One of My Favorite Dining Trends

In late June of 2023 I posted on my fondness for the growing trend of restaurants serving brunch all week long. More recently, my friends and former colleagues, Helene and Kamala, took advantage of that with me for our last couple lunch outings. 

First, Helene and I – minus Kam, who was under the weather – checked out Honey’s Sit ‘n Eat in the Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia. They’ve been around for a couple decades, and I had wanted to try them when they first opened. But their popularity and uniqueness at that time – before the weekday brunch trend had taken off – meant waiting in long lines to get a table, and various circumstances prevented me from doing that. While they’re still popular, the lines have died down since those early days, and this was a case of better late than never.

As you can see, the atmosphere is both charming and homey, if a bit cramped. 

Honey’s menu, which can be viewed by clicking on the above link for their home page, has less of a Jewish accent than it used to. Corned beef on rye, which I had hoped to try 20 years ago, is no longer an option. So I decided to go the breakfast-food route instead and ordered French toast with bacon and a pair of over-medium eggs. Helene was feeling more like lunch and went for a chicken fingers platter with fries. 

We were both very satisfied with our choices. The only difficulty we had was related to the small size of our table. There was barely enough room on it to hold everything we had ordered along with the condiments that were already there when we sat down. Nevertheless, we forgot about this minor inconvenience as soon as we took our first bites.

Helene’s chicken fingers platter hit her spot and was big enough to take half of it home for a second meal.

My challah French toast was perfectly done and tasted fantastic with butter and maple syrup. The thick bacon was some of the best I’ve ever had, while the eggs were prepared precisely to over-medium.

Kam was disappointed to miss out on Honey’s, so the three of us may return there for a future meal. But for our most recent outing – just this past Friday – we opted for another all-week brunch spot, this one in South Philadelphia – The Dutch. 

As the name indicates, they have a bit of a Dutch – and Pennsylvania Dutch – accent. What attracted me most while browsing their site was the presence of Dutch Babies on the menu. For those unfamiliar with them, they’re large, oven-baked, eggy pancakes that I became familiar with via several meals at outlets of the Original Pancake House while traveling. 

The Dutch is a bit smaller than Honey’s, but equally charming and also with a woodsy decor. 

While the menu has a nice array of breakfast and lunch-themed items, we all opted for the former.

Kamala ordered cheesy scrambled eggs with bacon and toast, while Helene and I both chose the sweet Dutch Baby topped with mixed berries and sliced bananas. 

The bacon on Kam’s plate looked fantastic and she called the eggs, which had Cheddar cheese mixed in, some of the best she’s had.

The Dutch Babies looked a little different than I was expecting based on the ones I’ve had before. They weren’t quite as big and the sides weren’t raised as high as I anticipated. But they still looked spectacular.

Here is a photo of one I had at an Original Pancake House outside of Buffalo in 2019 for comparison-sake. 

Our Dutch Babies were extremely light with the expected eggyness, and the mixed fruit was a perfect addition. I also added a bit of maple syrup. If we had gotten them without the berries and bananas, they’d have come the more traditional way, which is simply with slices of lemon in addition to sprinkled powdered sugar.

Helene, Kam and I had been going to ethnic restaurants – Chinese, Indian, Italian – for the most part when getting together for our periodic lunches until these last couple. While I wouldn’t be opposed to heading back in that direction, I’d be just as happy to keep taking advantage of one of the Philly dining scene’s most enjoyable trends – weekday brunch. 

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It’s taken roughly ten months for it to happen, but I finally feel the urge to blog on a regular basis again. I’m not going to return to doing so several times per week, as I fear that the urge will leave much quicker than it resurfaced if I try that. Rather I intend to put out one post most weeks and will do that on Tuesdays whenever possible.

While I won’t go back to specializing in posting on cheesesteaks, they will pop up from time to time, possibly as early as next week. I’ve been meaning to try a Philadelphia steak purveyor that has been garnering raves since they started baking their rolls in-house and may do that later this week.