Restaurant review: Hotel Lumen’s The Front Room serves up diner-style brunch with Highland Park flair

And the view is great (wink).

Photo by Staff

Eggs Benedict from Front Room at Hotel Lumen

DALLAS — Few places on earth make better breakfasts than a good, old-fashioned diner. So what happens when you take said eatery and bring in a chef to run a kitchen turning out one fantastic dish after another? Welcome to the Front Room at Hotel Lumen, a wonderful new restaurant with all the staples of a diner, only nicer. Much nicer.

It’s a great place for dinner with feel-good dishes including meatloaf and fried chicken, but it’s also one of our new faves for brunch. Grab a seat on the patio if the weather’s nice and watch the nonstop parade of SMU frat guys jogging or biking by. Talk about motivation to skip Mimosas and order oatmeal. But that would be a tragedy.

Start with a ham biscuit or two for the table to share. One large, dense biscuit is topped with Benton’s Ham, creole mustard, and a farm-fresh egg resting atop some luscious red, tart raspberry preserves. It’s salty, sweet, and really wakes up the taste buds.

A straightforward Eggs Benedict and made-to-order omelets with a variety of quality ingredients are also done with such precision that they don’t need crazy interpretations. Just be warned, the omelet is a monster, apparently made with ostrich eggs to become so large. So we recommend sharing this one.

Which means more room for pancakes. Nearly an inch thick apiece, these fluffy-and-crispy discs of griddled goodness are topped with cinnamon butter so delicious you may not even want to use the pure maple syrup served alongside.

If you don’t, simply get it to go. After all, if Einstein were alive today we’re pretty sure he’d approve of our own theory: Syrup + SMU Frat Boy’s Abs = Sunday Funday ... Squared.