Clinton Street Baking Co. & Restaurant

My cousin Geeta, Ankur, and I have long been planning (for 2.5 years been planning) a visit to Clinton St. for brunch. Their pancakes have reached the stuff of legend in New York. You can imagine their dismay when I had to break it to them that I went with my sister, Bindu. I hadn't meant for it happen, I don't know how it did, but Bindu can be SO convincing, AND bossy! Well, to be honest, it wasn't that hard to convince me. On any given Sunday, you can see the line winding out of the restaurant down Clinton St. usually indicating a minimum of a one hour wait. On this Sunday, Bindu and I didn't mind at all. We'd been blessed with a gloriously beautiful fall New York day and we took the waiting time as an opportunity to scope out our LES shopping plan for the afternoon and to taste test cannoli's at a new LES shop specializing in them called Stuffed Artisan Cannolis (Imagine a restaurant with 30 different kinds of cannolis and nothing else. It's awesome - go there). We were seated after about an 80 minute wait and I have to say I actually think it might have been worth the wait - and we didn't even get pancakes!). I had the Southern breakfast consisting of 2 eggs over easy, sugar cured bacon, cheese grits, friend green tomatoes, and a biscuit. The fried green tomatoes didn't come anywhere close to the ones my mom makes, and any true Southerner knows that grits should be a little lumpier than that ones at Clinton St., but the rest of the elements were just right, particularly the sugar cured bacon - genius! A highly satisfying savory breakfast well complemented by Bindu's Belgian vanilla waffle with roasted pineapple and toasted coconut. There were so many things on the menu we wanted to try that I didn't even make it to the pancakes on this visit, SO Ankur and Geeta we will go back, I promise!