Barnard is celebrating Cinco de Mayo with a traditional free-pancake offering at 10 PM tonight in 406 Barnard Hall. Perhaps it's a taste (pun) of what's in store for this year's Midnight Breakfast.

Yesterday, readers were apparently disappointed with the quality of CCSC's light-blue cookies cupcakes. "Tiny and stale," you cried in comments of rage. Bwog has high hopes for tonight's pancakes, but let us know how they stack up (again, pun). Barnard will provide syrup, you provide the feedback.

Every Sunday, as you roll out of bed and head to brunch, Bwog will be doing the same. Except we'll be writing about our brunching experience in hopes of improving your next one. Bwog's Sunday Brunch will run every Sunday.

As great as some Sunday brunch specials are, brunch is a remnant of a broken system that says both that you should eat breakfast well before I ever want to be awake, and that Sunday brunch is a crazy way to be bad one day of the week, sleep in, and eat your breakfast in the afternoon. The Basement Pizza Coffee House (at 125^th and Amsterdam) has a brunch suited to New York City rather than Hampingtonshire, England: you can get any food at any time, so if you want to roll out of bed and grab breakfast at 1 pm, you're good to go any day of the week.

Despite its strange name, Basement Pizza Coffee House is a (relatively) old school American eatery — the manager wears red pinstripes, the cash register has those big analog numbers, the service is friendly but gruff, and signs, some of them cardboard, ask customers to refrain from giving their orders directly to the short order cook and children to stick to getting a slice and a soda to go. The food is delicious, cheap, and unhealthy, and the breakfast menu is no exception. The real dealmaker is the breakfast platter, which gets you two eggs any style, two pieces of generously buttered toast, a breakfast meat, and a choice of grits, home fries, or French fries, for somewhere between $3.75 (for bacon or sausage) to $4.75 (for pastrami). The waffle and pancake platters also offer generous servings in the same price range. The thick pancakes can be served folded with a filling in the middle, like strawberries in a thick syrup.

Every Sunday, as you roll out of bed and head to brunch, Bwog will be doing the same. Except we'll be writing about our brunching experience in hopes of improving your next one. Bwog's Sunday Brunch will run every Sunday.

The Place: Community Food & Juice
The Location: Broadway between 112th and 113th
Expect to Spend: ~ $20 per person

Know this: At Community Food & Juice—the newest (well, second-newest) addition to the stretch of Columbia mainstays south of 116th on Broadway—you will wait. On a Saturday or Sunday morning, be prepared to wait for around 45 minutes for a table. And expect to wait another 10 to 15 for a waiter to come to your table. And then another half an hour for your meal to arrive.

Whether all the waiting will be actually worth your while depends largely on what you order and how you feel about paying $3.50 for coffee. (Bwog was not too pleased, though the coffee was delicious and there were free refills.) The restaurant has all the affectations of a West Coast smoothie shop—minimalist interior, the ampersand in the name, the infuriating inclusion of a juice bar that takes up an absurd amount of space yet seems to serve no purpose—but it seems like the unhealthier the menu item, the better it is.

Tucked away on the Upper East Side, deep within the recesses of the Neue Galerie, you'll find Cafe Sabarsky, an authentic Viennese pastry shop named for its founder. The brunch line stretches out the door of the Galerie onto 5th Ave., so if you go on a Sunday, arrive early with a book or friend in tow to keep you occupied.

The interior is dark and wooden, the tables white marble. Lucky patrons get to dine in upholstered booths in front of bay windows with a view into Central Park. The menu is full of winter soups, exotic breads, and more variations on coffee that I thought were possible--I had the relatively simple steamed cream and espresso served on a tray with a tiny glass of water, presumably to clear my palate for the main course. The standard Journal and Times are accompanied by decor-appropriate German newspapers, all free to take to read with brunch. They actually come with old-fashioned newspaper page holders, which I never figured out how to use, but enjoyed just the same.

The clientele is largely foreign, which I take as a good sign of the Cafe's purported authenticity. Comfort-brunchers hoping to stick with waffles/OJ/eggs should probably beware. The menu is delicious and eclectic (I chose avocado stuffed with crab meat and cherry tomatoes), but those who find 2:00 PM is a bit early for crab might want to stick with Deluxe.

College students beware: it's pricey, but a true pleasantry. A good place to go with your parents, or your significant other and his or her parents. And though the foods are a bit heavy compared with usual M'side brunch fare, walk it off by heading down Museum Mile or wandering around the Neue.

- JNW