It’s no secret that the East End’s Blue Spoon restaurant is one of Meredith and my absolute favorites in Portland – I’m pretty sure that it was the first place we covered on Map & Menu – and I don’t try to hide the fact that brunch is probably my favorite meal of the day, so by mixing the two, you’re pretty much guaranteeing a recipe for Map & Menu success.

Open summer weekend mornings are a rarity in our home. Between travel and weddings, we find that we’re seldom in Portland and not completely exhausted on the Saturday and Sunday mornings that many restaurants set aside for brunch. Fortunately, the stars recently aligned, and Meredith and I found ourselves with a completely free weekend before our trip to France, so we jumped on the opportunity, took advantage of a kind gift from Mere’s sister, and had ourselves a delightful morning in town.

I won’t lie and say that I wasn’t slightly upset by the fact that only two bites into her sour cream and blueberry pancakes, Meredith exclaimed that they might have been the best pancakes of her life – I spent the first 4 years of our relationship trying to implement a messy, Sunday morning pancake tradition (that eventually died when we moved across the street from Scratch Baking Company) – but I sampled a few bites, and she was right, I have no future in opening a pancake restaurant. I didn’t fair any worse, with my delicious breakfast platter of two perfectly-cooked eggs, some vegetable home fries, sourdough toast, and a heaping serving of the same bacon that makes their BLT one of the best I’ve ever had.

I’d have to say that we couldn’t have imagined a better way to spend such a valuable Saturday morning, and I can only hope that after wedding season, weekend brunches become our newest tradition.