The Brunchcapades: Part Four

Date: Friday May 14, 2010

Time: 1:00 pm

Location: Aunties and Uncles, 74 Lippincott Street at College and Bathurst

Companion: Joe, a creative web technologist, never met but we have been "following" eachother on Twitter for about a year, claims to not be a sauce guy but smothers his pancakes in maple syrup

The story: So Joe and I don’t know each other but through the geniuses of social networking we begin to talk and realize that we know more about each other than we think we do. Meeting someone face to face with whom you have only been interacting with in a virtual sense makes for some great dot connecting. We talk about it and agree that a network like Twitter allows people to “know” each other in perhaps a much more real and candid way than any facebook or Plenty of Fish ever could. It’s pretty hard to bullshit someone in 140 characters but when given an entire paragraph or page, I could become a former model who has chosen to leave the biz to become a chef. He says that he can tell from my tweets that I am a good person and that I am happy. The fact that my small sentences have actually spoken to my real self seem like a success. What he didn’t know is that I have the voice of a child, a whiny kind of squeaky voice but hey, he said it was “soothing”.

We took our very 2010 type meeting to a very old school type joint. Aunties and Uncles is like a big piece of American pie with its’ vintage paraphernalia. It’s very diner-esque, very kitschy and one of few spots in Toronto that are open for brunch during the week. Do people not eat omelettes on a Wednesday?

The host looks like a lumberjack with his plaid shirt and big, bushy beard. He’s a character and we like it although he borders on weird. I was greeted with a, “Hi what’s this?” and can honestly say I had no idea what the f he was talking about. Apparently it translates into, “A table for ...?”

The lumberjack recommended that we share the breakfast tacos and the breakfast pocket. I started out with the pocket that really isn’t a pocket at all. A pita is a pocket. This is a focaccia sandwich. Soft, oily, rosemary infused bread is filled with ordinary scrambled eggs, congealed cheddar cheese, caramelized onions that were more burnt than caramelized, salty peameal bacon, sliced tomato and mayo. The commonplace ingredients were a bit of a snooze but the bread, oh that bread, was a real winner. It was sided with a very dilly, creamy potato salad that had flecks of crunchy mustard seeds. Not a baby green in sight; thank god.

I ate half and we switched.

The breakfast tacos were a bust. The tough “soft” tacos reminded me of bristol board and the cheese had congealed again. Bits of sautéed, minced pork are devoid of any real flavour and the ordinary scrambled eggs made another appearance. Call me crazy but tacos should say Latin or Mexican or spicy or smoky or salsa or cilantro -something. They definitely don’t say radicchio but that what was scattered on top. Tacos do like sour cream but the cool condiment seems out of place without any fire to extinguish. This dish comes with home fries. Sadly, the same dude that did the onions did these, as they were a little scorched too.

Because we were first timers we won two banana pancakes and a few pieces of simmered pear. The little cakes were fluffy with sweet, mushy insides. A drizzle of syrup, a dusting of icing sugar and a nub of melting butter completed the picture perfect plate.

We patioed it and my shoulders, like the onions and the potatoes, got a little burnt.

The moral of the story? More attention in the kitchen and a little SPF.