Fort Worth Restaurant Makes French Toast, Texas Style

Brunch

Few Fort Worth restaurant morning delights can tempt the senses like the welcoming smell of freshly prepared french toast.  This sweetened, egg-battered bread can please even the pickiest of palettes.  At Chef Point Café, Chef Nwaeze tops his Texas Style French Toast with powdered sugar and serves it with hot maple syrup, butter and a side of fruit.  This carbohydrate craver's dream breakfast may not even originate from France but for obvious reasons, remains popular the world over.

So is french toast really French?  Well, yes and no.  Yes, because the origins of this treat have been linked to France and no, because they've also been traced back as far as Rome.  Ancient Romans would slice white bread, soak it in a mixture of milk and eggs, fry it in oil, then serve the bread with honey. Roman bread, was actually one of the first French names for this dish but historians do credit the French for tweaking this recipe as well, hence the name french toast.  Dating back to as early as the 5th century, recipes of this sort have been found in a French collection called the Apicius.  Other historical accounts indicate that regional medieval cooks may be partly to thank as well.  These cooks had families to feed and wanted to use every scrap of food possible.  They created this use for stale bread that was otherwise unusable adding other ingredients like eggs and milk for nutrition and taste.  This bread was called “pain perdu” which translated means “lost bread.”

It may be no secret that french toast is popular throughout Europe, since that's where it was first created.  In the United Kingdom, it is often referred to as “eggy bread” or “gypsy toast.”  In the Netherlands, Greece, Germany, Spain and Portugal similar versions have small modifications and all go by different names.  Italians vary the recipe by placing mozzarella between two pieces of bread before dipping, frying and garnishing it with tomato sauce or parsley but this is not sweet and not served for breakfast.  Who knew one could order such a cosmopolitan dish at a casual Fort Worth restaurant?

Texas Style French Toast makes a big impression with Fort Worth diners just like western toast is a hit with the Hong Kong crowd.  That's right, this breakfast is even served in China.  In New Zealand and Australia, locals make it and sometimes refer to it as “fairy bread.”  They make another variation of it called “fried bread,” which is served with cheese for a main entrée.  In Brazil, it is a sweet dish reserved for Christmas dessert.  Yum!

In the end, it doesn't really matter if french toast is French; it just matters where they serve a great plate of it.  For that Fort Worth breakfast restaurant with Texas Style French Toast, pull in to Chef Point Café: where you can get french toast served with Texas manners.