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 "Work has been kinda slow since cartoons went to color. Boop-boop-be-doop" Hungry for a greasy breakfast, we take the concierge’s recommendation and taxi to the Michigan Diner (220 E Michigan St). The menu is ordinary: eggs; eggs and toast; eggs, toast and a side of bacon, sausage, hash browns or American fries.
What’s the difference between American fries and hash browns? Is there any difference between American fries and home fries? I order French Toast with two eggs, a menu combo that lends itself to more breakfast-food pondering.
The Michigan Diner gets points for authenticity–an un-ironic, grungy diner. A giant ceramic Elvis poses in the right front window and an oversize Marilyn Monroe vamps in the left window. A plastic Betty Boop baits customers from the countertop.
A “Stop Diabetes” pamphlet is stacked on the counter next to a green metal bucket of Dum-dum lollipops. Three on-duty cops relax over coffee in the center of the room.
After breakfast, we walk from the downtown end of the Riverwalk to the north end near our hotel.
Completing a lazy morning, I relax and digest in a giant wicker cave of a chair in the Aloft hotel’s courtyard, an open-air, sparsely-furnished patio. Check out some photos of Milwaukee’s Riverwalk.
 Mader's German Restaurant Milwaukee is both my former home and my adopted hometown. Every return visit feels like a homecoming. But this visit to Milwaukee will be a little bit tourist trip.
I want to see and do the things I always meant to see and do. One, I have never eaten at Karl Ratzsch’s or Mader’s, the two remaining stalwarts of the German restaurant triumvirate that once reigned in this town. (The third triumvir, John Ernst, where I dined many times, closed in 2001.)
Since Mader’s (1041 N. 3rd St) is only two blocks from the hotel, tonight’s choice is easy. At Mader’s, the Germanness is everywhere you look: the wall plaques, the steins, the ostentatious glass-encased suit of armor and the inexplicable enormous upholstered chair in the foyer. The dining room chairs look medieval, hard and short, made of dark wood with wine-glass shapes cut out of the back.
 Mader's Beer Sampler Gene orders a beer sampler, six juice-size glasses with beers arranged from light to dark. I drink a Chardonnay La Crema. Gene selects a wiener schnitzel and sauerbraten platter for his main course. I order the only fish dish on the menu, grilled salmon with wasabi cream sauce. As the only fish dish, I worry it will be perfunctory and boring. So wrong! I also order a side of spatzle, fried gnocchi-like German dumplings. I talk Gene into sharing a Schaum Torte, the classic strawberry-and-meringue mountain of a dessert.
We stop in the German Beer Hall (1009 N. 3rd St) for a draft. I want Gene to see this bar, but I don’t know if is just too early in the evening or if we are too full to enjoy it. The narrow barroom is nearly empty and we leave half our beers on the bar.
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 My first visit to Tribeca Grill was sometime during my first year in New York, in 1992 or 1993.
I was overly impressed that Robert DeNiro owned the restaurant that I WAS EATING IN. I really thought DeNiro might be standing quietly at the end of the bar, notice me and my friends and raise his glass to us in a subtle Robert-DeNiro-kind-of-way.
Tribeca Grill’s longevity is not unheard of in New York restaurants, but against the odds. Many restaurants that were once white-hot dissolve into the ether of the forgotten. Good restaurants too—not just the trendy ones. A New Yorker’s memory is short.
Each annual update of Zagat’s contains a tribute page of once-loved restaurants that bit the dust in the last year. Oh yeah, I remember that one . . . too bad, but where are we going to eat tonight?
Celebrity-owned restaurants have an especially high mortality rate. Remember Planet Hollywood? Remember Britney Spears had a restaurant for five minutes? Five points if you can think of the name.
Gene and I ate at Tribeca Grill for the billionth time recently. The place has become a standard for us. Not trendy anymore, like its sister restaurant next door, Locanda Verde, but comfortable. The brick walls emit a homey warmth and the upside-down sombero chandeliers, well, what can you say about the audacity of lit-up, upside-down sombreros?
I ordered an red-wine braised octopus salad and herb-roasted monkfish with lobster ravolini. Gene had the charcuterie plate as an appetizer and the alaskan halibut as a main course. A booth and a bottle of wine made our late, romantic Sunday night dinner perfect.
Will Tribeca Grill still be there next year? The year after? I hope so.
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 Met friends at The Crosby Bar for brunch Sunday.
Checked out the online reviews first, of course. Every reviewer ranted about the cocktail prices that apparently go boldly where no others dare to go. Some just raised an eyebrow and some ranted on. They are right; starting at $18, cocktails at the bar-restaurant in the new Crosby Hotel will turn Joe Six Pack into Joe One Tap.
Fortunately for us, G. and I are on a cocktail-hiatus but we still approached with trepidation. I picture crowds lined up outside, squeezing in to wait for their table to be called, and oh the noise, said the Grinch. As happens so often, I was wrong.
G. and I arrived first, so we have time to look around. The spacious room is half empty. The hostess is polite and doesn’t make us wait until our whole party arrived to be seated.
The decor cannot be labeled; it’s retro, it’s modern, it’s homey but not cluttered. I am so tired of the minimalist gray and black decor that screams I am trendy. Candy-colored fabric covers the booths in front, earth-tone fabric lines the back area. A Fifties-style cluster of neon-colored lamps hang from the middle of the room, but the lamps against the walls are old-fashioned wrought-iron.
The ladies room is worth a visit, even for aesthetic reasons. Two winding floors down, the restroom is larger than some studio apartments, with a pink chairs and marble walls. Two little girls with their mom dart from one thing to another, awestruck at the pink chairs and other pink accents among the gray marble.
The food? Okay. Pretty good, even. Worth the price? No, but it’s great to spend a relaxing couple of hours with good friends in a great atmosphere. The Crosby Bar may draw Beautiful People, but the comfortable atmosphere allowed no Beautiful-Person chill to enter the air.
 I stand corrected.
I have always believed Eggs Benedict, America’s ubiquitous brunch dish, was invented at Brennan’s, the famous New Orleans restaurant. I ate the best Eggs Benedict of my life there–two poached eggs as spherical as globes, the lava of its yellow yolks popping out and running thickly down the mountain sides, captured by the craters of its muffin base.
The meal was a beautiful, three-course breakfast accompanied by champagne, lots of champagne. Indeed, the best breakfast of my life.
The question of the dish’s invention came up while G and I were scarfing yet another variation of standard Bennies at our local deli–salmon instead of Canadian Bacon and inventively, a potato pancake instead of the muffin. I stood by my belief in Brennan’s but G was sure the dish was invented right here in New York.
Word around the internet is, that Eggs Benedict was birthed either at Delmonico‘s in New York’s Financial District or the Waldorf-Astoria uptown. Delmonico’s claim of credit for the invention of many dishes raises my suspicion (the hamburger? really?).
Even Brennan’s own website does not take credit for the Sunday brunch staple. Their menu calls Eggs Benedict a”traditional dish”, but does take credit for Eggs Hussarde.
The description from Brennan’s online menu:
EGGS HUSSARDE
(A Brennan’s Original)
One of the dishes that put
“Breakfast at Brennan’s” on
the map. Poached eggs atop
Holland rusks, Canadian bacon
and Marchand de Vin sauce.
Topped with Hollandaise sauce.
Suggested Wine – Sauvignon Blanc
Surfing around Brennan’s website, I realize what I really ate that day was their Eggs Ellen, a bennie variation with salmon.
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