Brunch Goals: Cocktails, Hip Hop and Thrift at Ebb and Flow

We make a lot of jokes about brunch being Dallas’ most defining meal. And in this case, comedy does, in fact, imitate life. In a city where a lot of people put in a lot of hours during the week, waking up at one's leisure on the weekend, rolling into a restaurant — perhaps on the posh side of things because we earned it, dammit — to eat a mix of waffles, fried chicken, french toast while sipping on Champagne and OJ is highly valued. It’s our anthropology of food.
And nothing demonstrated this more than brunch at Ebb and Flow at the Shops at Legacy this past weekend. To set the mood here, at center stage was a shirt that read “I LOVE COCKtails” with the tails in tiny font under the much larger cock. The person wearing this shirt was at the center of the table at the center of the room and their energy set the mood.

And while we can’t speak for other diners, their fuck-it-we’re-having-fun approach to brunch was the very tonic and inspiration we needed at the time.

The dining room at Ebb and Flow has the right esthetics and playlist for a posh and slightly raucous brunch. Hip hop hits from the '90s and early 2000s play a few decibels higher than the normal background-noise setting. Black and white tiled floors are surrounded by forest green wallpaper embellished with baroque floral patterns. Gold chandeliers sit like tiaras above tables. Around the perimeter are some lounge areas with couches with coffee tables.
Ebb and Flow in Plano has a special brunch menu that includes classics we’d expect to see: chicken and waffles, a brunch burger (that we didn’t order, but then saw pass by on the way to other tables and regretted it), French toast, chicken fried chicken and breakfast tacos.

Start with a Salty Brew which is a blend of Salted Caramel Crown Royal and cold brew topped with Baileys Salted Caramel foam. The "foam" on drinks thing has never really made sense until this one. It was like an alcohol-infused cloud atop my drink.

One thing we really liked about ordering here is that the servers have pads that link directly to the kitchen, allowing them to punch in orders right at the table, a practice that is becoming more popular. This method feels quicker, and for larger parties with separate checks, things definitely go faster. Needless to say, dishes flowed out of the kitchen quicker than expected.
There are about 15 plates on the brunch menu and the most expensive dish is $13.99, which is their huge brunch burger. Their breakfast plate is $8.99 and is a basic diner dish with two eggs, bacon, ham or sausage and a carb (grits, potatoes or tater kegs) with toast. Three sweet potato pancakes, two eggs with a side of meat (or vegetable sausage) is $10.99. As good as every plate we had was, this feels like a sleeper deal.

We went with the chicken fried benedict ($12.99), which comes with a creamy poached egg atop a French toast bread pudding and a thin piece of fried chicken breast. A perfect bite with all of the bits of salty and sweet on the fork was a bit of a challenge to build but totally worth the work.
The chicken fried chicken and eggs ($12.99) dish comes with a ranch-battered chicken breast half the size of the plate covered in thick sausage gravy along with two eggs, in this case, cooked over easy.

All of the dishes were enough to push into a fat gluttonous late afternoon nap, which is exactly how it should play out. The weather was a bit too chilly for the patio the day we visited, but as it warms up, one could easily imagine stretching brunch out into a two-hour event.

Ebb and Flow, 7300 Lone Star Drive (The Shops at Legacy West, Plano). Open 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.Monday - Friday; 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. Saturday - Sunday