NYC Restaurant Reviews – Breakfast/Brunch

One could call us foodies, at least to the extent that we really enjoy good food, and consider food/restaurants an important component of any trip.  Last year when we were in NYC we ate at two of the top ranked restaurants (and most expensive) – Eleven Madison Park and The Modern.  While we had fabulous meals at both, we agreed this trip we would skip the over the top expense.  There is so much great food in NYC, I think you can have a fabulous meal with out doing a major splurge.  That is not to say that the list below was inexpensive, just not ridiculously priced.  Lauren did all the restaurant research and made all the reservations.  We use Open Table for reservations, when possible.  She also made an excel spreadsheet listing restaurants with their address and type of food and sorted by location (ie Soho, West Village, Gramercy, etc.).  This helped us decide where to go for lunches depending on where we were at the time.  Happy to email anyone this spreadsheet.  Just email me your request through the blog or at judy@fromhometoroam.com

Maialino

This restaurant is located in the Gramercy Park Hotel in Gramercy Park, so a subway ride to get there from our hotel, The Standard, in the Meatpacking District.  But so worth it!!  We had eaten there twice for breakfast on our last trip, so knew how good it could be.  I was looking forward to having the asparagus with sunnyside eggs and breadcrumbs that I had on our last visit, however they had changed the menu and it was no longer offered.  No worries, there were many other new things to entice.  I had the ricotta pancakes with fresh berries and ricotta cheese.  This was absolutely heavenly.  The lightest pancakes I have ever eaten.  It was served with maple syrup, but I enjoyed simply dipping it in the berry compote.  We also, shared the pork sausage links which were as smooth and tasty as I recalled from our previous visits.  Lauren had the soft scrambled eggs with pecorino and black pepper.  They were perfectly cooked and very flavorful.  The service was fabulous and the waitress gladly brought me soda water and a stain remover pen when I got ricotta on my dress.

Minetta Tavern

Located in Greenwich village this restaurant has an old traditional feel with red leather seats and bow tied waiters.

We ate here for brunch on Saturday.  They do not start serving brunch until 11am so their menu includes breakfast/egg dishes but also a lot of lunch items.  They are famous for their $26 hamburger, which Lauren said in all the reviews she read only one person mentioned that they thought it was not worth it.  We, however were not up for a hamburger.  I ordered oysters on the half shell with a delicious mignonette, and pork truffle sausage.  they looked more like meatballs than sausage, but they were particularly flavorful.

Lauren had potato latkes with poached eggs and smoked salmon.  We had never eaten latkes with smoked salmon, but this was so delicious we plan on trying it in the future at home.

Locanda Verde

We ate here for Sunday brunch.  They are located in Tribeca in a beautiful renovated space.

This was another fabulous brunch.  We started out with the ricotta cheese with honey and burnt orange toast.  It had received rave reviews and was delicious.  I appreciated that the toast had a small hint of orange taste, not overpowering.

I had one of my favorite dishes of the trip – “Shrimp & Grits”.  A delicious bowl of polenta, shrimp, tomatoes, sausage and sunnyside eggs.

Lauren chose the beef tartare, one of her favorite things to order.  Since we were headed to the airport for our flight home and knew this would be our only decent meal for the day we ordered dessert.  A smooth sweet corn budino with caramelized popcorn, fresh berries and a berry sorbet.

We also ate three breakfasts at restaurants located in the Meatpacking District within easy walking distance to our hotel.  They all had decent service and nice outdoor seating.  The food was good, but all pretty standard breakfast menus:

Pastis , Cookshop  and The Standard Grill 

Next up lunch and dinner reviews.  Read them here.

New York City, Restaurants

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