For a man who spent little time serving breakfast in his first quarter century in the New York restaurant business, Danny Meyer has really stepped up his game in the last few years. From Untitled to Maialino, he’s finally setting the table for the most important meal of the day. Today I focus on two of my favorite breakfast items: coffee and doughnuts.
1. Blue Smoke Chocolate Frosted and a Cup of Americano: Unblogged, untouted and undeniably delicious. These stealth numbers are available only on Saturday and Sunday, and in only two flavors, dark chocolate frosted and honey glazed. They are the best yeast doughnuts in the City. Yes, the best. There’s a grownup earthiness and substance to the dough that you rarely find these days. The bitter edge to the chocolate frosting is equally appealing. Note: Blue Smoke coffee isn’t as memorable as elsewhere in Dannyland, but it’s a necessary add on for intincting your doughnuts, unless you prefer to dunk in a glass of milk.
2. Coffee and Doughnuts Frozen Custard at Shake Shack UES: A Saturday flavor of the day, this mini-concrete tastes like its name suggests it would–cake doughnuts, still soft and flavorful, plus creamy coffee. A welcome eye opener when your night ends a little too close to morning.
3. Double Espresso and Slice of Apple Pie at Untitled: Beats Sant Ambroeus, Sicaffé, Café Sabarsky and all the other UES stalwarts. Meyer’s Platonic ideal of a diner is serving the Platonic ideal of coffee. Stumptown beans, top notch barista work and no outer borough attitude. No doughnuts here most days, but a slice of the Four & Twenty Blackbirds pie of the day will set you up right for the morning. I’m partial to the salted caramel apple variety.
4. Bombolini con crema and a Latte at Maialino: This is coffee and doughnuts in all its Roman splendor. Is Maialino’s breakfast menu an Italianized American idyll of pastry and pork delights or an Americanized Italian one? Is it authentic? I don’t care; it’s one of my favorite breakfasts in the City.
5. After the Coffee: You have to get the bacon at Maialino and the bacon and cheese home fries at Untitled. Of these, the bacon at Maialino is my sentimental favorite. It’s thick and flavorful and spicy and rich and a meal in and of itself. The fat has a complexity I’ve only ever experienced with Hill Country’s brisket on a good day, and the meat is a good deal more rewarding on the palate. Okay, the home fries with cheese and bacon at Untitled are pretty solid, too. They taste like the Johnny’s Luncheonette Waban Frittata (Newton, MA) without giving you the fat coma spins an hour later.
Gray and Grizzled Food Fan 
July 11, 2011 at 8:18 pm |
I’m all for creme brulee and PB&J doughnuts, but sometimes you have to stand by the simple stuff: A margherita pizza for a pizzaiolo, vanilla ice cream for a gelato maker, and a glazed doughnut for a pastry chef. Cut out the chatter of exotica tossed in to bait the critics, and you get a sense of what a cook can really do.
September 10, 2011 at 11:07 pm |
Granted, it’s not always wonderful in Danny Land. For instance, something about September seems to throw off the UES Shack. Burgers get overcooked, custard comes out dripping and melted, and some counter folks stop making eye contact, taking names for orders or even leaving theirs on tickets. They make it abundantly clear that they’d rather be somewhere else and leave you feeling like you would rather be somewhere else, too. Granted, it’s all better than BK down the block, but no one waits in line for an hour for a Whopper.
October 9, 2011 at 3:59 pm |
Doughnuts have been bricklike of late. Golden age is over. Someone’s baking on Friday and taking off.
January 26, 2012 at 6:42 pm |
Went back to Untitled. Coffee continues to astound, even with Sant Ambroeus across the street. That said, “cheesy grits with poached eggs and chard” would be better labeled “chunky, lumpy grits in pool of butter with eggs and chard.” Butter pool looked like movie popcorn butter but tasted fine. Bourbon bread as good as ever.
May 4, 2012 at 2:12 pm |
A thud and a whimper: Blue Smoke has dumped the doughnuts. They had long since declined from sublime on weekends to good on Saturday and bad on Sunday to lazy afterthoughts on both days. Elimination was the efficient option; improvement would have been better.
Anyone else remember the barbecued prime rib, another weekend item that disappeared ignominiously?