Haute Cuisine

Who would have thunk it? Apparently, I'm a culinary trailblazer. For years, I recognized the gustatory kinship between breakfast and dessert. People called me crazy, but the truth was undeniable. What's the difference between cookies and Cookie Crisp? Or between pies and Pop-Tarts? Breakfast is nothing more than premature dessert.

Now the big-name, big-time chefs of the world are beginning to see what I saw. And when I say "big-time" chefs, I mean it. These are the kind of guys who put together meals that sell for $50 a plate, meals with names that are legally required to include at least fifteen syllables in three different languages.

The question: do the meals actually sound good? They look very pretty certainly, but so does the Mona Lisa, and I'm not eager to stick that in my mouth anytime soon. The beauty of breakfast is its simplicity, after all. Break down a waffle all you want, it's still going to be a waffle. When you start to dress things up with sauces and flavors and aromas, you destroy its essential goodness.

Then again, though...some of this stuff does sound quite good. Listen to this one:

For Corton, in TriBeCa, the pastry chef Robert Truitt created a sweet variation on an egg-in-the-hole. Slices of brioche sautéed in clarified butter and honey and sprinkled with fleur de sel represent the bread: a pure white mousse with intense coffee flavor stands in for the egg white. The yellow center is passion fruit jelly beaten with olive oil and Greek-style yogurt.

Mmmm...it sounds delicious, even though I understood only half of those words. If this trend ever catches on, I might be willing to eat at a restaurant fancier than a Wendy's.