Beignets at brunch make everything alright

Carlyle Grand

4000 Campbell Ave., Arlington, VA

Sunday morning, I was focused on one thing - getting a great brunch. Luckily there are some pretty reliable brunch options in my neck of the woods - we could visit Liberty Tavern for its amazing brunch buffet, or rely on the old standby Clyde's. Instead, we headed over to Shirlington for a brunch rendezvous at the Carlyle Grand. Carlyle, one of the many, many ventures belonging to the Great American Restaurants conglomerate, offers a pretty tasty brunch. The fact that they provide fresh baked goods from the Best Buns Bakery (BBB) (located right next door) only adds to the warm, gooey happy-brunch feeling. 

As soon as you sit down, the attentive wait staff drops off a selection of bread products from BBB - to call them "bread" is to disgrace them. No, these were warm slices of banana bread, studded with walnuts, and a couple of pillowy soft, utterly decadent beignets dusted with sugar. Nothing tastes as good on a Sunday morning as those warm, soft balls of sweetened dough. As soon as you tear yourself away from the bread basket, you can choose from BBB Brioche French Toast, the Squibnocket Scrambled Eggs, and the Grilled Trout - all of which are delicious (I think the BBB Brioche French Toast has a cult following on Yelp).

But Sunday was definitely a lazy, overeat, eggs benedict kind of day. All that was missing was ... crabcakes! Thankfully the Carlyle dishes them right up. The crabcakes were lightly fried so that the breading crisped up with perfect golden corners. Unfortunately, while the breading didn't really have much flavor, the lump crab made up for it - the large chunks of tender white crab meat were topped with poached eggs that spilled their golden yolks at the slightest poke of the fork. The accompanying hollandaise was a rich yellow, light and fluffy. The hubs' steak and eggs benedict was similarly delicious - tender, medium rare steak sandwiched between brioche and gently poached eggs slathered in hollandaise.

Throw in a few cups of coffee and a homemade dog biscuit for the pup, and I can honestly say that the Happiest Brunch was achieved.

(Photo credit: mvissat)