Le Jardin’s brunch goes on all day

A hundred and twenty years ago, the word “brunch” first appeared in a British magazine to describe “a Sunday meal for Saturday-night carousers.” Luckily today, brunch is served not just on Sunday but every day — and you don’t even have to have been drunk the night before as an excuse for not waking up early for breakfast. In fact, the previous night’s carousing is carried over to brunch, where having a cocktail or two is entirely acceptable —if not expected — especially on weekends with friends.

French restaurant Le Jardin Manila at Bonifacio Global City is celebrating this beloved meal that starts before lunch and can extend up to mid-afternoon with its all-day brunch menu.

Chefs Hasset Go and Jonas Ng, who trained under French chef Gils Brault of Les Trois Gourmands in Ho Chi Minh City and opened Le Jardin Manila with him last year, have whipped up a brunch menu that fits right into the garden-inspired interiors of the restaurant with great views of BGC.

“We wanted to offer a menu that’s very flexible to what diners want and we found out that many of them want breakfast or brunch items throughout the day,” says Hasset Go. “People want to have fun and enjoy their meal and our menu offers just that.”

Especially on weekends. Order any a la carte dish from the brunch menu and you can have all the mimosas or sangrias you want for an additional P800.

Brunch at Le Jardin lets you keep the meal as light as you want or as heavy to make you last till dinner. There’s something for everybody here.

I love eggs benedict and when I am staying in a hotel abroad and too lazy to go down to the breakfast buffet, I order it and can now compare over 20 hotel eggs benedict and some do it well, others do it better, and some are so-so.

So that’s what I ordered at Le Jardin: its signature breakfast of eggs benedict with hollandaise sauce, smoked salmon, smoked chicken, pudding, duck fat, fried potatoes and quinoa salad.

And it’s one of the best I’ve had.

We were a group of about eight at the brunch, so we were able to taste what each other ordered. If you like chicken, there’s Concorde Poulet: smoked chicken topped with béchamel sauce with egg and grilled vegetables on rye bread with a side of crispy string potatoes.

We also got to try the Le Jardin burger — which is a very juicy chargrilled premium beef cheek (order it medium rare) with garlic aioli, caramelized onion and micro greens between a brioche bun.

The burger gets even better as it comes in three other versions: with foie gras, with leek fondue or with truffle mushrooms — all three on brioche.

Why brioche and not regular burger buns? The first time I interviewed Hasset and Jonas last year, they revealed that Filipinos love sweet breads like brioche more than any other French bread.

Pasta lovers have choices that include beef ragout with mushroom on capellini pasta; seafood sauce with grilled prawns, scallop and grouper with cherry tomatoes and almond; and thyme-rosemary chicken with black truffle cream.

If you want something that’s more lunch than breakfast, the menu has forest truffle chicken, grilled tuna, steak and eggs or fries, and duck confit crepe. Vegetarians have their version of the clubhouse called Ratatouille Club, filled with grilled courgettes, carrots, aubergine, tomatoes, mushrooms and peppers on brioche, as well as kale and quinoa salad.

If you can’t decide, Le Jardin offers its set Le Brunch, which is its signature breakfast of eggs benedict that comes with fresh juice, coffee or tea and dessert of the day.

And now, for the drinks — because what is brunch without drinks? Let’s start with the alcoholic drinks. Le Jardin’s got you covered with its mimosa, sangria, Garden Cooler and Blanc Blush. If you prefer not to be too giggly at the end of your brunch, there’s rosemary lemonade, watermelon and basil and citrus cooler.

To end the meal, order one of chef Hasset’s gorgeous cakes (he started out as a pastry chef) and the slices are meant for sharing, especially the dark chocolate cake, crème brulée and tarte tatin. (You can buy them whole, too.)

But I sometimes prefer to end a meal with a platter of cheeses. And you won’t be sorry if you go this route because they make their own cheeses from Gils’ recipes. It’s one type of cheese flavored in different ways and served at different ages. That was the first thing Gils taught Jonas and Hasset when they trained and lived with him for six months in Vietnam.

There’s ash cheese, pepper cheese, truffle cheese, almond and honey cheese, and herbed cheese. They are all so creamy and so good on top of melba toasts or crackers. 

It’s a brunch you will never want to end.

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Le Jardin Manila is located at the penthouse of W Fifth Building, 5th Ave. corner 32nd St., Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. It serves authentic and excellent French fare from Monday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. For inquiries and reservations, call Le Jardin Manila at 0917-817 6584 or email lejardinfrenchrestaurant@gmail.com. Visit the Le Jardin Manila website at www.lejardinbgc.com.