One nice thing about my web site is that it brings people back into my life who fell out of orbit. Seth and Amy are high school friends who knew me before I was the glorious specimen you see above you now in a red sweater holding a pot. Amy and I e-mailed a bit last week and we decided to have Sunday brunch. I asked her to suggest a place and she suggested the 9th Street Market.

The 9th Street Market is on (shocker!) 9th Street between 1st and 2nd Aves. I arrived a little before 10 and there was already a crowd gathered outside. The door opened and the crowd went in. Then Seth and Amy arrived and we put our name on the clipboard outside. The place is really small so if you don't get in on the first cycle, you have to wait for the first seating to rotate out.

That was fine. It went fast and Amy, Seth and I caught up. Then our name was called and we went in.

The brunch menu had a Prixe Fixe that came with coffee and orange juice or an a la carte that was really only a la carte because it didn't come with coffee or orangew juice. I ordered from the a la carte menu a smoked salmon scramble with homefries and sourdough toast.

The eggs were great, the potatoes pretty good (they had an interesting flavor), I loved the blackberry preserves but the sourdough toast was inedible. Literally, I don't know if they intended for it to be so hard to bite into, but each slice should come with its own dentist.

Amy picked the winner: apple pancakes that she let me try. Here she is with Seth: you can see her apple pancakes in front of her.

So if you go to 9th Street Market get the apple pancakes. Amy said: "I hope too many people don't find out about this place." She has a point: with the tiny space and the big wait times (it apparently gets crazy around 11, 12) I am really sacrificing our future brunch happiness by sharing this info with you. That's how much I care. So if you go and you get there before us, put our name on the list? We'll give you a dentist in return.