The Popular Breakfast Dish Chefs Hate To Put On The Menu

Homefries, banana pancakes, and waffles stacked high taste even better when you don't have to make them yourself. But when dining out for brunch, it helps to know there's one popular breakfast dish that chefs hate including on the menu: eggs Benedict. If the dish has been axed from your favorite brunch spot, it's probably because it's a pain to make and serve in fast-paced kitchens. Ask a range of chefs, and you'll hear a chorus of caution about the dish. In an interview with The Takeout, Chef Clifton Dickerson of the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts notes that while eggs Benedict is a good dish, "hollandaise sauce is temperamental."

In the classic breakfast, hollandaise is served atop poached eggs and ham on a toasted open-faced English muffin. Making the creamy sauce involves whisking egg yolks, butter, lemon juice, and spices over a double boiler (though it can also be made in a blender). But the preparation is less troublesome than maintaining the sauce's correct temperature, which can be tricky at restaurants. "If it's not made to order or held just right, you can end up with a broken sauce or something that's been sitting too long," Dickerson explains. You should never let hollandaise sauce get cold (or hot, for that matter) since the emulsification of butter and eggs will break. Hollandaise is best kept at room temperature, which poses food safety risks when dealing with eggs, especially when trying to feed hungry customers.

Anthony Bourdain cautioned against restaurant hollandaise sauce for its finicky temperature constraints and food safety risks. Beyond the hollandaise, though, there's another key element that contributes to the resistance against putting eggs Benedict on the menu: the poached eggs. If you've ever tried making poached eggs at home, you know they're delicious but not for the faint of heart — or the rushed line cook. Poached eggs require precision while swirling them into gently simmering water to cook. Done incorrectly, restaurant menu poached eggs can come out as what Justin Cucci, Chef at Denver's Root Down, calls "snotty looking—and tasting" (via Reader's Digest). Truly, no one wants that.

Since eggs Benedict on brunch menus can be a miss (not to mention, a risk), you might be better off making the dish in your own kitchen, where you can control the temperature of the sauce and poach your own eggs. After all, in a cooking tutorial for the sauce on Facebook, Martha Stewart says, "Hollandaise is one of those very special sauces that I think everyone should learn how to make." When making the dish at home, though, remember to serve and eat it promptly for the best quality — a task that can be hard to achieve at restaurants. Tasting Table recipe developer, Jennine Rye, notes in her lemony hollandaise sauce recipe to eat it "straight away, as it is best fresh and isn't easily reheated."

Static Media owns and operates Tasting Table and The Takeout.