Birthday Brunch at Zeus

Let me state right up front that I require breakfast. I need my fast broken almost as soon as I wake up, although I know that most people feel differently about the first meal of the day. And while I've lived with several men (not concurrently, mind you), not a one of them considered breakfast the necessity that I do. I accept that I'm the odd man out on this one.

But on my birthday, I'm not going to get up and have my usual oatmeal and fruit. Nor did I have to because I have a friend who wanted to take me to brunch at 10:00 this morning (in his defense, when we made the plans, I didn't know the extent of my birthday eve plans or I'd have suggested something closer to noon). So by 10:10 or so, we were ensconced at Zeus Gallery Cafe with nearly every other table already taken (including one with a shrieking child...'nuff said).

We both got the Olympic breakfast, with bacon and scrambled eggs for me and sausage and fried eggs for him. My friend had quizzed our server on the nature of the toast, hoping it would be toasted brioche like what they use in their French toast, but was told it was artisinal bread instead.

Artisinal bread makes for fine toast with an unusually good toast crust, but it also requires copious amounts of butter and jam. After all, one must have a sweet element to balance the saltiness of the potatoes, eggs and breakfast meat, no? The meager amount of butter and jam originally served had to supplemented within our first slices and, truth be told, could have used another replenishment. Birthday or not, what's the point of toast without a thick schmear of butter and jam?

My friend admitted that he'd considered bringing along a birthday candle to insert in my food and decided against it. But it wasn't a birthday candle I needed, it was a big old breakfast, which I got. It may have been a little short on butter and jam, but it went a long way toward mitigating last night's Corazon before tonight's debauchery.