brunch review: penn commons;

After a boozy brunch for New Year’s Eve, what do you need?  That’s right–a boozy brunch for New Year’s Day!  Obviously.  Since both Tyler and I had some friends visiting for our New Year’s Eve party, we wanted to take them to a full out brunch and try a new place!  Penn Commons brunch was a brunch to rival Fuego’s!  You can read the review for that, but Fuego’s has since closed and it won’t do you much good.  Penn Commons might even surpass it in food.

Let’s start off with location–Penn Commons is located in Chinatown, just a few blocks from the Gallery Place/Chinatown metro.  It’s far from us, but it was a special occasion and we were looking specifically for bottomless mimosas, which tends to mean heading into DC proper instead of our NoVA treks.  Additionally, we had to change the number of people on the reservation, and then later let them know we were running a little late, and everything still went off without a hitch!  I was surprised, but it was not particularly busy when we arrived around 12:30.  But then I’m used to my early schedule so that seems late to me.

The weekend brunch menu offers a $19 three-course meal, or $32 for the same three-course meal with bottomless mimosas or bloody marys.  I’d say that’s about typical prices in my experience.  You can pick from a good variety of starters and entrees–I feel like sometimes prix fixe menus can skimp on choices.  But I was almost overwhelmed by all the delicious options!  The dessert menu was a little short, but if you have room in your stomach after everything else, you’re probably confused on how brunch works anyway.  =]

And I actually love the fact they have a non-drink price.  Because if you’re not a heavy drinker, the food was plenty much to get you drunk off deliciousness.  That said, I sure pounded back a few.  And they were amazing at keeping our glasses full.  I do not think anyone at the table ever actually emptied their glass.

ON TO….THE FOOD!  I got a tower of onion rings to start, two people got the dip starter in which you pick two different dips and get crostinis, Tyler got pork belly that literally melted in your mouth and he refused to share, and Karl got calamari.  Like how amazing and strange is that spread?  We all shared, and like I said, nothing was bad.

The main courses for us included the High Thigh Chicken burger, the panko-fried brunch burger,  the breakfast hash, and eggs benedict. The star of the show for me was the panko-fried brunch burger.  I was afraid it might be too much fried foods after onion rings so I merely tasted Dorrie’s, but man, it made me jealous.  To be fair my chicken burger was also yummy, and actually the lemon garlic aioli on the fries was to die for.

For the dessert menu the table had apple cobbler with sweet potato ice cream, nutella cream puffs, and chocolate cake.  I was so stuffed and happy I just straight up took the Boston Cream Pie to go with me.  Which I dug into probably like two hours later, but shhhhh.

Long story short is we loved Penn Commons enough to literally joke multiple times that we were coming back the next day.  The biggest downside for me is that it’s far, and takes a trek, but for special occasions I highly recommend, and will definitely be returning.  A golden 5 out of 5 chips (read: stars)!

Penn Commons Website
700 6th Street NW
Washington D.C. 20001

Related posts:

brunch review: copperwood tavern; brunch review: piola; brunch review: potomac point winery; brunch review: ted’s bulletin brunch review: farmers, fishers, bakers;