Jeroen,

Your condescension noted, I’ve worked in the restaurant business, at top-rated restaurants as a cook, chef and also sommelier, for more than 35 years, so I think I’m a bit more than “gastronomy-affectionate”. While you quote a couple of sources, one could just as easily quote both Antoine Carême and Auguste Escoffier, whom I would hope you’ve heard of, say Hollandaise should made with lemon juice (though, you could go back further to Varenne, who used vinegar), so one could argue it either way.

But more to the point, Eggs Benedict is an American dish, invented in New York in the mid-1800s at either the Waldorf Hotel or Delmonico’s restaurant, depending on which story you believe, and the traditional recipe given by both uses lemon (and interestingly, if I recall, you worked briefly at the Waldorf and would know that) – the shallots are cooked down in a small amount of vinegar until it evaporates, but then they add freshly squeezed lemon juice before or after blending in the yolks and butter. There’s nothing wrong with changing things around, but it does change the flavor of the dish, and since the intent (at least according to what I was told upfront by Mike) was to showcase a New York style brunch, it tasted different – then again, substituting ham for Canadian bacon changed the dish, as did toast in place of an English muffin – so it’s your own style and I have no problem with that. It just wasn’t quite what we’d been looking forward to, and the vinegar was very noticeable. Believe me, I’ve cooked brunch in restaurants many times in my career, and I know how difficult it is to please people at brunch – from both sides of the plate. As to the potatoes, I didn’t refer to them as hash browns, but as crispy, browned potatoes – if you term them breakfast potatoes, I have no problem with that – they were delicious whatever you call them.

Your style of cooking is excellent and you have nothing to apologize for. But, if you’re going to bill a meal as a particular style of cooking, and then serve a different style, it is only natural that someone, like us, who comes for the former may be disappointed by the latter.

Thank you so much for your write up about Prodeo’ s brunch in your blog. As usual, I read it with great interest. It gives us the opportunity to perform better every single day ahead.

Hollandaise sauce ís made, however, with vinegar. According to “La repertoire de la cuisine”, it is, quote; Réduction de mignonette avec vinaigre, presque a sec. Ajouter jaune d’œufs. Fouetter en incorporant petit a petit soit beurre clarifié. Unquote. Even Fernand Point (Who we consider the grand father of nouvelle cuisine; I would hope you ever heard of him) said that Hollandaise sauce is a “Réduction de mignonette, poivre, laurier et un bon vinaigre, montée au buerre“. Even closer to your home New York, Gray Kunz still adheres to the old school recipe, where sauce Hollandaise is nothing more than a “good quality vinegar reduction, called gastric, then emulsified with egg yolks, clarified butter, and seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper”

Like you, most people who proclaim themselves chefs, while they are merely cooks, or gastronomy-affectionate, refer to Wikipedia or other on-line dictionaries, in search for “authentic” recipes. For them, information found on internet is more important than lessons learned by working very, very hard for over 20 years in top rated restaurants and hotels. That’s why they don’t seem to see the difference between hash browns and breakfast potatoes, or deep fried and oven roasted chicken patties.

We should never forget that some cornerstones in the kitchen can’t be changed. Sauce Hollandaise is one of them. But for someone like you who has never worked in France, or in really good French restaurants, it’s an acceptable mistake.

Kind regards