Brunch Bites: The Breakfast Queen's New Book and Ada Street Restaurant's New Brunch

In this week's batch of brunch bites, get your hands on the Breakfast Queen's heartwarming new cookbook and sink your teeth into corned beef hash Scotch eggs at Ada Street restaurant.


Taste Memories


When was the last time a cookbook made you cry? Normally cookbooks don't carry the weight of something as emotionally ravaging as, say, To Kill a Mockingbird. Or the last Harry Potter book (don't even get me started). But Ina Pinkney's new book, Taste Memories: Recipes for Life and Breakfast, is a profound piece of culinary literature that will make you tear up, make you smile, make you feel inspired, and of course, make you hungry for breakfast. Through her years-long tenure on Randolph Street at her namesake restaurant Ina's, the Breakfast Queen has touched so many lives in a way that goes well beyond breakfast. I love her heavenly hots and her fried chicken & waffles, as do hordes of others, but Ina has done so much more for me than just feed me. When I'm at Ina's, I feel at home, a sentiment shared by so many. And that's precisely what her new book seeks to personify. As she prepares to close her restaurant at the end of the year, her book carries on her legacy by not only allowing people to recreate their favorite Ina's items in their own homes, but by reading stories about her life and marveling at her journey. After you've wiped the tears off your face, you'll find that there are lots of breakfast items to cook. All the essentials are in the book, from her scrapple and coffee cake to gingerbread pancakes and Bloody Mary mix. Embrace your inner Breakfast Queen. Copies of the book can be purchased at Ina's or via Ina's website.



Corned beef hash Scotch egg
(Corned beef hash Scotch egg at Ada Street)


This next bit of brunch news won't make you cry, but it will likely whet your appetite. Ada Street is one of the latest restaurants to debut brunch, served every Sunday. The quasi-clandestine restaurant from the DMK Restaurant Group arsenal is best known for its neoteric small plates and eclectic cuisine later in the day, but chef Zoe Schor is out to prove she's just as inventive in the a.m. hours. With a focus less on small plates and more on hearty re-imagined breakfast comforts, Ada Street makes their own tortilla chips for chilaquiles, bedecks pretzel bread pudding with candied bacon, layers house-cured salmon over a discus-sized potato pancake, fries biscuits for a decadent interpretation of biscuits & gravy, and glazes thick-cut bacon with chile maple syrup. One of the knockout dishes of the bunch is the corned beef hash Scotch egg, an item the restaurant is already marketing as a signature. It starts off as a standard Scotch egg for about a nanosecond, until it's sheathed in corned beef and potatoes and deep-fried. Lovers of Bloody Marys will appreciate Ada Street's Bloody Mary menu, with a traditional Bloody joined by newcomers such as The Ada made with mirepoix-, garlic-, and jalapeno-infused vodka, and The Mary Margaret, featuring house mix, Tullamore Dew Irish whiskey, and a Guinness beer back.

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