What can I say? I've got a city kid's fascination with country food. Whether it was biscuits and chocolate gravy when I first sat down to breakfast at the home of my wife's Louisiana grandmother or passing through North Carolina and discovering red-eye gravy, I'm easily charmed by down-home cookin'. It doesn't hurt that I grew up in New Jersey, where your basic food groups include the Hostess group (Twinkie, Snowball, etc.), and my mother -- a dear, but a native -- could barely cook water.

So imagine my grin upon learning that a menu of spicy weekend brunch offerings would be happening over at LJ's BBQ. This is a place whose pulled pork sandwiches, if served at the White House and Pentagon cafeterias, might very well induce an unprecedented era of international amity and accord.

Step in and check out the breakfast side of the menu and things look fairly ordinary at first. French toast and pancakes, customizable three-egg omelets ($3.99). But then you might notice a tiny line, in type smaller than elsewhere, under the list of 50-cent omelet add-ins: "All vegetables sautéed in Cherry Brandy or Grand Marnier unless otherwise requested." Whuh? So you sit up and take notice. Lots of cover art from 45s on the walls -- Little Richard to the Contours -- creating a '60s time bubble. There's some "pigphernalia," as proprietress Linda Watson calls it, and the start of a whimsical dead clock collection.

Turn the menu over to the brunch side. This is where things really get interesting. Nine dishes, plus sweet potato muffins baked at home by Miss Elizabeth, your friendly Atlanta-bred waitress. Apart from "The Real Deal" ($7.95), which combines eggs and breakfast meats with French toast or pancakes, every choice here does a little something weird. Nice weird.

The least exotic item on the menu is the traditional eggs Benedict ($5.95), with honey-smoked ham instead of Canadian bacon, along with the traditional egg-yolk-based Hollandaise sauce. (Chef Bernie once told me of increasing the lemon juice component after reading my review of his eggs Benedict when he was at the Castle Hill Inn.

Not to worry. You want zippy? Bernie'll give you zippy. His signature "LJ's Benedict" ($6.95) comes on grilled corn bread instead of English muffins and chipotle Hollandaise, and the sauce variation certainly pleased the person at our table who chose it. Even more extreme a variation is "The Big Mess" ($6.95), which I could not not have. Poached eggs are presented here on a sort of pulled pork hash, and you know what that prospect meant to me. Normally, these eggs come under a BBQ Hollandaise, spiked with the same tangy sauce that's on LJ's juicy ribs and chicken, but I craved the smoky hotness -- and it is hot -- of chipotle (a smoked jalapeno), so Miss Elizabeth substituted it without a problem.

The hash was simply a mix of regular home fries and shredded pork, which is exceptional for containing lots of blackened, crispy bits. All four poached eggs at the table were hard -- apparently the Egg McMuffin has established a new national norm of expectation -- so be sure to specify runny yolks if you don't want the default setting. A friend disappointed about the eggs pronounced the home fries, even crispier than the pork, the best she ever had.

The biggest carnivore at the table had a steak and eggs variation: four thin, but wide slices of brisket, wonderfully smoky, alongside home fries and scrambled eggs ($6.95). Johnnie had the omelet mentioned above. It was light and fluffy, and the cherry brandy gave the sautéed mushrooms magic.

We also sampled those sweet potato muffins ($1.95 for two), which were tiny but tasty, and the "Grits-n-Gravy" ($3.95). The latter was a grilled slab of grits, topped with cheese and red beans that this meat-eater couldn't stop tasting. (Meat stock is the secret there.)

The only things we didn't have from the exotic side of the menu were "The Power Tool Chili and Cheese Omelet" ($5.95) and the buttermilk bacon-crumble corn cakes ($6.95). The latter are described as "Like pancakes, only a thousand times better," and judging from our experience above, the bragging rights were probably earned.

Bernie Watson and wife Linda opened LJ's about 16 months ago, adding this weekend brunch opportunity in early November. Wayne Gibson, a Castle Hill Inn kitchen colleague and an LJ's partner, was going to handle the weekend brunches, but his plans changed. Looks like things worked out for us just fine anyway.

Bill Rodriguez can be reached at billrod@reporters.net.

Issue Date: February 7 - 13, 2003