Sunday Brunch: Upstairs on the Square

It should come to absolutely no surprise that one of my favorite TV channels is the Food Network.  Last week, I had the Food Network channel on and it was playing an episode of The Best Thing I Ever Ate.  I absolutely love this show because it is mindless food porn and I often watch it while I'm playing around on my laptop.  As I was writing a blog post, I was absentmindedly watching the show when I heard Sunny Anderson describe that one of the best things she ever ate was a delicious dish of eggs Benedict.  Since I am a huge fan of poached eggs, this immediately caught my attention.  When Sunny Anderson went on to say that these eggs Benedict were from Upstairs on the Square, I knew that I had to try them out and the following day, Bret made reservations for us for Sunday brunch.

On Sunday, we arrived at Upstairs on the Square for our 11:30 AM brunch reservation.  Although it was a beautiful day out, the temperatures were slowly rising so we opted to sit indoors for our meal.  I've been to Upstairs on the Square before and each time I am so charmed by the delightfully pink tea party decor.

To start off the meal, I ordered a glass of sparkling rose wine (Manoir de la Tête à Claques Rosé
(Saumur)).  I thought that ordering a pink beverage was completely appropriate for Upstairs on the Square!

Bret and I were excited about our bread basket, which contained miniature breakfast pastries, including the most delicious bite of coffee cake and sticky buns.  The miniature sticky buns never made it in the photo since we eagerly devoured it!

I didn't even have to look at the menu to decide what I wanted to eat, but Bret had a lot to choose from.  Ultimately, he went with the steak and eggs with a garlic and rosemary-rubbed rib-eye steak served with chipotle butter and fried potatoes.

I obviously went with the eggs Benedict, which was the reason we were there to begin with!

When I broke into the eggs, I saw that they were poached beautifully as the eggs were deliciously runny.  Instead of bacon or Canadian ham, the eggs were on top of crisp slices of pancetta and golden griddled English muffins.  The pancetta was a bit salty but the saltiness balanced out nicely with the rich tarragon hollandaise sauce.  You could really taste the tarragon, which was a nice element to this dish.

I can totally understand why this dish made it onto "The Best Thing I Ever Ate."  While I think that the "BLT" eggs Benedict with bacon, grilled lobster and grilled tomato that I tried at Blue Heaven while I was in Key West last month are the best eggs Benedict I've ever eaten, this dish comes in at a close second and is obviously a lot closer to home!

After brunch, Bret and I wandered around Harvard Square to a few of our favorite stores and eventually found ourselves at the Harvard Square Farmers Market.  Since we had a lot of fresh ingredients already in our fridge, we passed on a lot of the local fruits and vegetables.  But we did make one stop at the Taza Chocolate tent.  Like others, we wanted to help out Taza as much as possible with the recent flood damage to their factory.

After trying the Guajillo Chili Chocolate Mexicano, we picked up a disc, along with a disc of the Salted Almond Chocolate Mexicano.  We're saving both of these treats for a special occasion!

How do you like your eggs and where can you find your favorite egg dish?