after dinner sneeze

t says:  My coworkers and I continued along our brunch-tour of Philadelphia.  We hit up Ants Pants and Green Eggs on two consecutive weekends last month and it was glorious!  But I have to foreshadow: one was more glorious than the other …

Green Eggs:  August 2012, Monday Brunch, Party of 5.  First things first: within 2 minutes of sitting down, it was decided that we split an order some of the “famous” red velvet pancakes for the table.  Check it:

don’t be fooled – this plate is HUGE!

When these pancakes came out, the first word that came to my head was “Cra-cra!”.  And trust me – I don’t use “cra-cra” lightly, but only it can fully capture the level of silliness/absurdity that is included in “crazy”.  I don’t know if it was the color (it’s BRIGHT red!), the shape (it’s SQUARE!), or the size (it’s HUGE).  After carving this thing up into five unequal pieces (epic fail on my part), I dove in to see if they’d taste good.  And that they were – they were “good” … at first …  You see, the pancakes were fluffy, the marscapone and chantilly cream were sweet – but there wasn’t really a whole lot going on …  Then BAM!  I came across those “chocolate morsels” and everything changed right before my very tongue.  And it wasn’t just because I’m a chocoholic, rather, it really made the entire pancake-concoction taste better!  I began to appreciate the strawberry and buttermilk and maple much more – and then … they transcended to “Awesome”.  I do want to say, however, that there is no way tat I could ever finish off a whole plate of those, as it’d probably be too rich – I’d say that a half-order would be my max.  My advice: go halfsies with someone on this dish and one other savory dish and then you’ll all be happy!

Chicken and Waffles Benedict!

But it didn’t stop there.  Green Eggs kept up the pressure with a wonderfully cooked Chicken and Waffles Benedict, with super-crisp-and-juicy chicken atop a waffle with a nice and runny poached egg (and crack potatoes … that’s what I’m calling them).  And “the kitchen sink” looked outta-control:

the kitchen sink

This dish has one of my brunchmates crying uncle well before the sink was empty.

In all, I know that I was very impressed with Green Eggs.  The food was delicious and packed with enough novelty to keep my attention.  Now if only they wouldn’t be so busy during the weekends …

Ants Pants:  August 2012, Monday Brunch, Party of 5.  Ok – by process of elimination, Ants Pants had the “less glorious” brunch, right?  Sadly, yes.  And don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t bad, but compared to Green Eggs, it just didn’t have the sex appeal.  For example, I ordered the “bacon stack”.  Sounds pretty sexy, right?

the bacon stack

As you can see, it’s not actually that sexy-looking.  On one hand, we can blame my photography – which is fair – I have no skills.  We can blame the camera – which is fair – I’m still using an iPhone 3G (the 5 is coming … then booyah!).  We can also blame the lack of bacon, however!  I mean, if it’s the “bacon stack”, then surely there needs to be a large amount of stacked bacon, right?  Apparently not.  You can barely see the bacon!  I think there were like 3 pieces on it … but they obviously weren’t the focus amidst the the salad and the tomatoes and the eggs.  I mean, really, the bacon could just as well not have been there, as it was covered/masked by all the other stuff.  So the balance of the overall dish was off.  The eggs could have been seasoned more aggressively.  The salad was unremarkable.  The biscuit didn’t really have much flavor/texture.  And then bacon … the bacon … it was just some plain ‘ol bacon – not particularly crisp, not particularly flavorful.

After peering at other’s dishes, I have to say that I don’t think I would have enjoyed theirs any more than mine – it all looked so predictable and kinda boring.  But don’t get me wrong: nothing was “bad” – it was all quite edible.  And I guess if you’re not in the mood for something sexy/sweet/fattening, then everything’s just fine and dandy.  But for me – I’m going Green Eggs …