M. Wells' breakfast sandwich of champions.

A diner situated across the street from the mouth of the Midtown Tunnel is the last place one would expect to find the Platonic ideal of a breakfast sandwich, yet that’s exactly where I found it yesterday morning. M. Wells is not just any diner though. And its cook, Hugue Dufour, is no mere hash slinger either. He worked for 10 years at Au Pied de Cochon, a Montréal restaurant renowned for both fetishizing foie gras and reveling in the use of offal. In fact it was foie I came for, in tamale form no less. But since M. Wells had opened the day before and was only serving breakfast I settled for an egg sausage sandwich ($7). And I’m glad I did.  Dufour manages to transform a lowly coffee cart staple usually devoured in a matter of minutes into a work of art that is staggeringly delicious and best eaten slowly.

Hugue Dufour mans the griddle at his Québéco-American diner.

“The egg sandwich? We don’t have such a thing in Québéc,” Dufour said as he griddled half-inch thick pork patties over the flat-top at his self-styled Québéco-American diner. The Berkshire pork patties—seasoned with sage, nutmeg, and thyme—are made at M. Wells as are the English muffins. “When we get the flour from the miller it’s still warm,” Dufour said. The patty is blanketed with smoked Vermont cheddar, then topped with fluffy scrambled eggs, pickled jalapeños, a juicy slice of heirloom tomato, and a slather of homemade mayonnaise. It’s a farm to table take on a fast-food favorite.

“I never thought I’d be cooking breakfast in a restaurant, “Dufour said. “I kind of like it,” he added. And it shows; rarely have I seen someone take such great care with eggs. Those for the sandwich are first microwaved and then finished on the griddle resulting in a wonderfully light texture. “I’ve never microwaved eggs before,” Dufour said of what some might call an unorthodox method before joking about having a microwave cookbook.

Foie gras tamales and frog legs aren’t on M. Wells’ menu just yet.

“I wish I could meet the farmers like we do in Montréal,” Dufour, said of the folks who work with his primary purveyor, Basis Farm to Chef. The chef turned diner owner grew up on a farm in Lac St. Jean six hours from the city where he did his share of hunting and trapping. The original concept for M. Wells was a sort of trading post for artists and gourmands where one could purchase pelts, furs, and linens along with charcuterie, foie gras, and truffles. (That M. is not for monsieur, but rather magasin, French for store.) And then Dufour and his wife Sarah Obraitis, a partner in the high-end purveyor Heritage Foods U.S.A., leased the diner, which is diagonally across the street from their apartment.

“A diner, of course, calls for diner food,” Dufour said, explaining that he will shelve the idea of a general store until he wins the neighborhood over. “I think it’s important to begin with people from Queens before attracting people from Manhattan.” Diner or not M. Wells already has one element that befits a trading post for artists:  Supple chocolate brown booths and counter stools made from bison leather.

M. Wells will not serve foie gras poutine, but it
does have a decadent ice cream sandwich.

When Dufour showed me the Au Pied de Cochon cookbook, I flipped to the recipe for foie gras poutine with almost Pavlovian precision. Dufour immediately reiterated what he told me last month when we met at the Taste of Long Island City. He refuses to serve poutine in New York City as he finds the cheese curds here subpar. As if to make up for this he offered me an ice cream sandwich. The sandwich consisted of two warm chocolate pecan cookies and the filling was “custard from that guy in Corona.” Dufour and his wife are big fans of Tortilleria Nixtamal whose proprietors turned them on to Timmy O’s Frozen Custard. They plan to have him make a maple syrup custard for what may well become the signature dessert at Queens’ first Québéco-American diner.

Dufour's foie gras tamales, will be made with masa from Nixtamal. “The ducks are force fed with corn so it’s a perfect match,” he said. “I’m going to cook it with duck stock and duck fat,” he said. “It will be amazing.”  Such are the things one finds in a diner hard by the Midtown Tunnel where the booths are made from bison leather and the head cook is a French-Canadian farm boy.

M. Wells Diner, 21-17 49th Ave., Long Island City, 718-425-6917

More World's Fare