A letter from Federal Prison from Psycho Butcher, our Restaurant Critic

Dear Readers,

I have been incarcerated, unjustly, for the last few months, pending charges of arson. I should not comment on an investigation in progress, but the act was real, performed by yours truly, for very good reasons I am sure you can guess. But that is not why I am posting today. I write to once again comment on the loveliness of brunch.

Brunch is a magnificent ritual. Perhaps just as mighty as the feeling of setting torch one's enemies is the process of, having woken up from sparse hours of slumber, drunken hours after the act spent in a sonambulic playground of hard drugs and illegal sex acts, is the loveliness of stumbling into seat and ordering flapjacks the next day. This I write from prison, of course, not an omlet in sight.

So, lacking in actual pleasures, let me share my fantasies about the red velvet pancakes at the Bongo Room. They are lovely; just the right consistency, exceeding any reasonable person's idea of the appropriate portion size (this is mandatory for pancakes, because let face it dear readers, no matter how much red food coloring they felt fit to enrich the lovely mixture with, pancake fixings are inexpensive and it is appropriate to overserve guests at brunch, a nod to the begotten days of a hearty breakfast before getting behind a plow or other such rustic instrument), and topped with appropriate creaminess. The ancient bullwark of brunch in this town had not lost its heavenly status on the day prior to my incarceration, and since it was a weekday morning, I was able to walk in and sit down at a table without having to wait outside on Milwaukee Avenue, corpse paint running from an evening of smoke and sin.

Nightwood, in Pilsen, serves a fine brunch as well. Disappointing was the Eggs Benedict, actually, but impressive was the hamburger, not a brunch item at all, but ordered nonetheless by the drummer from a rival Black Metal band, a Phillistine, who had the sense to smell cooking meat from the street outside and follow his animal instincts. Both places have appropriately exquisite coffee, which is mandatory for such occasions as well.

Now that I am reporting to you, dear readers, the breakfast biscuit, or whatever it is they call the McMuffin. sendup at Hot Chocolate, has slid a bit, not from lack of love but from rushed execution, but their Hot Chocolate is something to dream about. Alone, in this dark cell, I ruminate on the Cthonian world of their Black and Tan, counting the bricks and lamenting the likelihood of lunchmeat on white bread, meal after meal, until my motives are understood and i am vindicated.