Brew260xVolchy: brunch has never been this cereal-sly delicious

The word ‘heaven’ is sure to conjure up images in all of our minds. For some, it’s the paradise that awaits us after death: full of cherubs, harps, and loved ones we lost too soon. No shame to the sinners for whom heaven is a fairytale you don’t buy into. I’m just the same–I’ll save you a seat in the flame pit if we both back the wrong horse. Whether you’re into the concept of heaven or Valhalla; some splendid celestial city awaiting in the wild blue yonder or a less easily definable, boundless bliss floating in the ether, one thing is certain to be true–we’ve all got some dreamy vision of a promised land bouncing around in our monkey brains. Whether we think it’s fact or fiction is neither here nor there: we all have the capacity to hold the concept–and we do. For most, their personal nirvana can’t be found on this earthly plain. It lies somewhere beyond, in an incomprehensible afterworld. For me, heaven is a much more simple and tangible concept. There are absolutely zero harps, the angels all have tattoos and occasionally wield knives with great finesse, and I don’t have to die to get there. Perhaps you recently visited my personal version of paradise. Did you snag a seat at the Brew260xVolchyx2Toms brunch pop-up? 

Maybe you don’t want to believe that the whole ordeal was divinely spiritual. Maybe, to you, a beer filled brunching bedlam is more of a sinner’s paradise. What you think is really of no concern to me. We’re not talking about your beliefs right now, we’re talking about mine. If you haven’t turned on the news lately: it’s a real stomach-churning shitshow out there. The world is in an ugly place right now and it’s not something to be ignored. But for just a moment, I will allow myself to hide away in the safety and security of my own delicious fantasy world where Chef Rio’s food is my religion, Volchy’s monklike devotion to the perfection of eggs is my gospel, and 2Tom’s Cereal Killer beers are my communion wine. They are my personal holy trinity and they’ve done more good for me than any religion I’ve found yet. So swim with me, if you dare, through a sea of cereal beers and thoughtfully paired plates and I’m sure you’ll soon agree: on this particular Saturday morning, utopia wasn’t very hard to find–it was right here in Fort Wayne. 

As I write this, I’ve just come from brunch. I’m not not tipsy; but that’s okay, because you’re not not amused. I’ve got shit to say, so buckle up, buttercup. First stop is Brekky Toast: smoked ham hock, potato, micros, and blueberry agrodolce. This is absolutely one of my favorite toast applications I’ve ever experienced. If I had any complaint about this dish, it’s that the microgreens were maybe better defined as macrogreens and they made it very difficult for me to fit bites of this blissful toast into my abnormally tiny mouth. (Yeah. I’m one of those people who only uses the smaller sized spoon in a cutlery set. I’ve got Betty Boop mouth, but don’t cry for me–I manage just fine. Ayyyy.) When I let go and let my fingers get busy rearranging micro/macrogreens to my personal comfort level: this dish was fire. The potato layer on the toast was creamy-dreamy, to the point that–if I didn’t know it was potato–I could have mistaken it for a luscious layer of soft cheese or something equally, deliriously delicious. Potatoes really are out here doing all the heavy lifting. The blueberry agrodolce was the perfect tart hint of berry sweetness to balance the sinfully smokey ham hock. Paired with Boo Berries: blueberry cereal sour, this was a delightful combo. The dusky purple pastry sour had a pleasant aroma of blueberry and marshmallow, but the first sip is like a big sour blueberry punch in the face–the best kind of punch you can get! It really plays nicely with the more decadent layers going on in this Brekky Toast. Like, this isn’t your vegan girlfriend’s avocado toast. This toast is big, bold, beautiful, and does nicely with a sour blueberry beer by its side.

The Apple Salad consisted of a mix of cabbage and fennel, with sprinklings of creamy feta and crunchy cashews, all married together by a caramel vinaigrette. Was this one of my favorite plates? I’m legit a sucker for the bougie shit we call salads. Y’all don’t just get me to eat my greens: I’m begging for it. I like it, I love it. This was paired with one of the only brand new cereal beers to be released this year: Creeper. She’s a caramel apple cereal sour, named after the most recent addition to the Monster Cereal family: Carmella Creeper. I wanted to love this beer, because I’m really in my Carmella Creeper era. I’m loving caramel, I’m loving sour apple, I’m loving feminism, and most of all I’m feeling like a fucking zombie girl 24/7. This beer delivers: especially where sour apple flavor is concerned. Paired with the salad, it’s a refreshing combo. Would smash again. 

One of the most well-loved plates of this pop-up was the Hash Bowl. Foodslut and I both had nice things to say about this mingling of espresso rubbed brisket, soft scrambled egg, root vegetables, poblano, and peanut butter sofrito. This was a really delightful dish, but what got me doing a happy dance in my chair was how it played with the Puff Stout. Look, I did a whole write up on the cereal beers from last year, and I went into some detail about my feelings on the Puff. This is meant to be a Reese’s Peanut Butter stout, as in Reese’s Puffs Cereal-inspired. My complaint is that it doesn’t deliver much in the way of peanut butter flavor. It’s a bit like Sweet Baby Jesus from Duclaw Brewing in Maryland, but toned down–whereas I’d much prefer to be punched in the face with flavor. (Sweet Baby Jesus can punch me in the face any day.) That said: my complaint is also that Reese’s Puffs Cereal is a bit aimless and doesn’t deliver much in the way of actual chocolate peanut butter flavor. So, if the beer is meant to be evocative of the cereal: it’s doing a perfectly fine job. Where the magic happens is when you pair the Hash Bowl with the Puff stout. My friend, what you experience is nothing short of alchemy! The peanut butter sofrito elevates the peanut butter flavor in the beer–and suddenly all is right with the world. 

As for the French Toast: this is the plate that I refused to share with my bestie. We each got our own. And then, after enjoying those, I ordered another plate to enjoy once more before paying our tab and leaving. French toast has long been one of my most serious love languages. I harbor such strong feelings for French toast; a torch ever-burning in my heart for it. This dish spoke my language and left my soul feeling utterly full to bursting in the most delightful manner. It’s Shop260 chocolate sourdough, cookie crumbles, and vanilla crème anglaise. Simple, right? But so good. Is anyone surprised that the French toast at this pop-up was absolutely goated? No. Honestly, nobody is surprised at all–we expect this level of excellence from the chef behind Shop260: Fort Wayne’s favorite purveyor of bagels and breadstuffs. But sheesh, I knew that their cinnamon swirl bread made great French toast, and now I’ve got real feelings regarding the chocolate sourdough being used in this application, as well. I swear: it’s sweet, but it’s also really well-rounded, sophisticated, and slightly bitter. Like, if you had a one night stand with this French toast, it would still make eye contact with you in public–without hesitation, it would be respectful toward you, and it would hype you up when you weren’t in the room–because it would want to see you succeed. The love language of French toast is a complicated one–it’s not for everyone to enjoy and, frankly, even those who might enjoy it won’t always understand it. Life is pain, but life is also pain perdu. Damn, this French toast really was the whole fucking package and I’m so glad I got to have it even once–though twice was definitely better. To pair with it, the only other brand new beer this year: Or-EEE-O. This Oreo Cookie stout is, of course, meant to be reminiscent of Oreo O’s cereal. The Oreo cookie flavor was subtle, as is the case with Oreo O’s cereal. But paired with the dazzling French toast: this stout sung. 

A dish that felt particularly Indiana-centric, we had Johnny Cake: aka Indiana corn cake with spiced pork belly and macerated strawberries. The pork belly was beyond beyond–nothing like this exists on our earthly plain and, once this pork belly resides only in your memories, nothing like this will ever exist on this earthly plain again. Also, I straight-up don’t like strawberries, but I ate some because two of the people that I admire most worked hard on these plates and it would be beyond fucked up of me to not try everything exactly as they intended it. I still don’t like strawberries, but I can fully see how someone who does like strawberries would swoon for this plate. My bestie likes strawberries and this was absolutely one of his favorites. Anyone could like this plate–even a bitter, East Coast bitch. But it’s really soul-food for strawberry-loving hoosiers. It was paired with Franken Berries: strawberry cereal sour. Last year, I described its sort of red-orange hue as being the exact color of Mood Slime from Ghostbusters 2. This year, it leaned way more orange, which feels a bit bonkers given how bubblegum pink Franken Berry traditionally is. On the nose, it gives sweet strawberry, but tastes more like sour strawberry candy and marshmallows. A scrummy pairing: definitely one of the more left-of-center, inventive combos of this brunch. 

Penultimately, we sampled Eggs In Purgatory: a traditionally tomato-saucy, lightly spicy, egg-centric dish. This interpretation took the traditional and was like: let’s serve it up with some of the best bread in Fort Wayne, like the Shop260 baguette, a beautiful jammy egg, chocolatey spicy mole, and pepitas–because they’re delicious, seasonal, and we all love a little cronchy-cronch. The spice-level on this dish was an absolute knock-out. Like, genuinely, well done, chefs! There was a lot of that really cozy warming spice, with just enough actual heat-spice to be like, “I’m your Daddy now,” without ever really hurting your feelings or your poor, precious baby tongue. Shoutout to Volchy, master of eggs: because when he’s practicing his craft every ordinary egg is magically transformed into a cosmic egg. Each round orb is treated with the utmost respect: like every little sphere is its own universe, worthy of all the time, energy, and adoration required to achieve unadulterated perfection. Paired with Chocula: chocolate cereal stout which is conditioned on cacao nibs, chocolate, and monster cereal. The decadent chocolatey aroma of this beer hits the nose immediately. To me, this almost smells like a garden variety stout with a squirt of chocolate syrup in it: it’s really that chocolatey and intense. The flavor is more subtle. It reminds me of the milk left behind in a bowl of Count Chocula cereal. It’s exquisite and an absolute favorite, especially when it’s balancing the heat of this dish and playing beautifully with the mole. 

The last kiss before we bid brunch farewell was the Tiramisu: sweet cream ice cream atop a coffee liqueur and Conjure espresso soaked ladyfinger. The dreamy dish was dusted in cocoa powder. As always, delightful. I only got a tiny bite or two of this one before bestie took over and smashed it. This dish had no beer pairing: and that’s absolutely alright because it required nothing additional to make it shine. It was lovely on its own merits. 

Similarly, there was one Cereal Killer Beer with no food pairing: The Monster Cuvee. This brand new, exceptionally bold Imperial Stout was how we finished off our experience and honestly, I’m so glad we saved it for the bitter end, because it was heavy and packed such a big, distinct flavor. The Monster Cuvee is a blend of whiskey barrel aged stout conditioned on coffee beans, blueberry muffin mix, and maple syrup. This one is only available on draft, but if you’re into powerful stouts, it’s an absolute do-not-miss! Get yourself to the taproom and give it a sippy sip or ten. But caution, if bold AF stouts are not for you, then you will feel personally victimized by this beer. I consider myself a stout princess: but I tend to lean away from imperial stouts and more toward your run-of-the-mill breakfast stout. This walked the line beautifully–but was even a bit too big, bold, and beautiful for me to enjoy more than a handful of sips. Bestie, an Imperial Stout addict, would have plugged their face into the tap and stayed all day. Your mileage may vary.

When I die, please bury me with a box of cereal and an empty pint glass: because this meal is the manifestation of my own personal heaven and I want to be fully ready to experience it again when my time comes. A crowded restaurant isn’t my idea of bliss–I abhor crowds and feel awkward having to socialize with people. (Even the really, genuinely lovely and kind ones who stopped to say “hi” to me during this brunch–I appreciate you and sorry that I’m so weird and antisocial. Please don’t read my “I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo,” vibes as me being unenthusiastic to meet you–I’m just a millennial with crippling anxiety and a bit of resting bitch face.) I pulled into the 2Tom’s parking lot early–earlier than I’d care to admit. So early, in fact, that when we started queuing up and people who’d arrived after me were in line before me I didn’t mind–that is, until the dude who was 1st in line (but like 4th to pull into the parking lot: because trust me, I was there and counting cars like an absolute sociopath) said, “If you’re not first, you’re last.” Then I wanted to start a fight. You can move the girl away from the East Coast, but once she gets riled up over absolutely nothing–good fucking luck. All this is to say that 2Tom’s was pretty well packed from the moment they opened the doors at noon. Were things a little hectic, bordering on chaotic? Perhaps. Do I believe everyone was doing their absolute best to create a sense of peace in the chaos? Absolutely. (The brunch angels were seriously busting their asses–kudos to the kiddos who slayed today.) Did any of this impact the flavor or quality of the plates served? Nope; Chef Rio and Volchy absolutely slayed this–as we all suspected they would. It’s not the atmosphere of this pop-up that I personally found to be heavenly: it was the menu that two brilliant, talented, passionate dudes came together to craft–paired with some seriously supreme cereal-inspired beers. For someone who is a bit on the anxious side, who prefers romantic solitude to droves of people, who delights in quiet moments and shrinks away from the cacophony of strangers chattering as if there’s a competition for whoever can hit the highest decibel–2Toms during the surge of an epic brunch pop-up isn’t the place for me. So imagine how absolutely ambrosial the food must be that it alone can stir my senses, carry me away from the chaos, and provide a safe haven where it feels like I’m enjoying my brunch bites in my own little world. That’s my idea of heaven. Food that’s so fucking delicous it can create it’s own magical world and carry you away to that special place in a single bite. Bravo, Chefs! Brunch has never been this cereal-sly delicious. (Ba-dum ching!)