Top 4 Brunch Dishes To Cure Your Hangover

Feeling groggy after a wild night out? Instead of staying home and suffering through the symptoms of hangover, come out to Brooklyn Kitchen - a family-owned cooking store that offers ingredient-driven groceries, quality tools and equipment, and technique-based recreational cooking classes - for a chance to make mouthwatering dishes that are not only delicious, but will also cure your worst hangover!

Don’t worry if you are a novice cook. Brooklyn’s Kitchen’s friendly staff and volunteers will guide you through every step to perfecting these sweet and savory brunch dishes.

1. Chicken and Ginger Spinach Soup

Nothing is more comforting than a bowl of warm chicken soup, which helps to restock sodium and water levels in the body. Chicken also contains cysteine, which gives the liver a much needed boost. Ginger works wonders for nausea relief and contains anti-inflammatory compounds. Finally, spinach is rich with potassium, an important electrolyte that is often depleted during alcohol intake.

2. Bloody Mary Egg Bake with Bacon Crumble

Inspired by everyone’s favorite brunch cocktail, the Bloody Mary Egg Bake with Bacon Crumble offers a kick of spiciness from the hot sauce to wake up your senses. Eggs pack a ton of cysteine, an amino acid that breaks down toxins in your body. Tomatoes help pack simple sugars to get your levels up and running again, and its inflammatory benefits don’t hurt either.

3. Everything Bagel Avocado Toast with Mascarpone and Red Onion Pickle

Avocado is everyone’s favorite new, trendy ingredient for brunch. The nutritional content of avocados can counteract dizziness and weakness that results from heavy drinking. Apple cider vinegar in the pickled onion can help dissolve foreign substances in your body, and also balance pH levels and increase deficient minerals such as potassium, calcium, magnesium, sodium and iron.

4. Lemon Thyme Bread

And after all the savory dishes, who can say “No” to a sweet treat? The Lemon Thyme Bread packs rich scent from fresh thyme and lemon peel. After baking in the oven for 40-50 minutes, the bread is crispy crust and dense yet moist inside that just melts in your mouth. Top it off with a dollop of creamy Greek yogurt and drizzle it with honey, and you’ve got yourself the perfect dish to end the brunch.

Spicy Chicken Sandwich and Bland Avocado Sandwich from Andala in Cambridge

Harvard students have the tendency to think that anywhere outside of Harvard Square is simply too far. This notion restricts many students to the "Harvard Bubble," preventing them from venturing into other parts of Cambridge/Boston. While spending a part of summer in Cambridge, I visited a couple of restaurants and cafes in Kendall Square and Central Square, including Andala Cafe. According to its website, Andala opened to serve as "a warm place where people can socialize in an environment that fosters intimate conversations."

In addition to coffee and tea, Andala offers Middle Eastern food. My friend and I decided to get a vegetarian dish and a meat dish and share them. The Chicken Khalili Sandwich ($8.95) is grilled chicken with jalapeno peppers in Jerusalem salad sauce, served in toasted Arabic bread. The dish came with hummus and some vegetable sticks on the side.

The Arabic bread looked like pita, but it was thinner with crunchier exterior. I wasn't sure whether to pick up the food and eat it like a sandwich or use utensils because the bread was too thin and everything inside sort of fell apart.

Inside the two thin slices of Arabic bread were grilled chicken, lots of jalapeno peppers, yogurt-like dressing, and basils.

The sandwich would have been...edible if there weren't jalapeno peppers because these were extremely spicy! I literally took a bite and couldn't eat it anymore. The spiciness from the peppers was definitely way too overpowering.

The Avocado Press Sandwich ($7.95) didn't have any description in the menu, so I had no idea what to expect except that there will be avocado inside. Like the chicken sandwich, it was served in Arabic bread, but it had potato salad on the side instead of hummus. The sandwich was sprinkled with basil on top.

Inside the sandwich were huge chunks of avocado, tomatoes, romaine lettuce, some sort of black bean puree sauce, and...lots of mozzarella cheese. I wish I had asked what was in there because the sandwich would have been perfect sans cheese.

The Avocado sandwich was a sharp contrast to the chicken sandwich because it tasted rather bland. Rotating a bite of the chicken sandwich and a bite of the avocado sandwich, therefore, was very complementary :)

Where Is My Avocado? Smoked Salmon Crepes at Crepes on Columbus NYC

Crepes used to be the food item that I went out to eat when I lived in Davis, but since coming to Harvard, I haven't been able to find a decent creperie to satisfy my craving for this French delicacy. While spending this summer in New York City, a friend of a friend recommended Crepes on Columbus in Manhattan Valley. Even though the neighborhood was slightly sketchy, the restaurant seemed to have been remodeled recently. 

I waited for about 10 minutes for my friend to come from work. Like any other bored person would do,  I spied on both the restaurant goers as well as people passing by the store. I also loved taking a peak at the table next to me as the waiter brought their food because it made it so much easier for omeone as indecisive as me to choose what I want for dinner.

It turns out that my friend isn't a huge fan of crepes. Instead, she ordered the Prosciutto Sandwich ($10.75) with fresh mozzarella, sliced tomatoes, and pesto. It also came with a salad on the side.

The bread looked like baguette, but I think it tasted like French bread. I don't eat pork so I don't know what the sandwich tasted like. my friend said the prosciutto was slightly dry.

I chose the savory Smoked Salmon crepe ($12.75) with ratatouille, egg, scallions, and basil creme fraiche. However, I modified the menu to cater to my taste bud, so I substituted egg and basil creme fraiche with avocado and spinach.

The crepe had two surprises, one of which was pleasant, the other not so much. First, it was packed with smoked salmon and spinach! I tried to cut it with a knife but this proved to be difficult because the inside would ooze out. The second, not so pleasant surprise was that it had guacamole instead of avocado...I was expecting fresh avocados! Also, the combination of smoked salmon and guacamole was weird. The crepe was crispy enough when I first got it, but it quickly became soggy.

Sandrine's Bistro: Hoppin' Rabbit

Sandrine's Bistro, located at the heart of the Harvard Square, presents classic and contemporary French cuisine. According to its website, the owner Raymond Ost is one of the most decorated French chefs in the region. With his partner Gwen Trost, he has created "a winning combination of European warmth and style with American efficiency."

I always walked past Sandrine's while visiting some friends in the River Houses, so I was excited to try the place for the first time. My friend I ordered the day's special appetizer, Avocado and Lobster.

Granted, we were surprised when the waitress brought the dish. It certainly didn't look like what I had expected! I have never had a dish with half shell of the entire avocado. The dish itself was presented beautiful, so I was really curious to see if the taste lived up to standard.

It certainly did. Like the unique presentation of the dish itself, the taste was nothing like I had ever tasted. We had to scoop the avocado with a spoon and get the crab meat and carrots/cucumber mixture (I believe it was mixed with mayonnaise and some spicy chili sauce). The savory crab meat went really well with the smooth avocado and the seaweed salad at the bottom. Even the cucumber and the tomatoes on the side, which I assume were used merely as a decoration, were tasty! The only minus would be that the dish was a bit difficult to eat because the avocado kept swiveling to the side.

I felt pretty adventurous, so I decided to order the Braised Organic Rabbit Leg (One rabbit leg with wide egg noodles, mushrooms, lardon, maille mustard a l’ Ancienne sauce). Again, it was my first time having rabbit. What a revolutionary experience! The meat was extremely tender, especially compared to the chicken my friend ordered. The sauce was a little too creamy and had big chunks of pork fat (aka bacon) that I was appalled by, but the combination of egg noodle and tender rabbit meat was fascinating.


This is the Organic Roasted Herbes de Provence Half Chicken with Crushed yukon gold potatoes, sautéed haricots verts, au jus that my friend ordered. Eh. Nothing too special. Just a regular chicken. The meat was a bit dry, but that could be because the rabbit was extremely tender in comparison! Rabbit meat could perhaps be my new favorite meat dish.