Banania was always THE brunch place. I would come all the way from my native Kensington (so far that most of you have probably never heard of it!) and friends would come from the city just to meet there and enjoy a delicious omelet with goat cheese, or eggs benedict, or any of their other great dishes, along with the terrific accompanying home fries, salad, and basket of crazy-good breads.

As we all know, the place we renovated and renamed - to “Porchetta,” perhaps a bad sign of things to come - but the brunch menu remained the same. So I kept eating there happily.

However, two weeks ago I convinced two former Brooklynites to make the trip from the city for a Banania/Porchetta brunch, promising that even though the name was changed, the menu remained.

I was in for one of the worst changes since Han shooting first.

The menu was completely different. No more eggs benedict. No more omelet. Instead, there was hamburger (WTF??), sausage, etc. And to top things off, the home fries and salad were gone, sadly replaced by mediocre french fries. (Move on to the next paragraph when you’ve regained oxygen after gasping…okay ready?)

So I ordered the “pancakes.” Pancakes, plural. What I got was one huge pancake, about an inch thick, with apples and ricotta on top. I took a few bites and realized something was oozing out of the pancake. What was it? Ricotta mixed in? No. Some kind of cream? No. It was raw pancake batter! Yay! Needless to say, I lost my appetite and sent it back.

Now, to give credit where credit is due, they did take the pancake off the bill, and apologized. Hell, they even still provide the free basket of really good bread. But it’s too little. And far too late.

Banania is truly dead. I won’t be going back, and I’m sad to say that.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 21st, 2006 at 3:57 pm and is filed under Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.