BY WENDELL BROCK
"America's Best Breakfasts: Favorite Local Recipes From Coast to Coast." By Lee Brian Schrager and Adeena Sussman (Clarkson Potter, $23)
Two years ago, Miami-based food-fest founder Lee Brian Schrager and his recipe-developing sidekick, Adeena Sussman, served up “Fried & True” (Clarkson Potter, $22.50), a crisp little volume of fried-chicken recipes from around the country.
Now this duo is back, eating their way across the USA in pursuit of the nation’s best breakfast fare.
Ethnic-food lovers will be inspired by the Filipino steak with garlic fried rice from Uncle Mike's Place in Chicago or the malawach (Yemenite fried bread) from 27 Restaurant in Miami. Healthy eaters can rise and shine to baked oatmeal with raspberry compote and candied pecans (from Half & Half in St. Louis) or summer granola (from Sofra in Cambridge, Mass.). There's even a guide to America's best Bloody Marys.
While “Fried & True” included a good half-dozen recipes from Atlanta, this time our brunch-loving town does not make the cut. The South is represented quite deliciously, however: shrimp and grits from Charleston’s Hominy Grill; biscuits with country ham and redeye gravy from Houston’s Blacksmith; creole file gumbo from Li’l Dizzy’s in New Orleans; and many others.
For some readers, this will be a cooking manual; for others, a travel guide to keep in the glove box for the next “Route 66”-style road trip.
And many of the recipes are prefaced with family memories and historical footnotes. Take the calas cakes (fried rice balls) from The Old Coffeepot in New Orleans. Apparently, Louisiana law allowed slaves to buy back their freedom if they could earn their price, and female slaves sold calas in hopes of escaping bondage. That, says New Orleans food expert Poppy Tooker, is more powerful than a beignet.
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