PrintEgg, a Perfect Breakfast in Williamsburg
Clockwise from top left: Like many places, Egg provides crayons for you to color on the white paper tablecloths; I drew an egg whose color comes from a thin wash of coffee. If you're not an early bird, you'll wait for 40 minutes to an hour with the rest of the worms. My breakfast—two eggs scrambled, toast, a hash brown, and bacon.
Until a couple weeks ago, I had never been to Egg, the famed breakfast-brunch spot in Williamsburg. I live in Park Slope, so it's a little out of my way for the morning meal. Usually I'm hungry and cranky and just want to get something in my stomach to take the grouch off. But the girlfriend and I were in the Valley of the Hipster for the Brooklyn Renegade Craft Fair, so we decided to try Egg while we were in the neighborhood.
It was awesome. And the breakfast I had there is still in my dreams. I hope that blogging it here will keep it from haunting me. Egg's chef-partner, George Weld, really knows how to do up eggs, as you'd damn well expect from the name of his joint. I was lured by the breakfast sandwich but tried the "two eggs any way" plate, opting for scrambled. It's a seemingly simple dish, but it's a true indicator of an eggslinger's worth, because scrambleds are so easy to screw up. Mine were creamy, moist, and perfect, as befitting the heart-shaped pile they made on my plate, which I'm sure was a bit of an accidental Rorschach.
And the hash brown it comes with? OMG. When your plate comes out, you think you've been mistakenly given a crab cake or some such, but what you've really got is a hush-puppy-size dark-golden-brown hunk of creamy, buttery potatoes with a crisp outer shell—itself almost egglike in its own way.
Another nicety was the individually brewed French press coffee brought to the table, though I could have done with a good-quality mass-brewed coffee if it meant a refill from the wait staff. (One cup is just not enough to drive the grouch away.)
I left Egg more than satisfied with the meal I had, and, as I've read on internets, there's plenty more goodness for me to eventually eat my way through on the menu—including that breakfast sandwich with Colonel Bill Newsom's country ham.
Egg
135 North 5th Street, Brooklyn NY 11211 (near Bedford Avenue; map)
718-302-5151
Related
We've got a number of videos on Serious Eats in which George Weld shows our friend Cia_B how to cook various egg dishes. Take a gander.
How to Scramble Eggs Perfectly
How to Poach an Egg
How to Make a Rolled Omelet
How to Make Eggs Over Easy
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7 Comments:
yummy
Prairie at 10:36AM on 06/28/08
oh yeah this place is h-a-w-t. woo.
Prairie at 10:40AM on 06/28/08
The food at Egg great but the service is generally unhelpful, albeit friendly. The grits are fantastic though, as is the broiled grapefruit and the roasted tomatoes.
producestories at 12:30AM on 06/30/08
That sandwich you brought up is outstanding!
phillipjman at 1:31AM on 06/30/08
Oh, Adam, the Egg is wondrous, especially on a quiet morning. When I went there (alone; Mr. Meatloaf was at a meeting), it was hard not to order nearly the whole menu. So glad you wrote about it.
lemons at 9:31AM on 06/30/08
@prairie: Yeah. It did seem a bit hot in there.
@producestories: I found the service to be adequate, though once our communal bottle of water was tapped out, that was it. Would have been nice to get a refill on that.
@phillipjman: I think I'm going to have to go get that sandwich. Maybe a pre-work breakfast run ...
@lemons: Did you go on a weekday early?
Adam Kuban at 9:51AM on 06/30/08
You have to try the biscuits -- they are so amazing! The grits are from Anson Mills and also out of this world. Definitely the kind of breakfast dreams are made of. Kind of makes me want to move back to Williamsburg.
masmarket at 3:35AM on 08/26/08