No truckers were harmed in the making of this brunch.

Brunch is not usually the most thought-provoking meal of the day, but the what I encountered this Sunday at Little Giant has had me musing all the way home to the Upstate. The brunch menu includes the Trucker's Breakfast:

Soft-scrambled eggs, hand-sliced slab bacon, andouille sausage, wild mushrooms and tomato gravy, all atop grilled Texas toast, side of housemade molasses baked beans. $15

I did not check for Teamster cards, but the clientele seemed to be about what you would expect for Sunday around noon on the corner of Broome and Orchard -- likely to be employed in sectors of the economy other than transportation. The food, also,  is not what you might expect to find at a truckstop, or similar establishment. Thus, we have people who are not real truckers sitting down to eat food that is not what real truckers generally eat.* The point here is not to suggest that this is somehow inauthentic or misleading, because no one actually expects to be able to toast an actual knight of the highway with a Grey Goose screwdriver. And yet, this idea of an actual trucker eating his actual breakfast is critical to the experience of eating a fancy brunch on the LES. Indeed, the specter of Waffle House haunts the entire proceeding, and that factor is critical. The management serves food that it knows is much better than Huddle House or 76 to patrons who know it is much better than Cracker Barrel or Bob Evans. But pretending that it is a trucker's breakfast, by subtraction, works to highlight the aspects of the meal that one would not encounter at a truck stop. Thus "hand sliced bacon," "wild mushrooms" and suchlike take on an additional cachet. The ghost of the trucker makes the $15 plate of scrambled eggs make sense.

The biscuit and gravy proceeds through a similar logic:

Buttermilk-chive biscuit, two poached eggs, thick Canadian bacon, roasted garlic-herb gravy. $12

This dish actually has more in common with some curious offshoot of Eggs Benedict than with biscuits and gravy. For the sake of comparison, Chick-fil-a's biscuits and gravy, pictured at left. Little Giant's B&G is real food with real ingredients, Chick-fil-a's is chillingly monochromatic. Again, presuming that the LG clientele has some vague notion of normal biscuits and gravy, labeling this dish thus signals its superiority through its inauthenticity. "Delightfully inauthentic" might not seem like a quotation to clip and save, but it is not damning with faint praise.  Need another bloody, Jean?

*Based on a recent and fortuitious conversation the cinetrix had with the long-haul trucker who hangs out at our local, I gather that the corner of Broome and Orchard is a location that inimical everything a trucker might seek in a restaurant.

Comments

[michael]

"Superiority through inauthenticity" would seem like a basic trope of ludic upscale menuspeak. Think of Thomas Keller's "soup and sandwich" and "coffee and doughnuts" and "macaroni and cheese" and his salmon cornet. He says it makes the diner feel comfortable to be greeted with familiar things.

[Rose's Lime]

Why is biscuits and gravey made with ingredients other than flour and shortening "delightfully inauthentic", but Monkfish Osso Buco is an abomination? Italians vs. Truckers... discuss.

[Eater]

You should check out the "Hipster's Brunch" at the Flying J on Rte. 90 outside Pembroke.

[Fesser]

You should check out the "Hipster's Brunch" at the Flying J on Rte. 90 outside Pembroke.
If memory serves, that's a cassette of Sufijan Stevens b-sides, wrapped in a pair of American Apparel y-fronts, and served with a PBR reduction?

[Eater]

Exactly. Dusted with a "cocaine" of mashed potato mix.