Where: Portage Bay Cafe, 391 Terry Ave. N., 462-6400. SOUTH LAKE UNION.Time of Entry: Sunday at around 10 a.m. Brunch is a long one here, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., so you can get up early and get your day on, or sleep in and have a lazy late meal. Good so far.Level of hangover: Zilch, thankfully. Staff’s level of hangover: Undetectable. The SLU space just opened in May, and it’s styled to please both the biotechies and their kids. In a room this warehouse-open and smooth-surfaced, no waiter would want to be nursing a hangover while bringing someone else their eggs and feigning deafness to caterwauling kids. Prescription: In the Portage Bay Cafe’s original U District location, I used to savor a fantastic visit to the berry bar, which also looked promising here, with fat bowls of whipped cream and small mountains of raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries. But I am a slut for Benedicts, and so that’s what I got. Only I didn’t. Hollandaise sauce is the ne plus ultra of brunch. Hollandaise should be an eggy, buttery, lemon-touched (but not too lemony) puddle that you dip the rest of your Benedict into — the poached egg, the toasted English muffin, the bacon (or salmon or sausage, or whatever thing serves as the foundation for the dish). The butter-rich sauce will puddle and pool and yes, even congeal, and still, you will have to restrain yourself from lifting the plate to your face to lick the last streaks of yellowy goodness off. Or that’s how it should be.But this was not such a transcendent experience. Not even close. I ordered the special Florentine Benedict with prosciutto (around $11.95), expecting spinach, well, underneath the poached egg, but not in the sauce. What arrived was something else entirely — a green-slopped, flavorless concoction that my partner compared to canned creamed spinach. To be fair, the menu says “our hollandaise” but it’s not clear that your two eggs will be covered in a sauce tasting neither eggy nor rich, with no discernable lemony-ness. And I’m not sure what this orange part, the second strange sauce, was trying to be. I pushed my plate aside, and concentrated on my side of berries. This was the first meal have ever I sent back. Ever. Our server was very gracious about it. She noticed the rejected plate and asked me about it. I told her it was not the Hollandaise sauce I was expecting, so she took it off our bill. A good lesson: Be honest if you’re not eating a dish, admit you don’t like it, and yes, it will (should) come off your bill. This part of the transaction went as it should have.My partner’s sausage and mushroom-stuffed omelet ($10.95) was not much better, with orange grease staining the plate. And those predictable potatoes didn’t help. Hair of the Dog: I could have used a drink, but didn’t indulge. The cafe offers a choose-your-juice mimosa ($4.95) with fresh-squeezed lemonade, grapefruit, apple, apple-raspberry, or orange juice. Success of the Soak: Unsuccessful. And it wasn’t cheap. Even with one dish removed from our bill, with tip, this was a $23 excursion. $10.95 for the omelet, $2.50 for my bowl of berries, and $2.25 each for a pot of tea and drip coffee. It was greasy-spoon food, but not at greasy-spoon prices.