Breakfast/Lunch Cusp

Like I said, we might get some chickens. We would need a variance. The chickens would lay, with a signalling cackle, and we’d relieve them of their responsibility. Next thing you know, egg sandwich coming right up!

Yes, yes, I know this is not an egg sandwich. But I was in Milwaukee where it’s okay to actually sit down to eat your breakfast. And I don’t mean in a car, while commuting.

DC is not a breakfast town. Too ambitious here, too fast, too gotta-get-up-gotta-go-to-work. You gotta travel if you want your eggs on a plate.

Other spots, they know what to do. My theory has something to do with the sad fact that DC did not come up with much industry other than government. NO WAY you’re gonna find a diner here, puffing out clouds of bacon vapor in the midst of a sea of warehouses at midnight.

Anyhoo, I wasn’t working, cause I wasn’t home, and I wasn’t eating breakfast in the dead of a.m., more in it’s waning moments. In Milwaukee. Around 11. As in a.m. Time it just right and you can have breakfast AND lunch. Simultaneously. Very efficient. Those government dudes would approve.

I do know of one place in DC. (Okay, there is more than one) that serves a superb breakfast. Market Lunch at Eastern Market is top notch for breakfast and, if you’re clever, you can get the last order of buckwheat blueberry pancakes and the first order of bbq. It’s a gamble. A bit of Saturday morning excitement. Yep, start her off with salty, squishy bbq on a bun and finish up with syrup drips and berry bits in your beard.

What about Milwaukee again? And hey, what about them sandwiches?

This. Mmmm. This is a French Dip at Benji’s. Benji’s is the deli I would like to find across the street from where I stand, no matter where I stand. Sunny and hushed with molded plastic booths, friendly, low-key service, and horseradish on tap.

Have you had a French Dip? My soul dip experience was on the other side of the kitchen door, at another place in Wisconsin, where the chef did not have a deli-fied bone in his ample body. The “au jus” (huh?) was very brown and very salty and was very distantly related to a cow. At Benji’s the meaty juice has a tasty swirl of fat orbs atop it. It was tricky to dip that big ole sandwich in that narrow cup, so I sloshed it onto the bread instead.

Corned beef at Benji’s is just that. Corned beef, sliced casually, on regular rye. Plain. That takes confidence. Corned beef at Benji’s is all that.

The egg dish? Hoppel Poppel. Actually Super Hoppel Poppel.
That’s the last I’ve seen of breakfast on a plate in a couple weeks. Back to the grind now. Scraping crumbs off my carseat.

One egg sandwich coming right up, and put legs on it.

Frank, a bear, and Ernest, an elephant, specialize in taking care of small businesses while the owner is away. When Mrs. Miller hires them to run her diner for three days, they assure her that they will take good care of it. Then Frank decides they must learn diner lingo before they begin. For an order of a hot dog with ketchup and a dish of Jell-O, Ernest yells, “Paint a bow-wow red, and I need a nervous pudding.” And for a vanilla milk shake with an egg in it, to go, Frank calls out for a “white cowmake it cackle and let it walk.”