STOCKYARDS SMOKEHOUSE & LARDER (699 St. Clair West, at Christie, 416-658-9666, thestockyards.ca) Complete brunches for $20 per person, including all taxes, tip and a cup of coffee. Average main $10. Open for Sunday brunch 9 am to 3 pm. A la carte menu Tuesday to Friday 11:30 am to 9 pm, Saturday 11:30 am to 8 pm, Sunday to 8 pm. Closed Monday, holidays. Unlicensed. Access: steep ramp at door, washrooms on same floor. Rating: NNNN
In some resto circles, it’s considered the b-word: brunch.
[rssbreak]
I mean, who wants that bunch anyway? Let them line up like sheep at the Hot House Café and Cora’s for French toast and recently squeezed OJ. Fie on your hash browns and hungover hoi polloi!
But ever since a certain stock market crash, just about everybody’s jumped on the brunch bandwagon. A buck’s a buck, after all.
Hoof Café set the standard high with its Thursday-through-Monday blowouts, a pork-tastic early morning card of pigs’ tails ‘n’ grits and suckling pig Benedict. There’s not a hotter table in town.
David Laurence
Such is the case at Stockyards – NOW’s best new restaurant of 2009 – or rather would be if the shotgun barbecue shack had any tables. Instead, we’ve commandeered four counter seats, the remaining eight surprisingly bum-free, though it’s already 10.
“We’ll be full by noon,” says Stockyards’ pit boss, Tom Davis.
So will we. After an opening salvo of strong French-pressed coffee ($3.50), we quickly polish off a round of chef Rachel Pellett’s superb buttermilk biscuits ($2 each) as Stevie Wonder and Funkadelic sound the wake-up call. These flaky croissant-like wonders pull double duty with Eggs Tommy ($12), a hollandaise-topped Benny stacked with house-cured Cajun sausage, buttery shrimp and a pair of perfectly poached eggs that have been briefly deep-fried à la Jacques Pépin, a heap of porchetta-spiked spuds on the side.
David Laurence
A deftly executed casserole of cheesy shirred eggs ($10) could almost be pizza, albeit one of firm whites and runny yolks dressed with smoked lardons, creamy collard greens and aged cheddar. Paired with properly scrambled eggs and tasty enough, biscuits smothered with crumbled-sausage gravy make for classic southern comfort. A dense pastrami hash (both $9) finished with chive-laced sour cream and more of those terrific deep-fried eggs works even better.
We go out with a sugar-dusted bang of dulce de leche beignets ($4 for four), saving Davis’s candied trout belly – a jerky, we’re told – for next time.
Maybe we’ll be back when brunch kicks in on Saturdays once the nearby Green Barn farmers’ market moves outdoors for the season. And we definitely won’t return as a group, since leisurely catching up with pals over Belgian waffles is as much a part of the brunch experience as eating off each others’ plates, things you can’t do strung along a lunch counter with a hungry mob breathing down your neck.
Two people, no problem. But until Stockyards miraculously doubles in size, we’ll stick to takeout.
stevend@nowtoronto.com
