The Pleasure of a Weekday Brunch

I once had a friend who refused to go out to brunch on the weekends.

“Restaurants are packed, there are lines everywhere, and the service sucks,” she declared.

This friend of mine believed the only reasonable time to go brunch was a weekday. I once met her at Rick and Ann’s in Berkeley for brunch on a Wednesday and marveled at being able to waltz into the restaurant and be seated within 30 seconds. It is true, on a weekend the wait would have been at least 30 minutes.

Since I work from home I too could banish weekend brunches from my life—but that would mean giving up brunch with my friends who work in offices, something I am never going to do. Still, I must admit, there is a certain secret joy in going out to brunch on a weekday, of boldly lingering over your meal mid morning when most people are off working. It is somehow more indulgent, more luxurious, more of a treat than a weekend brunch. And you do get your pick of tables.

That is why I was doubly delighted to get a call from Michelle, a friend of mine who moved back east two years ago to take a job at a glossy magazine. She was in town and wanted to know if I could spare some time on Friday for brunch. A glance at the schedule told me what I already knew—I was busy—but I couldn’t resist the lure of a weekday brunch with a much-missed friend. I shifted some tasks and planned to meet her a Zazie in Cole Valley for brunch.



Zazie is a favorite of mine, though I do not go there often. I reserve it for special occasions and special people—and a good friend in town fits the bill perfectly. The restaurant is a 15-minute walk from my house and offers a small, sun-drenched café interior and an outdoor patio in the back draped with a gorgeous flowering trumpet vine. All the food is pretty good but I go to Zazie for one thing: the pancakes.



I am not normally a pancake kind of girl. I find they sit in my stomach like lead, making me feel like I ought to go out and chop a round of firewood or plow the fields. Pancakes are great fuel for an all-day bike trip or backpacking excursion, but I find them too heavy for a day in the city. Except for the pancakes at Zazie. There is something special about them—they don’t weigh you down. On a recent visit our waitress confided that the musician Tom Waits has recently been in the cafe and declared their pancakes to be the "best pancakes in the world." He knows a good pancake when he sees one, that Tom.

I have two favorite pancakes at Zazie. On rainy winter days I like comforting gingerbread pancakes with poached pears, but on sunny days I opt for the amazingly light and delicious lemon ricotta pancakes with lemon curd and raspberry sauce. It’s year round pancake goodness at Zazie.



After big hug from my much-missed friend, and our choice of tables in the café, we placed our orders and the talk began to flow. We reminisced about bike trips and backpacking excursions we have taken together (fueled by many pancakes) and talked about our lives, loves, and work—Michelle’s job as a magazine editor, my job as a book editor.



Our work conversations are especially interesting because we could have easily taken each other’s path—me on a glossy, Michelle in the book world. I am fascinated by the role Michelle plays at her magazine—commissioning stories, dealing with writers, attending the National Magazine Awards ceremony (well hello, Graydon Carter). She, in turn, wants to know about how I orchestrate a complete revision on a novel, interact with writers, deal with agents.



We’re both curious about—and if truth be told a little envious of—what the other is doing, and this leads to a conversation that is temping and tantalizing in the best way possible. We’ve come a long way from when we met eight years ago—working as unpaid interns at a travel book publishing company, following our passions with the hope that they would not lead us astray.

There are miles we want to travel yet. When I tell Michelle how impressed and proud of her I am she looks at me funny, her head tilted to the side. “Sometimes all I want to do is go to Africa to write about women and war,” she tells me. I confess that sometimes all I want to do is travel the world, writing about culture and people and food.

But we have time to get there still—and with a plate of pancakes like this, we’re well on our way.



ZAZIE’S RICOTTA PANCAKES WITH LEMON CURD AND RASPBERRY SAUCE
This recipe is included in the book Savoring San Francisco: Recipes from the City’s Neighborhood Restaurants (second edition).

Zazie’s ricotta pancakes are light but not fluffy; they are moist and tender with ricotta and egg; they pair perfectly with the sweet tang of lemon curd, and the deeper, more intense flavor of raspberry. Like a great conversation with a good friend, the kind that leaves you bouncy and excited about life, these pancakes are the perfect start to any day. They’d even be worth the wait for a brunch table on a busy weekend day.

For the Pancakes:
4 eggs
1 cup whole milk ricotta
5 tbs unsalted butter, melted
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbs lemon zest, grated
canola oil

Separate the eggs. In a large bowl mix the ricotta cheese, butter, egg yolks, and the vanilla. Stir until mixed and set aside. In yet another bowl combine the flour, sugar, salt, and lemon zest. In a small bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff and glossy.Mix the dry ingredients into the ricotta mixture and stir until blended. Carefully fold in the egg whites until smooth. Heat a pan on the stove, with enough canola oil to film the bottom, and pour one cup measurements of the pancake mixture into the pan. Cook for three minutes each side, making sure not to press down on the pancakes in between.

For the Raspberry Sauce:
1/2 cup red currant jelly
1/4 cup raspberry jam
10 oz frozen raspberries, thawed
2 tbs sugar

Combine all ingredients in a heavy, non-reactive saucepan. Simmer at low heat, stirring occasionally, until thick (10-15 minutes). Cool before serving.

Lemon Curd
Yes, Zazie has a lemon curd recipe, which is perfectly acceptable. But for my money the best lemon curd comes from my friend Mrs. B (the secret, I think, is the bits of lemon zest in the curd). Check out her lemon curd recipe. It's unbelieveably good.



Beside the pancakes, another one of my favorite things about Zazie is the back patio and the amazing trumpet vine that wraps around it. The vine is 150 years old and snakes its way through all the backyards on the block. Recently, the bar next door to Zazie wanted to cut the vine (boo, hiss), but the management at Zazie was able to broker a deal and save the flowers.