Category Archives: cheap, tasty brunch

Red corn pancake with fresh cranberries and pecan honey maple butter

Why is it about brunch at the Bongo Room that makes it simultaneously the best and the worst idea ever? While decadent stacks of pancakes doused in combinations of chocolate, banana and whipped cream beckon, long waits for a table are pretty much a given on the weekends, at least at the Wicker Park location. They give you coffee in cool thick mugs while you wait, but you still have to see the colorful mélange of desserts-on-a-plate swoosh by en route to other tables as you wait for what feels like hours. But when you do finally sit, as we did at the South Loop location on Saturday, it somehow makes it all worth while. I can appreciate the sweet stuff, but the salty always wins out and I end up getting a veggie omelet or salmon Benedict with dill Hollandaise sauce, and throw in a single pancake on the side to try. The restaurant is great about keeping their decadent classics on the menu, but also mixes things up with sweet and savory concoctions like white chocolate and caramel-covered pretzel, which in theory sounded amazing, but was a stomach ache waiting to happen. The red corn pancake with fresh cranberries and pecan-honey maple butter special, however, was way more my speed. I’m obsessed with red corn, which creates a slight cornbread texture while the fresh cranberries offer touches of tart sweetened out by the spreadable maple butter and powdered sugar on top. I ordered the side dish of one, but could easily have polished off a full stack. The Bongo Room, 1152 S. Wabash Ave., 312.291.0100.

I think it was my father who recently asked me what a scone was. My initial reaction was a smug, “Um it’s like, you know,… a scone. Duh.” But when I tried to actually describe one, it wasn’t as easy as I initially thought. They aren’t cupcakes or muffins, nor are they quite cake, bread, a cookie, biscotti or even a biscuit—but they sort of combine textures, flavors and ingredients from all of the aforementioned carbs into one delicious tea-dunkin’ treat that gets you in touch with your British side. And clotted-cream-filled or not, whenever I see a homemade scone on a brunch menu (as I did at Lula Cafe over the weekend), I always try to convince the table to order one to share. We let the bread basket fill us up before every other meal, so why should breakfast be an exception? Lula changes up their brunch scones, and ours was a warm milk chocolate chip (covered with those large, crunchy granules of sugar I could just eat all their own) with homemade strawberry preserves. Restaurants like Sepia and Gioco offer homemade scones on their brunch menus, and there’s got to be more. Or at least there should be. Anyone know of any others?

Milk chocolate chip scone with strawberry preserves at Lula Cafe