch, and then have to wait until dinner to eat something truly substantial. Acclaimed New York chef and host of No Reservations Anthony Bourdain is a man who shares my doubt:

Then there the People Who Brunch. The "B" Word is dreaded by all dedicated cooks. We hate the smell and spatter of omelettes. We despise hollandaise, home fries, those pathetic fruit garnishes, and all the other cliché accompaniments designed to induce a credulous public into paying $12.95 for two eggs. Nothing demoralizes an aspiring Escoffier faster than requiring him to cook egg-white omelettes or eggs over easy with bacon. You can dress it up with all the focaccia, smoked salmon, and caviar in the world, but it's still breakfast.

Yet we must be missing something crucial, for there exists a veritable mess of devotees to brunch that cluster around several locations around the city that offer this meal. To properly understand this phenomenon, I decide to check out a few of the newer brunch locations in the city to discover why they set up shop.

Simply Nosh Bistro (2210 Dundas Street West):

In a hapdash arrangement of tables throughout the space, I choose a table at the front at the window that has a view out down Roncesvalle. Several pieces of local art hang on the wall, and a plush Scooby Doo has been placed inexplicably in the corner, along with other antique nick nacks that have been scattered in the space.

The menus are all loaded into old vinyl LP covers, and I’m given “The Plan” by the Osmonds, a Mormon concept album complete with passionate religious quote inside: “As man is, God once was – As God is, man may become,” right above my potential order. My fellow bruncher receives the Best of Earth, Wind and Fire, but perhaps due to the frightening hyper-pure photo of the boys on my menu, neither of us order from the menu, and order instead off of the board posting specials hung beside the kitchen at the back of the bistro. I order the ratatouille omelette served with herb roasted seasoned potatoes, organic salad and toast.

Oddly enough, I find out that when the owner of the bistro Steven Khor worked and trained in New York, he worked in a bistro called Les Halles, and Anthony Bourdain is one of the partners.

“Brunch is not for everyone, I agree, but it is huge in Europe and I'm surprised Chef Bourdain didn't accustom to it. You can't beat the price compared to fine dining and not many can afford fine dining. Besides, fine dining is not always healthy yet it is always expensive, whereas brunch on other hand is usually less than $10 and eggs have complete minerals and are a good source of meat alternatives.”

I’m not sure Bourdain would sympathize with any idea of necessary alternatives to meat, but I think Steven has a good point, and he certainly makes the comment from a solid foundation of fine dining. Steven has worked internationally in fine dining locations as far away as Kuala Lumpur in Lafite at the Shangri-la hotel, and at oft-touted North American locations the Plaza Hotel in New York, and Epic (formerly the Oakroom) in the Fairmont Royal York.

“The fact is that I wanted to make a fine dining location, but due to the recession I've decided to open a brunchy bistro. As I see it, many greasy spoons are being replaced gradually by more upscale healthy options, which makes it more interesting. I'm a nutritionist so breakfast to me is the most important meal and should not be missed. Portion size, vegetarian options and minimal use of oil are my style of cooking and hope I will make people realize breakfast comes with different variety.”

For the ratatouille omelet, Steven chops zuchinni, yellow squash, eggplant, red bell peppers, yellow bell peppers, and red onions, then cooks everything separately with seasoning, oregano and parsley, and then sautés the vegetables in olive oil and drains the juice. After baking the resulting ingredients he stuffs the ratatouille into the centre of the omelet and folds the ends. He garnishes the plate with potatoes that are seasoned with oregano, thyme, paprika, onions, peppers, and salt and pepper. The organic salad mix is drizzled with homemade garlic and Dijon dressing, and there is strawberry jam for the toast in a basket placed on the table.

“Delicious, simple food has always attracted me – basically, a one-page long menu with a variety of pastries that are made in house. Eggs can be cooked in hundreds of ways and can accompanied with interesting ingredients that are unimaginable. What brought me to Nosh's is what I dreamt for many years and has finally happened.”

Steven has won several awards in Escoffier competitions in Toronto and Malaysia. In 2007, he was awarded a designation as Canadian Chef de Cuisine (C.C.C). There are only 1600 across Canada and the position is recognized internationally. The residents in the Dundas West neighbourhood have had transit cut out for several months due to construction, but the Dundas west streetcar now takes you directly to this location: the service is extremely friendly and the food is certainly worth a trip.

Karine’s (109 McCaul Street):

I come to the Grange food court late morning, negotiating my way through standard quick-fry asian cuisine stands, a dingy bubble tea and the eventual fast-burger joint – in this case, McDonalds. Luckily, before resigning myself to a mistaken sense of direction, I stumble upon the location that Karine’s has taken over. Owner Maggie has created a more unique booth than their fellow in house competition: the owners chalk up the black underbellies of purple-speckled counters in order to display key menu items. Flowery pink and brown wallpaper supply the backdrop, supplemented by hanging black signs showing cropped photographs of the menu items. Silver ornaments hang off bejeweled silver lines, which seem more of permanent fixture of the booth than outstanding holiday decorations.

The menu prices here are extremely low, the highest priced meals on the menu ring in at $8.99, a short list that includes a smoked salmon eggs benedict and the AGO-themed King Tut special, with two fried eggs, sausage, regular and peameal bacon, and two pancakes or pieces of French toast, which the Egypian pharaoh would have eaten had he any accessibility to Karine’s.

However, I have read positive reports on their waffles, so I order the peanut butter banana waffles for $7.99 and sit down at a cafeteria table with immovable fixed chairs to wait for my order, served on a large green plate with a slew of fruit: orange, pineapple, watermelon, strawberry join the four large wedges of thick waffle covered with chunks of banana, and lambasted with fruit syrup and icing sugar with a touch of cinnamon. A dimly lit food court has never particularly put me at ease, so the ambiance around may be a little off-putting, but the shining center that Karine’s occupies successfully resists the void that the rest of the Grange occupies. I was disappointed that I was not able meet Maggie, the professed spunky entrepreneur that transformed this simple booth into a successful brunch spot, but I returned later in the day to find her available for a chat.

Extremely pleased that we had stopped in to talk, she immediately offers to make a smoothie, which turns out to be their special Vegan soy drink, made with a blend of mixed berries, bananas and soy. She sits down to share her opinions about the dank underground that constitutes the Grange.

“One problem is Karine’s is very hidden, students call it hidden gem. It’s like we are part of OCAD, the students are very comfortable with us. But I miss my restaurant – this is going to be the last one in a cafeteria. Like a caged bird, I want to be free again. But that’s not an issue these days, I made this place and I love it.”

The Grange actually looks at her menu to make sure she doesn’t sell anything too similar to any of the other vendors. Apparently the bubble tea people initially made a stink about her sale of the smoothies, but none of it hampers Maggie whatsoever. Fresh from the sale of her popular GTA mini-chain of breakfast diners called Maggie’s All Day Breakfast, she named the new brunch spot after her daughter Karine, who was in her last year at the Ontario College of Art and Design when she pointed her mother to the location across the street. Maggie has given the students from OCAD a local inexpensive brunch option and they are her primary business.

“This is Karine’s area, and I think that students are very nice people – this is our generation and I want to be part of it, otherwise I don’t like to be inside as much. I’m very lucky that I get to work with my daughters, we’re what I call ‘the women.’ Not that I have anything against men, we love men! But at this point I want it only to be us.”

Karine’s is actually an entirely family-run affair: Maggie’s mother acts as the cornerstone of the kitchen, and Maggie’s other daughter works as well. When I mention Anthony Bourdain Maggie lights up, for I had sent her the quote beforehand.

“Oh my god good luck baby, he’s hilarious whoever he is. Tell me again what he said about vegetarians.”

Even more despised than the Brunch People are the vegetarians. Serious cooks regard these members of the dining public - and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans - as enemies of everything that's good and decent in the human spirit. To live life without veal or chicken stock, fish cheeks, sausages, cheese, or organ meats is treasonous.

So she takes a bit of a stab at Bourdain’s terminology:

“It’s different than Hezbollah! They eat meat but only Halal meat, vegans don’t eat meat period.”

But she is truly serious about her brunch business and as you can see from the rather meat-centric King Tut special, she doesn’t only cater to Vegans:

“I didn’t want to kill our breakfast from Maggie’s. Most of our dishes are gluten and animal product free, but our meat lovers, I have a big respect for them. When in a business like this you can’t say ‘This is how I am,’ I have to please everybody. We do the best we can, and a bit more.”

Littlefish (3080 Dundas Street West):

As I walk into Littlefish, late-morning glare illuminates the front of the bistro, overwhelming what looks like the most comfortable seat in the house, a padded bench that wraps around a small window nook. Light purple cabinets in the front hall display the baked goods for the day. The bistro’s light-blue painted walls match a chair and couch, juxtaposing the primarily exposed brick interior. Small bulb lights hang overhead and a long metal exhaust winds around the ceiling. I take a seat closer to the kitchen on a plush bench that spans the back wall.

The daily scramble, a holdover from Carey’s days at his diner Okay Okay, contains polish sausage, peppers, onions, and fresh parsley, but I cannot pass up the highly recommended huevos:

Served with a slice of watermelon, the huevos is a whole wheat tortilla stuffed with three eggs scrambled with jack and mozzarella cheese, as well as spiced black beans, with three piles laid on top: one of fresh salsa, one guacamole and one sour cream, all laced with green onions. I spill the piles and sweep them into a single layer in preparation for a large, well-crafted portion of omelette-filled burrito.

As I’m finishing my meal, Carey Wesenberg enters from the kitchen and takes a seat with me. After starting out of school cooking French cuisine for the head of a prepared-food outfit that he had previously managed, Carey opened the Mockingbird, a bar previously residing on King Street West that he stayed with for ten years. He later opened the diner Okay Okay in Leslieville. He switched into breakfast because nowhere else satisfied his breakfast need.

“I only open places that I want to eat at myself. I feel that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and I love brunch items, I think they are the hardest things to cook well.”

When I mention Bourdain’s quote I ask if he’s being needlessly malicious, but Carey doesn’t seem to think so.

“I understand his point of view: for Bourdain, it is beneath him to cook eggs, because it is easy to throw an egg together and build the framework around it, but not everyone can cook eggs well. In high-end cuisine there is a certain brunch customer that expects more than a dish of eggs with eggs – they want a certain flair and a whole attitude, not just cooked eggs because of the money involved.”

Carrie describes a high-end atmosphere complete with cocktails, coffee, and great chef interpretation of eggs, and that takes time. At a café, it’s not necessary that you have a quick turnover, but you certainly need a consistent turnover to profit. In high-end, you get people who expect a two to three hour stay; brunch becomes more of an event. The café has traditionally not been oriented for long stays, rather a place to grab a quick bite. He explains to me that opening a neighbourhood bistro seems like the safest, most self-assured option in these economic times:

“The café has been completely obliterated: the café has turned into a coffee shop and the bistro has filled the vacancy left by the café, so lots of people are opening new bistros. You go to a bistro to grab something really nice and roasted, or a medium price hot meal and a glass of wine. This is when you see the success of places like Pizzeria Libretto, where people that have a high-end background end up doing more accessible food – high quality, but not necessarily the price. The high-end market is very saturated, and it’s hard to get people to come out for an expensive meal, especially in these economic times. Even people in higher income brackets are now more conservative and look for value.”

I certainly smirk a little when I note the $12 price tag on the heuvos, only one dollar short of Bourdain’s estimate, but the price is valorized in the quality of the meal: the guacamole is so smooth and not too heavily spiced, leaving room for the cheese and the stronger taste of the beans packed inside, a dish that unites several different factions into a singular, delicious whole. When I mention the quality of the guacamole, my server Dave tells me that the guacamole is Michael Ondaatje’s favourite guacamole in town since the days of the Mockingbird, and Carey fills me in on the story:

“There were so many different events and literary readings he would come to at the Mockingbird, and he really liked to be where the guacamole was. He was always surrounded with fans, but he just wanted to enjoy the guacamole. We would set up three or four stations so that he could move around, excuse himself from a cluster of people to talk to someone at the other side of the room, grab some guacamole there, always moving so that it was close at hand.”

Carey could never stay away from the kitchen; even after exploring other post-secondary options, and despite the stresses and high-paced atmosphere that usually dominates the profession, he always came back. The manner in which he approaches his menu is markedly different from Maggie’s approach.

“The places we do are not for everybody, and we don’t try and make it for everybody, I make it as best as I can. Even if you are the worst, most obnoxious demanding restaurant customer, I can’t take it out on your food. I can’t make it rotten because the food did nothing wrong – I really just love food.”

The heuvos has been a patron favourite since he introduced the meal at Okay Okay, and one of his customers went so far as to liken the completion of the meal to the afterglow of an orgasm.

“It’s like sex: afterwards you’re completely satisfied but with the heuvos you don’t have to talk, deal with feelings, and you don’t have to ask them to leave. When you’re done, just push the plate away.”

I thought that was a worthy argument to justify the popularity of the meal, and finally one that a man as outspoken as Anthony Bourdain may finally accept.