Evan Hanczor: eggs and literature

After Mark Ladner of Del Posto in New York, the rich programme of the temporary restaurant opened in Milan for Expo by the three partners of the USA Pavilion (the Department of State, the James Beard Foundation and the International Culinary Center) of which Paolo Marchi wrote here, hosted another protagonist in the Big Apple’s culinary scene. Evan Hanczor arrived in NYC in 2009, from Florida, and met George Weld, patron of Egg. This restaurant in Brooklyn is dedicated to Southern cuisine and most of all to breakfast.

It is Weld who explains the inspiration that led to the birth of this place: «I wanted a restaurant that would take the concept of breakfast seriously. And there was another issue too. For years I had been obsessed by your cooking. I then told myself that my culinary culture was just as rich and that I had to take Southern cuisine seriously».

Breakfast, we were saying: listening to a creative and original chef such as Evan Hanczor illustrating what cooking breakfast for his clients means to him is interesting: «At Egg I learnt how important it is to interact with people at the beginning of their day, instead of waiting to meet them at the end of a very hectic day. I believe those who have breakfast at our place often have a freer mind and being the first significant event in someone’s day is thrilling».

Hanczor and Weld recently wrote a book with recipes worth waking up for (indeed it is titled "Breakfast, Recipes to wake up for"). Of course this is not the only meal they serve: thanks to a common passion for literature, the couple found the inspiration for a series of dinners, like the one in the splendid restaurant on top of the Seven Stars Galleria in Milan, called Table of Content, in which Hanczor is inspired by a book and each dish is dedicated to an excerpt from that novel.

Here in Milan the novel was Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”: «We both graduated in literature and we love writing. What we both wanted to do is communicate through our food the same emotions that a writer can share with a reader: we try to concentrate on some very intense excerpts from the book we base ourselves, trying to convey those feelings in the dishes. “The Sun Also Rises” is a book we both adore».

Yet in Hanczor and Weld’s activities at the James Beard American Restaurant there weren’t just dinners: of course they had to serve brunch too. When we ask them the difference between breakfast and brunch, however, the answer is straightforward and rather surprising: «At Egg – says Hanczor with a smile – we refuse to use the word brunch: in this case we made an exception. The only difference I see is that brunch is for those who arrive late and often need to recover from the previous night’s hangover! Jokes aside, the positive thing about brunch is that people are simply more relaxed and enjoy their time».