The Gold Prospecter-Approved Brunch We Should All Be Eating
- Neely Wynn Moore
Brooklyn, like the rest of New York, has a very, very solid game when it comes to brunch. Undoubtedly, you know the drill: piles of farm fresh eggs in gruyere or whatever, complimentary bloody mary, overpriced grits, caramelized bacon, venison bacon, bacon drink stirrer in the bloody mary, bacon sprinkles on everything. All of it’s delicious!
And yet, something is missing. Something key. Something that does, in fact, include bacon. This something is the Hangtown Fry.
For context, let’s take a little trip down memory lane… all the way to the Gold Rush! You see, this dish — still a staple on the west coast — originated near San Francisco, when legend has it that a prospector, having just struck gold, rushed (pun!) in to the Cary House Hotel and demanded the very most expensive meal they could possibly serve him.
Naturally, the result was a bacon and oyster omelette, known ever since as the Hangtown Fry.
To review, there’s a dish served at brunch (check) that includes oysters (check) and bacon (double check), and yet I have never, ever seen it on a menu in Brooklyn. How did this happen? Who can I fire? Is our collective bourgeois dream dead sooner than expected?
No, it’s being kept alive in Park Slope. An exhaustive search of MenuPages indicates that there is one lone restaurant serving up the Hangtown Fry, the Stone Park Cafe. Don’t you want to run out and get one now now NOW??
Of course you do. We salute the Stone Park Cafe for their forward thinking on this issue, and the rest of you, get your act together and make me a Hangtown. Half of you look like prospectors, anyway. You’ve been put on notice.
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.
