Earlier this month, when New York magazine came out with their Breakfast Manifesto story, I was pretty disappointed by their restaurant picks.
Not that any of their choices were bad, necessarily. They were just so... conventional.
There were a couple of intriguing choices (I'd be curious to know what the Chinese breakfast at Big Wong King restaurant in Chinatown is like... but isn't dim sum supposed to be the Chinese breakfast food?) but I felt like if I had been given the assignment I could have done way, way better.
In my neighborhood in Jackson Heights, for example, there's a Colombian restaurant on 37th Avenue (and 80th Street) called La Boina Roja, which Mary (my ex) and I used to go to every Sunday morning for their deliciously unhealthy (and obscenely underpriced) steak and eggs (all of $5.95!)
And if you want to get really unhealthy, (and really delicious) you could go out to David's Brisket in Brooklyn, where they have an absolutely unbelievable brisket, eggs and grits breakfast.
But at least there was one restaurant on the NY Mag list that they got right when they threw in Balthazar (which has a better English breakfast than anything I ever ate when I lived in the U.K. for six months). I've long told anyone who wanted to listen to me that it's the best breakfast in the city.
Today, however, I'm not so sure.
This morning I went to a real estate panel discussion at the Four Seasons, and I must admit, the Four Seasons' scrambled eggs with truffles gives Balthazar a run for their money. (They gave me something like five truffles on the plate!) The bacon was perfectly cooked. Very good juice and coffee.
If you're looking for some place shmancy for breakfast, you can do a lot worse.
Oh, and the real estate market is going to hell.
