Egg: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Candied Bacon

Sometime between meteoric rise of the cronut and The Great Bacon Craze of 2009, this city fell head-over-heels for Brunch. Between all you can drink prix fixes to smoked meat tacos, the late-morning weekend meal is nothing short of a full-fledged food phenomenon. I've always been unabashedly unenthusiastic about breakfast food. My daily routine usually consists of a K-cup and a splenda. However, on the weekends, I am occasionally persuaded to get out of bed at the crack of noon and drag myself to the nearest place that sells runny egg yolks and crispy pork belly.

Thus, I finally made my way to Williamsburg's preeminent brunch spot, Egg. I've tried to get in to Egg once before, but I was dissuaded by the long wait. Fastened to the door of the nondescript restaurant is a clipboard where you can scribble your name and your party size, and once about every 500 minutes a hostess comes to seat those at the top of the list, who haven’t already gone elsewhere. Don't fret if the list is long, chances are Fonzie and Yolanda ditched to another breakfast spot. But the wait is worth it. 

If you visit in the winter months, when you get inside, you'll be rewarded with some hot, outstanding french press coffee. It really does beat the pants off of the regular drip stuff. There's something slightly rewarding about pressing the plunger down and pouring off a cup yourself.

I ordered the Eggs Rothko. After wrestling with ordering the Country Ham Biscuit, I ultimately had to order the eponymous egg. Just to give you a taste of what you could have been reading about, the Country Ham Biscuit features Kentucky ham piled on a biscuit lathered in fig jam, before Grafton cheddar is melted on top. You can see why I gave it serious contention. Oh, and it comes with grits. 

The Eggs Rothko, named after abstract impressionist painter Mark Rothko, was everything I look for in a brunch entree. There's nothing abstract about the dish, in fact, everything on the plate exists is as it should be. Gooey egg yolks wait for your fork to pierce the threshold, locked inside a fresh slice of brioche bread. A generous helping of Grafton cheddar insulates the eggs from above. This is essentially a take on what I would call “eggs in a basket” or “eggs in a hole”, which I frequently make at home using a juice glass to cut a small hole in a slice of white (or wheat) bread, in which to fry an egg. Egg's “Rothko” nails the ratio of eggs, bread, and cheese, so that theres just enough buttery bread to sop up the runny yellows. The cheddar cheese essentially turns this “eggs in a hole” into an open faced grilled cheese version of the breakfast dish.

Like all good breakfast joints, you get a side of meat with your eggs, and I chose (wisely) the candied bacon. If you love to pour a little maple syrup on your bacon, this is for you. If you aren't into that sort of thing, well, you need to reevaluate your life choices. The thick cut bacon retains every iota of the smoky, pork, goodness that you crave, but packs a syrupy sweet bite that is a bona fide, ten out of ten on the Richter Scale foodgasm. If there is any complaint to be made, its that they give you too much of the stuff, to the point where you begin to fear for your own safety. To quote the great Robert Kelly, my heart is telling me no, but my body, my body is telling me yes. Get off the subway a stop early, stop worrying, and learn to love the candied bacon.

I did also taste Egg's hash-browns and they too succeed. They have a golden, crispy outside and a flakey tender inside, reminiscent of the mythical hash-browns at McDonald's. I don't often get to enjoy those bad boys. If I'm in a McDonald's before 10 a.m., and I'm not at the airport, something bad has happened in my life. Egg's hash-browns are perfectly salty, not too greasy, and cut the sweetness of the candied bacon. Makes sense that Egg's ownership have a pop-up stand at the Smorgasbord called “Hash Bar”. Disappointingly though, my waiter brought me a bottle of Heinz Organic Ketchup, to accompany my hash-browns, which really didn’t do the job of the “real-deal” high fructose corn syrup stuff. Fucking hipsters, man.

All in all, Egg is a must-go for NYC brunch aficionados. Although it might not please to Bloody Mary and mimosa drinking crowd, a hot cup of good coffee and a runny egg is what gets me out of bed on the weekends. Oh, and the candied bacon, definitely the candied bacon.