Last Sunday in Victoria, BC I had the most delicious Eggs Bennie at Frankie’s Modern Diner. It consisted of an English muffin topped with sauteed spinach, tomatoes, goat cheese, poached egg, and a delicious basil-pesto hollandaise sauce. I’ll be mimicking this one at home, and soon.
I also love a bennie with proscuitto and smoked mozz, or cold-smoked salmon (no cheese), or good old Canadian bacon (also no cheese). Hollandaise in all cases.
What are your favorite versions?
Eggs Norwegian, with smoked salmon. Eggs Florentine, with spinach. And Eggs Sardou, with artichoke bottoms. There’s not much you can do to a poached egg that I won’t eat.
My favorite breakfast! Near us the Irish spot does a corned beef hash Benedict, which I like but I do request they forgo the muffin and just put the eggs on the hash. It’s really good.
And sometimes I request the Hollandaise on the side, if it’s a new place. I hate to have a bad or boxed sauce on my eggs.
We also a local place that does a crab cake Bennie that is pretty good.
+1 on the crab cake Bennie! When making crab cakes at home, I like the Legal Seafood’s Copycat Recipe that is baked rather than fried.
That being said, you can’t beat a well toasted, buttered English muffin, a griddled piece of ham or Canadian bacon, a poached egg, and Hollandaise. I really like the blender version from The Joy of Cooking (1977).
+2 on the crab cake eggs Benedict!
Variations I’ve enjoyed:
Peameal Bacon Benny
Spinach and smoked salmon
Crabcake Benny
Lobster Benny
Jamaican Patty Benny
At home, I make Eggs Florentine and eggs Blackstone
I also like poached egg and hollandaise on top of scalloped potatoes, and Latke Bennies.
One restaurant serves bennies on mucver / Turkish zucchini pancake, which is fantastic. I haven’t replicated that at home yet.
My favorite EB variant is Eggs Blackstone, thick bacon as animal protein and fresh tomato, poached egg and hollandaise. Locally Oakland Grill serves it. Sometimes it’s a grilled tomato…but hard to beat a good fresh tomato.
+3 on the crab cake eggs Benedict.
Ima basic bish, so really any properly poached eggs (which I haven’t mastered & given up on, pretty much — save for the occasional renewed attempt that fails miserably) with a rich, lemony hollandaise will do.
That said, Florentine may be my favorite version.
+4 on the crab cake Bennie
The dungeness crab Benedict at Kate’s Kitchen in Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA
The fried chicken Benedict at Brenda’s Soul Food Kitchen in the Tenderloin , San Francisco.
Lobster Benedict I had at some breakfast place in Maine 35 years ago.
The homemade shrimp Bennie I used to make myself when Trader Joe’s briefly sold fridge-stable hollandaise and I could just heat up a tablespoon or two at a moments notice.
Here’s Serious Eats fast immersion blender hollandaise for home cooking. I too use to buy TJ’s hollandaise sauce then found this after they stopped. I tried it and it works. Makes EB at home reasonable. Pour melted butter into egg yolks, water and lemon juice mixture, buzz the blender.
Fried Chicken Benedict!!! I’m all over that one…
I’m a fan of Eric Ripert’s blender hollandaise, but have been known to also use Knorr’s in a pinch 
…
FYI I find the Knorr’s holds up well in the fridge. Cook once, eat thrice…
Like several of you, I love a crab cake Benedict, though I prefer béarnaise to hollandaise for the crab. Other favorites of mine include:
Smoked salmon
Pulled pork
Mexican variations with barbacoa, birria or chorizo
And if I’m feeling atavistic, good ‘ol Canadian bacon
So “foolproof” I bungled that one, too. Instead of hollandaise I had hot lemon egg juice. Another failed bennie experiment 
#noob 
Sashimi.
There’s a local spot that makes a fried green tomato bennie with a chipotle aioli. It is the stone cold BOMB. Theyre well loved for their fried green tomatoes, so this is a natural extension for them.
Its probably a good thing that theyre just far enough away I don’t get there very often
I’ve done the Kenji-blessed immersion blender hollandaise, and while it’s lovely, I have the same issue with it as I have with the equally clever and delicious immersion blender mayo.
Namely: the minimum amount they make, as dictated by the need to use at least one egg, is enough for MANY more servings than I and my partner could possibly consume in 2-3 days. Such concoctions can make 3, MAYBE 4 days well stored and sealed in the fridge, and then things inevitably start to get unpleasantly funky.
I wonder, now that we can order all sorts of emulsifiers/stabilizers/preservatives from Amazon, if one of these magic powders would stave off the degradation and let you actually make a whole jar of homemade mayo or hollandaise that would actually last til you finished it?
As much as I enjoy making Hollandaise and licking the bowl, my favorite rendition is this much lighter version: toasted English muffin buttered with salted Kerrygold, topped with poached egg, squeeze of lemon, and pinch of salt. It has the elements of Hollandaise, but by skipping the emulsification step it uses way less butter while retaining a very similar flavor profile, slightly more acidic, a plus to me.
