Rise and dine
Jump-start your day with a breakfast sandwich. Get them hot — or build your
The decision to order a breakfast sandwich is basically the same as the one to order a burger: The near guarantee it will taste good overrides any uncertainty that eating it at all is a good idea. The difference is that you make the breakfast sandwich decision in the vulnerable hours of the morning.
“It’s just one of those kind of comforting meals for everyone,” says Andrew Ghetia, chef at 4505 Burgers & BBQ. “You’re starting your day, putting your best foot forward. And you know you’re going to get something good.”
4505 offers a breakfast sandwich with house-made maple-bacon sausage on the weekends and a vegetarian fried grits-and-egg sandwich dripping with Oaxacan cheese every day, but breakfast sandwiches are showing up everywhere — in bakery cafes, pizzerias and even dive bars, in variations that reflect the passions of the people who create them in their own hungry moments.
They always start with a flat disc of egg, which could be fried with a runny center or in frittata form. Melty cheese is usually involved. Perhaps a stack of bacon or griddled ham and, since we’re in California, some seasonal greens.
There’s usually a creative aioli or spicy compound butter, and it all arrives between two layers of a savory scone or brioche bun as often as on an English muffin.
Because of its location near AT&T Park, Merigan Sub Shop chef-owner Liza Shaw added breakfast subs to her menu as a way to bring in extra business during the off-season. It’s proved so popular that she moved up her opening hour from 10 to 8:30 a.m. The breakfast orders subsidize the morning crew’s coffee habit, says Shaw, who arrives at 7:30 a.m. to start roasting sandwich meats.
Her favorite breakfast sub features an omelet, griddled mortadella, some Italian salsa verde for a green, acidic zing, and a thin layer of ricotta for lightness and freshness. She also makes an Egg Parm sub with marinara sauce, provolone and mozzarella, and a breakfast version of Merigan’s porchetta lunch sandwich, with lemon cabbage slaw and hot chile peppers.
“Big chunks of porchetta practically fall out of the sandwich, and egg oozes all over them,” says Shaw, likening it to a classic bacon and egg sandwich except that “porchetta is pretty much bacon, but better.”
But breakfast sandwiches aren’t just a guilty pleasure. Now that many diners have become a bit less fat-phobic and more concerned about getting protein and limiting sugar, they fill a need that sweet breakfast pastries don’t.
“People want something that they can easily eat either on the way to work or once they get to their desk, and it’s easy and portable and more filling than just a pastry,” says Matthew Roder, owner of L’acajou Bakery and Cafe. “It has protein and it has suste- nance to get you going on the day.”
At his tiny SoMa bakery and cafe, he stuffs a super-rich and spicy cheddarchipotle scone with an egg, bacon, tomato and spinach. Another egg sandwich has tomato and bacon as well as cabbage slaw and Dijon mustard on an herbes de Provence roll. Because the bakery doesn’t have a cooktop, he bakes the eggs in small frying pans until the yolks are just firm enough not to goosh all over customers when they take a bite.
The cheddar chipotle scone sandwich began as something that Roder would make for himself until a few regulars caught wind of it. But 4505’s Ghetia does things differently. He usually has a cheeseburger, not an egg sandwich, after he arrives at work at 5 a.m..
“It’s the fastest thing to make,” he says. But, after cooking meat all day, he goes home and sits down to scrambled eggs, essentially eating his way through the day backward.
“Good food is good food,” he says. “I’m as likely to have a cheeseburger for breakfast as I am to have eggs for dinner.”
In the same vein, the breakfast sandwich has evolved into something delicious and interesting enough to eat any time of day. No regrets.