brunch at mile end.

I’d been to Mile End a bunch of times for their smoked meat sandwich and poutine, and managed to make it to one of their food coma-inducing Hanukkah dinners, but I’d mostly neglected their breakfast menu.  On a few occasions, back when I was a morning gym-goer, I’d stop by their takeout window and order a toasted bagel to go — and oh what a bagel it is!  Direct from St. Viateur bakery, Montreal bagels are, to my mind, so much better than the ones you get here in New York.  Blasphemy?  Maybe.  But then again you probably haven’t enjoyed the sweet-salty crunch of a Montreal sesame bagel before.  They’re less dense, lighter affairs, with a touch more crispness than their New York counterparts.  And it’s been a mystery to me why I don’t make more of an effort to consume them more frequently, especially since I live two blocks from the place. 

So this past weekend I finally got a chance to have a sit-down breakfast at Mile End, and there was no way I was going to not get something involving the bagel.  They’ve got a breakfast sandwich of fried eggs, chazzer (read: pigginess), and Quebec cheese, but it comes on a rye English muffin.  Bah!  They will happily swap in a bagel instead, for a $1.50 upcharge, making this a rather expensive little sandwich ($8!).  But you know what?  Totally, absolutely worth it. 

Also worth it: their smoked meat hash.  Now, don’t get me wrong: I love their smoked meat sandwich.  But I might love their smoked meat in hash form even more.  It’s like getting the burnt ends on good barbeque: smoky, crispy, a little bit chewy, and altogether transcendent.  Add it to diced potatoes, throw a couple of fried eggs on top, and sweet jesus yes.  After demolishing the fried egg sandwich, we ate every last piece of hash, down to the littlest nubs of potato and meat.  It’s as close to an ideal way to start a Brooklyn Sunday as I can imagine.