I’m in Los Angeles this week, on the westside, which everyone I know says is boring, but I picked up perfect, giant pastries from Petitgrain Boulangerie in Santa Monica yesterday — thank you
for the tip. I had a ham and gruyere danish with soft, fragrant chive stems, a butter-heavy, layer cake-like blueberry scone with crunchy edges that could barely keep itself together, and a gooey, infinitely layered cardamom bun, its center swirled with tart blackberry jam. They were impossible to bite without shards of shiny, laminated dough flying through the air, onto my jeans and into every crevice of the passenger seat. It’s not so bad over here!Back in New York, Flyfish Club, where a membership is $3,500 if you’re single, but just $4,000 for you and a spouse if you have one, opened this week. My guy on the inside had a "mostly very good,” $750 (pre-tip) dinner there the other night. If I can finesse my way in next month I’ll report back with more details.
The last bit of restaurant intel I’ll leave you with is the one you came here for — where to go for Sunday brunch in the city. I don’t really go out for brunch anymore, because whenever I do, I drink a bloody mary or an Aperol spritz and eat scrambled eggs and sausage and hashbrowns, and then I also eat pancakes soaked in butter and drowned in syrup. I don’t love the fog that seeps into my skull after eating like that or being hungover in the early evening. Still, I’ve made the sacrifice dozens of times in my life because the concept of rolling out of bed, especially hungover, and into a booth with your friends to eat warm, cozy, easy food made by someone else can be very enticing some days. So when my best friend texted me the following text, I sent her this list of my favorite places to eat my least favorite meal.
In 2013, Buttermilk Channel was constantly mobbed because Beyoncé celebrated New Year’s Eve there and then came back for brunch with baby Blue Ivy. The restaurant has barely changed since then — it’s still a place that smells and sounds like a hot and buttery griddle, where people are eating burgers for breakfast and saying yes to the cute, crunchy waiters walking around with unlimited pours of coffee. There’s still a pressed grilled cheese with apple slices on the menu, a slaw and pickle-heavy fried chicken sandwich, and what was their claim to fame then, and what still brings me back now, a dessert disguised as breakfast: thick, custardy triangles of pecan pie French toast, dripping with a bourbon molasses sauce, served with a big, whipped spoonful of sweet cream.
Can you actually get in? Yes! Times have changed! It’s still pretty crowded with families on the earlier side, but the wait is rarely longer than 20 minutes, and I’ve been able to walk in on a weekend closer to noon with none at all. There are also plenty of reservations for parties of two and four are available for the next few Sundays.
Yellow Rose’s flour tortillas are stretchy and chewy, almost flaky and just as greasy as you want them to be. They’re exceptional full of carnitas and saucy barbacoa at dinner, but I think they’re best rolled around peppery scrambled eggs and hunks of perfectly cooked potato. The version with bacon in place of potato is also great, and I’ve admired people adding cheese to that, essentially building a BEC taco. You should order the roasted tomato bloody mary as soon as you sit down, and shouldn’t leave here without at least one of their ethereally light donuts. I particularly like the one coated in the fudgy, Duncan Hines-y glaze.
The waffle on Superiority Burger’s brunch menu is probably the best waffle you will ever eat. It’s the waffle you imagine coming out of the hotel breakfast buffet waffle machine, the one you wish your diner served. It’s airy and super crispy, but softens under a swipe of guava butter. It’s a must order, as are their piping hot, creamy French fries. I’m sure this new laminated pastry rocks, too.
Can you actually get in? Most likely. Booking a reservation a few Sundays out doesn’t seem impossible, and I’ve had luck walking in on a Sunday afternoon with no wait at all.
I’d never tell you to travel to Williamsburg for brunch, but if someone gives you those parameters, or if you happen to wake up there for some reason and want to partake in brunch, there are few better places to steer you than K’far in the Hoxton Hotel on Wythe Ave. The dining room does feel like a hotel in Williamsburg, meaning it’s big, bright and filled with plants and pillows, but the pastries are wonderful. I like the little babka buns, but the dark caramel-soaked pistachio sticky bun is mind blowing. I have eaten a whole one in a haze, wondering how a dough could be so sweet and soft, firm enough to hold itself in a swirl but plush enough to melt in your mouth. There’s real food worth eating here too, like griddled, sesame-covered Jerusalem bagels filled with za’atar and cheese scrambled eggs or smoked salmon and creamy tzatziki.
Can you actually get in? Hell yes. They don’t make reservation availability this like anymore.
Sadelle’s serves brunch all day, every day. It’s where you come for a long and lavish meal, ideally with a big group, even more ideally with a corporate card or family member who is picking up the bill. Towers of whitefish salad and translucent, dill-scattered smoked salmon are necessary orders for spreading onto your tower of bagels. The grilled cheese and tuna melt are both served on bagels that have been flipped inside out and griddled flat side-down. But the French toast is the highlight of the meal. Two fat slices of bread are fried until they’re so crunchy they’re reminiscent of funnel cakes, but with centers as sweet and molten as a cinnamon-scented vanilla pudding.
Can you actually get in? It’s unlikely you’ll be able to score a reservation here. Like it’s hot sisters Carbone and Torrisi, this place is perpetually packed with annoying tourists and actual New Yorkers. You could try your luck with an email or a walk in. It seems risky, but Revelie Luncheonette is around the corner, Shuka is a few minutes away and Alex Stupak’s The Otter just opened a couple blocks south.
Y’all love to talk about that clip of Ina Garten slicing her bagel into thirds, but I’d bet my life she snatched that idea from her friend Eli Zabar’s Tower of Bagel, a staple on the menu at his Upper East Side restaurant, E.A.T. The Tower of Bagel is a single bagel, cut into three, thin, horizontal slices, each one spread with cream cheese and smoked salmon, then stacked on top of each other and presented to you on a wooden pole. I used to go here a lot with my mom — we loved walking up Madison Avenue, having our respective Blair Waldorf and Audrey Hepburn moments and stopping here for lunch — who always defended the thin slices by proving how much extra surface area they offered for spreading smoked fish onto. She wasn’t wrong. I’m not suggesting you do this with every bagel you eat, but I think a trip to E.A.T. is worth it. My mother would also tell you to skip the classic tower and order the sliced bagel with side of whitefish salad. She’s not wrong about that either.
Can you actually get in? Absolutely. While it can get crowded here, the rush is earlier than your typical brunch hours, and no one lingers here for too long.
The NYC pancake hall of fame
Pancakes are my favorite food, they are the breakfast version of my other favorite food, actual cake. Slicing into a stack of them, spreading salted butter across the top one, forking an entire bite into a tiny cup of warm syrup, dropping blueberries and chocolate chunks and banana slices onto each one before flipping them over in a hot pan. They’re such a fun food, and these are the best places in New York to eat them.
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