Whenever we go to brunch with Ankit and Nora recently, it seems that we have a habit of picking places that aren’t really designed for a morning crowd. Not sure if it’s because we have collective trouble getting anywhere before 1pm, or because we just all secretly like to push the breakfast envelope, but for whatever reason, it’s made for some pretty interesting culinary experiences.

• Who: Ankit, Nora, Dano
• Where: Cleveland Park
• What: Antipasti from the bar, ratatouille, delicious pims cup

Since most dinner places obviously don’t feature egg-based meals on their regular menu, you are putting your full faith in the abilities of the chef to move out of their comfort zone and whip up something amazing, even if their day job usually involves breading chicken and stirring up tomato sauce. Your thought: Any idiot can scramble a couple eggs! How hard can it be?? So you decide to take a chance see what they have to offer. The problem is that once you’re at a nice dinner restaurant for brunch, the last thing you think you should get is an omelet. What’s the point, right? Any idiot can scramble a couple of eggs!

Now, we’ve all had breakfast for dinner—nights when Mom didn’t really feel like cooking anything more than cheerios, or our constant nagging for pancakes eventually got the babysitter to relent so that she could FINALLY get some peace and quiet to call her super cool 14-year-old boyfriend. However, aside from the occasional slice of cold pizza, for some reason dinner for breakfast has never really caught on. Go figure.

So back to brunch. There you are, late morning/early afternoon on a weekend, starving from lack of nourishment, wanting nothing more than the big juicy bite of eggs flourentine, and you’re staring at a number of menu items that are seemingly foreign to your breakfast palette. Suddenly you’re debating a young Amish chicken grilled “under a brick,” risotto with next step’s leeks, Siberian kale, erba stella & dandelion, or cold asparagus soup with roasted exotic & wild ‘shrooms, all things that may in theory sound delicious, but not necessarily what your already delicate AM (or early PM) stomach may be expecting. 

But you decide to just do it and take the plunge. In this situation, I got ratatouille with some sort of herbed farro mixed in, Dan got bruschetta with mixed wild mushrooms and Ankit got an Italian variation of a burger on ciabatta. Rather than ordering something breakfasty to start for the table, we decided to do as one would do in rustic Italy and enjoy our hearty bread basket with olive oil while taking full advantage of the mixed antipasti at the bar. After all, Dino is famous for this stuff! Who cares if it’s nine hours earlier than we would usually be eating cauliflower and green beans!

And what did we learn? There’s a reason dinner for breakfast hasn’t really caught on in this fair country. Despite our delicious meal, our assurances that we would totally go back, and even our peering at other peoples plates so that we could smuggly decide that we had ordered pretty well, there were two thing we were jealous of. Nora’s benedict and Nora’s bloody mary. Not that either looked particularly fabulous or different from any other benedict or bloody mary we had ever seen. In fact, the chef who could probably hand roll pasta in his sleep most likely wouldn’t call this one of his crowning accomplishments, and the bartender, who could identify the difference between two Chiantis with his eyes closed was probably not too excited to be tossing his delicately pickled olives into a glass of tomato juice. But in the end, there was something in front of her that wasn’t in front of us: breakfast. Smart, smart Nora, she remembered that important reason dinner for breakfast hasn’t really caught on for us North Americans: we grow up knowing that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Having it twice, is great! But skipping for the sake of stewed wild boar & pork belly doesn’t really fly. And really it’s true. Any idiot CAN scramble eggs, so next time, even if they’re a fancy Italian chef, take them up on it.