Harvest, Cambridge

You can have brunch a la carte but only in the (dingy) indoor bar area. You can sit in the nice outdoor patio but you need to order the prix fixe full brunch menu with more food than you really want to eat. No... wait... OK, you can sit in the patio and order only what you want. But first you'll have to explain it a second time to the next snooty waitress who will tell you, once again, that you can't, etc, etc, until eventually you wear them down. Welcome to Sunday brunch at Harvest.



The food is pretty good. The service needs work.

Union Bar and Grill, Boston

Cod cakes. Eggs Benny New England style.

Clio, Boston

I was half expecting hollandaise foam when I sat down for breakfast at Clio, 370 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA, Tel +1 (617) 536-7200. A quick flick through the Clio photo gallery reveals that Ken Oringer is quite the foam fan-boy. A trick he picked up from the godfather of foam, Ferran Adria, no doubt. But my farm eggs were foam-free, and smothered instead with a generous amount of Piment d’Espelette hollandaise. Spicy.



As innovations go, it worked quite well. A little touch of the Basque Country and a little extra kick. All perched on a bed of ham and sweet potato hash. Very nice. And at $17, so it should be.

More frugal options include old fashioned Irish oatmeal with "red & gold" raisins and brown sugar (a mere $8), or French toast with berry compote ($11). They also serve waffles, a couple of omelettes, and fancy-sounding crispy galettes of organic grains and banana with French salted butter and Vermont maple syrup. French salted butter? I thought the French preferred their butter sans salt?

For a power-breakfast venue, service was a little slow and clueless. But at least they won't be in your face while you discuss the finer points of the deal.

Glo's, Seattle

Slow food is all hip and trendy these days. Not at Glo's, 1621 E Olive Way, Seattle, WA, Tel +1 206 324 2577. It's just classic diner food that happens to come out slowly. Very slowly. So come early and be prepared to sit around and wait. Because breakfast at Glo's is worth the wait.



Despite being a humble diner, Glo's is most famous for eggs benedict, the show pony of the breakfast world. They serve five different breeds of benny: classic Canadian bacon; smoked salmon; Florentine (with spinach); Californian (with Avocado); and Blackstone (with strip bacon and sauteed spinach). Most importantly, the house made hollandaise is very good, and the hashbrowns are delicious: soft and crispy cakes of shredded spud. Yum.

Harvard Club of New York

So, the burning question: was the Harvard Club's eggs benny better than the Yale Club?

Quaff, Toorak

Toorak, home to Lou Richards, Eddie McGuire and Nathan Buckley (you just can't find a good mansion in Collingwood these days), is also home to a restaurant called Quaff, 436 Toorak Road, Toorak, Tel +61 3 9827 4484. They only do breakfast on weekends, but they do serve a very respectable Eggs Benedict.



Nice toasty muffins. Very good hollandaise. Good ham and good (but not great) eggs. The side of sauteed spinach was also very nice. And if plain old Benedict seems a bit dull, they offer Chili Eggs, which is a bacon Benedict served with chili concassee (whatever that is).

The menu is pretty much all eggs, with a couple of exceptions: toasted fruit bread or pancakes with vanilla bean ice cream and maple syrup. Bad luck if you want something exotic, like muesli.

The venue is dark and plush, a bit like the interior of the 2008 Range Rover Sport LE. So the local toffs can cruise down from Clendon Road in the "tractor" and feel like they never left the 4 car garage.

13/20 "what, no muesli?"

Lumiere, Surry Hills

Even personal trainers have PR consultants in Sydney, as I discovered during breakfast at Lumiere, Shop 13, 425 Bourke Street, Surry Hills, Tel +61 2 9331 6184. Such are the joys of breakfasting alone. You get to hear some of the funniest things.



I was planning to have breakfast at a place called Sage, to which the SMH gave a glowing review, and which has a very snazzy website. Problem was, the joint is closed. Gone. So I went to Lumiere instead.

Not that I'm complaining. My poached eggs with spinach, prosciutto and hollandaise was very good. I still prefer ham or bacon with my eggs, but at least they used good quality prosciutto. And the hollandaise was excellent.

Nice menu, too. Four fancy omelettes: roasted tomato and caramelised onion; ocean trout, creme fraiche and dill; haloumi and wilted spinach; or mushrooms, chorizo, chives and parmesan. House made toasted muesli with nuts, seeds, baked rhubarb and yoghurt. Eggs benny with smoked trout. And ricotta hotcakes with sour cherries, honeycomb and marscapone (an interesting twist on the Bills version).

15/20 "fancy omelettes"



Eggs & Bacon $12.00 BB100 +20%