PB&J pancakes at LAVO
Do not be frightened by the lithe she-creatures in club heels frequently tottering in front of LAVO; there is food inside, and it is good. The restaurant/club hybrid recently began flirting with something it calls “Proper Brunch” on Sunday. Proper, yes — but not boring. Now, they may push their signature Kobe meatball, which is perfectly acceptable, but save room for something that playfully punctures the restaurant’s foodie pretensions while also realizing its aspirations: the PB&J pancakes. You may be expecting some cutesy, candified mouth-bomb. Instead, you get a surprising sketch in restrained whimsy: Spongy pancakes speckled with Reese’s Pieces (but, crucially, not too many), layered with smears of all-natural peanut butter, and topped with whipped mascarpone and powdered sugar. The pancakes absorb all this — and the drizzle of strawberry jam — and transubstantiate into a sort of Platonic columnar expression of a PB&J sandwich. Brunch has been properly broken. — Andrew Kiraly
LAVO inside the Palazzo, 791-1800, lavolv.com
Breakfast burrito at Carlito’s
Pleasurable eating is so often depicted as an aesthetic experience — an interplay of flavors, textures, cultural allusions and memory triggers — that you can overlook the deep, almost biological satisfaction of simply filling your mouth with life-sustaining basics. Like this. It could hardly be more fundamental: a tortilla wrapped around eggs, cheese, sausage and crispy bacon, ladled with a green sauce calibrated to an enjoyable tongue-scorch. Nothing fancy, yet all the more wonderful because of that. While lots of places offer breakfast burritos, many quite delicious, somehow Carlito’s come closest to being an interplay of flavors, textures, cultural allusions and memory triggers. And, if you’re of a certain political stripe, your digestion will be aided by the gastric acid unleashed by the incessant Fox News playing on the TV. — Scott Dickensheets
Carlito's Burritos 3345 E. Patrick Lane # 105, Carlitosburritos.com