Breakfast Special

According to Breakfast Special, “everybody is hungry for breakfast.” In this lighthearted PBS-aired documentary, filmmaker Rick Sebak checks out various morning meals served in restaurants across America, from a pancake house in upstate New York that is only open for the two months of the year when the maple sap is running, to a place in Portland, OR, where folks waiting for a table sign in their dogs too. In between coasts, viewers will feast their eyes on fried pork chops, sweet potatoes, and grits near Savannah, GA; Cuban fare in St. Augustine, FL; country-fried steak and toast with chipped-beef gravy at a strip mall outside Columbus, OH; and jook (rice porridge) with thousand-year eggs (which are preserved and generally only weeks or months old) in San Francisco. Sebak is celebrating breakfast fare in this food travelogue, so the health implications of what's on the plate or in the bowl is limited to the occasional sheepish comment by a diner—making the information value of this entertaining program considerably lower than the calorie count. DVD extras include a “making-of” featurette and bonus footage. Recommended. Aud: P. (F. Gardner)