NEXT MONDAY, as everyone except the Hallmark Co. knows, is National French Toast Day, and who would argue with the idea of setting aside a day for the staple breakfast of untold generations of kids? Indeed, French toast is a major food group for some. What comes to mind, of course, is high-school football players bent over the kitchen table with fork in hand, grunting toward wakefulness.

Centuries ago, French toast was sometimes called Poor Knights, or simply “eggy bread,” and it has been warming bellies and filling frames for hundreds of years. Latin recipe books and missives from Tudor times are known to mention it.

Thanks to the modern griddle, we lucky Americans can whip it up in no time — great slabs of fried, beaten egg-and-milk-soaked bread, loaded with butter and powdered sugar and gallons of maple syrup.

It’s quick, easy and delicious — true gluttons demand a spoon for maximum syrup effect.

Gourmet and The Dining Companion set out to sample the French toast at a few local establishments, if only to polish some verse before the big event next Monday. And since we were eating like schoolchildren, we opted for letter grades.

Hollis Country Kitchen

Main Street at Ash, Hollis Grade: B

French toast at this gem of a country diner is plenty and wholesome. To dress it up you can add fruit, “real” maple syrup, or bacon or sausage if you like.

OG: I opted for regular French Toast with fake syrup. Well, not fake, but not the “real” stuff New Englanders are reverent to. For some reason, I prefer the thick stuff. There was plenty of toast for the taking, and it was standard fare, cooked well enough to not be soggy — the cardinal sin of French toast preparation — with a slightly crispy toast edge. I had no sausage, but asked for strawberries on the side. I expected fresh, regular strawberries, but these were soaked and drowned in a small ocean of strawberry syrup. Wow. I was wondering how loading up on such sweets might affect my leaf-blowing later that day (after a nap, perhaps?) Grade: B TDC: I opted for a French Toast with sausage and “real” maple syrup — being a New Hampshire native I know the difference, and the reasons for it, and those who prefer the “thick” stuff just don’t know any better. They can’t help it. Pity.

My French toast was the same as OG’s, but the syrup was thin and light and proper. But the butter came in small packages, which cuts the authenticity a bit. Grade: B

iHOP

224 S. River Road, Bedford Grade: AOG: Gotta hand it to the iHOP folks, they can pump you full of breakfast stuff quicker than you can say “I need a minute with the menu.”

French toast here comes in about a dozen ways, as do waffles and everything else under creation.

We should expect a restaurant that used to include the word “pancakes” in its name to serve up wicked breakfasts, and I can tell you the French toast here is pretty darned good.

But it’s not the eggy bread that matters, it’s the accompaniments. For starters, consider the syrup tray at each table. Four full, gleaming, squeakyclean dispensers of strawberry, blueberry, boysenberry and old-fashioned (maple) syrup just waiting to drown your food, please your sweet tooth and expand your waistline.

Order the Stuffed French Toast Combo ($8.99), and buckle your seatbelt while you still can. The “combo” part is a full breakfast of sausage or bacon and two eggs and hash browns, made to look and taste exactly like Denny’s.

The stuffed French toast part is a very, very, wicked-good pile of four cinnamon-raisin French toast triangles made into a square (two triangles high), sealed around the edges and stuffed with what the menu calls sweet cream filling but I call icing. Again, I opted for the river of strawberries on the side. That was a shrewd move, because there’s enough going on with the cinnamon-raisin toast and icing and old-fashioned syrup, so the strawberry river was a good desert.

The toast was superb. The icing oozes out the side, mixing blessedly with the syrup, and the raisins add a little zing to the super sweet mountain of toast and syrup. Terrific. Grade: A TDC: I went for the full load this time, an egg-and-bacon breakfast on the side of the Strawberry Banana French Toast Combo, which is four toast triangles loaded with sliced bananas, strawberries in strawberry syrup, whipped cream and powdered sugar. It’s just a mountain of sweet goodness that has very little goodness in it, and cannot possibly be more sinful. The old-fashioned syrup, while not at all “real,” deserves its place on this breakfast. Grade: B+

The Red Barn

113 Elm St., Manchester Grade: B+ OG: TDC ate something else for breakfast this day, because we were toasted, but OG had one more attempt in the tank.

The former Shirley D’s on Elm Street is about as basic as a breakfast spot can get, but it gets high marks for friendliness, good service and cleanliness.

And, very high marks for the Bottomless Cup.

French toast here ($5.75) is called “Texas-sized,” and it’s true!

Three large puffy slices of fresh bread, fried lightly but thoroughly, is very nicely accompanied by a small tub of soft butter. No packages to unwrap, no frozen butter to rip your toast full of holes, and it’s real butter. It melts right away, and there’s plenty of it, so much so that I enjoyed my first toast triangle swimming in butter before I applied the syrup, a rare treat except at home.

Coffee and French toast — with no breakfast meat or other distracting add-ons — comes to $6.27. When presented the bill, I asked if perhaps the coffee had been forgotten, and was told it’s included.

In other words, it’s FREE! There is a small sign on the wall that says “Coffee 5 cents,” but it didn’t even cost the nickel. Compare that to cups of decaffeinated coffee at iHOP that cost $2.19 each (more than 25 percent of the cost of the iHOP French toast combos) and you have a sweet deal on Elm Street.

Toss in no obnoxious oldies music (blaring from all corners at iHOP), and super friendly service and conversation at The Red Barn, and it’s a winner. Grade: B+