* Egg
image c/o Grub Street
CUISINE: Comfort Food/Breakfast Food
LOCATION: 135A N. 5th St., Brooklyn, NY 11211
between Bedford and Berry Street
PHONE: 718.302.5151
HOURS: Dinner, 6 to 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. Breakfast, Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., with the lunch menu available from noon until 3. Saturdays and Sundays, breakfast only, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
CARDS: Cash Only
MENU: Brunch | Dinner
MAP: Click Here (L at Bedford Ave.)
BOOZE: None
NY TIMES SAYS: A GOOD fried chicken is hard to find. Especially in New York City. But the fried chicken at Egg in Williamsburg, Brooklyn: it’s good. So good I watched a Southern-born friend devour nearly two whole portions in one sitting. So good he returned the next night with other ex-pats from Dixie for more. The biscuits it comes with are pretty much picture-perfect, too, and collard greens, obviously and righteously, round out the plate ($16). I prodded George Weld, Egg’s owner and one of its cooks, for his method. “I make it how my grandmother made it: shake it in a bag with flour and fry it.” (At further prodding, he admitted that he brines the birds beforehand, which Grandma didn’t do.) He said the first restaurant cook he’d seen frying chicken that way was Stephen Tanner, when Mr. Tanner ran the stoves at the former Pies ’n’ Thighs. They struck up a friendship and found out they share a favorite spot, Flip’s Barb-B-Que House in Wilmington, N.C., near Mr. Weld’s childhood home and Mr. Tanner’s grandparents’ place. Now Mr. Tanner cooks in Mr. Weld’s kitchen, and he helped develop the lunch menu Egg added last summer, including a sloppily overgenerous chorizo and egg torta and a very fine hamburger, and the new dinner offerings. (Egg used to share its space -- a narrow, high-ceilinged spot on Fifth Street -- with Sparky’s All-American Food, a hot dog operation that served lunch and dinner until its owners decided to focus on their Manhattan location last June and turned the space over to Egg.) Most of the dinner menu is guileless, direct and plain good eating. A hulking pork shank ($16), braised to a lacquered darkness, comes scattered with a mix of chopped garlic and herbs -- like an informal gremolata -- atop a mound of yellow Anson Mills grits. The kale and dumpling soup ($6) couldn’t be more simple -- an alliance of greens, carbs and soothing, full-flavored broth -- or better on a cold night. Other dishes are distinguished by the conscientious approach of the kitchen. The pimento cheese toast that is part of the “sample plate” ($10, also including a beet-pickled egg, a deviled egg and a pile of country ham shavings) is better than most because the kitchen makes it from scratch, with Grafton Cheddar cheese and freshly roasted peppers. The house version of Tater Tots -- miniature hash browns that it serves at breakfast -- accompany a good grass-fed rib-eye steak topped with blue cheese ($24). Fried nearly black, they are a blast of creamy, buttery pleasure in a crisp potato shell. A couple of dishes -- fish over a hominy and root-vegetable stew ($18), and a bowl of freshly made pasta with mushrooms ($13) -- missed their marks, but they were exceptions. Egg offers two desserts ($6), though there’s only one choice for me: a slab of golden yellow poundcake, toasted crisp and topped with lemon custard and vanilla ice cream. The dessert had its origins back in Mr. Weld’s family kitchen, just like the fried chicken. It was his mother’s favorite dessert, and on some mornings after she baked it, she’d serve it to young George for breakfast, toasted with and smeared with butter. “It was the luckiest breakfast to get,” he said. Now it’s come full circle. BEST DISHES Kale and dumpling soup; sample plate; fried chicken; duck and dirty rice; toasted poundcake.
GRUB STREET SAYS:
It was an especially timely moment that Egg (which started serving lunch only last year) chose to open for dinner. The southern-style hole-in-the-wall has swooped in to fill the neighborhood’s fried-chicken void just as Pies-N-Thighs mourners start to recover from their mid-month farewell binges. George Weld’s partner in Egg, Steve Tanner, has a P-N-T pedigree so the deep-fried bird that will be available Thursdays through Saturdays from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. (and includes a biscuit and collard greens) should prove a reasonable stand-in. The menu aims to be much more however, with appetizers like seared duck breast served with a celery root, fennel, and apple slaw and an entrée of braised pork, which comes over Anson Mills grits. You won’t find crisp-edged and properly dense doughnuts for dessert, but we think toasted homemade pound cake weighted down with vanilla ice cream and custard sauce is just homey enough to help you forget.
Comments
Wonderful brunch -- best on the Northside. The ham biscuit is especially delicious. As "authentic" as Southern food gets in NYC. Service is fairly slow and indifferent, but "rudest" and "worst" are overstatements...And for anyone to claim that Relish is anything more than a last-resort lunch spot is a joke. The food has long since passed mediocre and the service gets more surly and obnoxious all the time.
Posted by: CAA | March 23, 2008 08:11 PM
hardly the best brunch but definitely the rudest service you can find on the northside (what is the problem with the head waitress, super b@tch), Relish, Juliette, or any of a thousand places are infinitely better and neither will you have to wait a million years to get served.
Posted by: mb | January 13, 2008 06:17 PM
My boyfriend says this is the only place for brunch, and I tend to agree. I've been here three times and the food is amazing. The only thing I didn't care for was the candied grapefruit because it was just too sweet for me. My father, a coffee connoissuer to the point where he roasts his own, declared the coffee to be one of the best, and our friend, another coffee lover, agreed. They certainly have a way with an egg. Delicious.
Posted by: Katie | December 8, 2007 05:15 AM
I am in awe of how confirmist hipsters have become. This place as well as Brooklyn Label sucks!!! I find it truly hard to believe that no one has a discerning palate anymore and cannot taste how nasty these places are.
SCARY!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: Rather Not Say sinc ei don't conform | August 10, 2007 08:21 PM
I received the absolute worst service ever ever seen by a very grumpy woman who threw our food at us. the food was very over rated!
Posted by: eric | June 6, 2007 03:31 AM
hands down, best brunch in williamsburg!
yes, it is true that you may have to wait a while to be seated and then you may have to wait a while to be served but, it is the tastiest meal i've had in a long time.
Posted by: leslie | April 9, 2007 03:36 AM
Yum. But eat fast because you will feel sorry for the people waiting outside and because if your husband finishes before you do then he will start to eat off your plate. Also, I fricken' love a french press coffee and George W. is a pleasant guy.
Posted by: maria | April 4, 2007 06:38 PM
yeah how about Subway? anyhow I'm off to go eat at Sea.
Posted by: another Ryan | August 14, 2006 05:18 AM
Why does every business in williamsburg have to have some fucking pompous sounding one word name like "bean" or "egg" How lame and cliche is that shit?
Posted by: Ryan | August 1, 2006 11:50 AM
I think I have fallen asleep while I waited for my coffee. They forget to put your order in....often...
Posted by: James | June 20, 2006 10:42 PM
Right on! Egg is a smashing addition to the neighborhood. Gorgeous biscuits, rich coffee...and fantastic egg dishes. And the woman/hostess there couldn't be any more polite and professional. I agree with the previous reviewer, try to hit Egg during the week (less crowds)...forget about it on the weekend unless you're getting a to-go order.
Posted by: eugene | May 26, 2006 05:02 PM
INCREDIBLE! New York Magazine was on the money!!! The pancakes taste like delicious vanilla crepes and the grafton cheddar omlete was to die for. Don't forget to order your own personal french press coffee. Please advise ... weekdays are best ... way less crowded. Weekends draw the manhattanites.
Posted by: behsil | April 8, 2006 10:16 PM