Wednesday, December 22, 2010

The Brunchcapades: The Finale

Date: Sunday December 19, 2010

Time: 2:15 pm

Location: Beast Restaurant, 96 Tecumseth Street

It's cold outside but I'm cozy inside Beast Restaurant. A small space heater hums on the dark hardwood floor beside me. The aromas seeping from the hidden kitchen start to excite my taste buds.

I've been following Beast on twitter for about two months. You can make fun of social media all you want but it works. Twitter is the reason I'm here. I've been salivating over their tweets and with Beast being a little box in a row of houses on an unassuming side street, I bet most of you have never even heard of it.

To start, French pressed decaf ($4). The waitress brings me the contraption and instructs me to wait for it to beep, press the big red button (there are three, all red) and depress the plunger. I think I did it right because the coffee tastes good.

The benny with house made pastrami ($11) is winter food. It's loaded with hot, stringy, peppery, salty pastrami and doused in a grainy mustard hollandaise that is light and vinegary.

The muffin is too dense and chewy and the plate misses hash browns. Instead the kitchen gives a handful of bbq potato chips. They are awesome chips but I can't slide them around my broken yolks. I finish with a few pretty little slices of pear and apple.

The service is scattered as she seems more concerned with brunch clean up and dinner prep. There is no quality check and for all she knows I effed up my coffee and there was a toe nail in my pastrami.

I'm not offended. Leaving me alone is way better than being a crappy server.

I will give Beast another go. They aren't jammed, I don't have to stand outside and wait for a table. The brunch menu is creative, my benny was better than good and with such juicy sounding things as biscuits and gravy with soft scrambled eggs and fried sweet breads with hash and eggs, how can I not come back?