A breakfast grilled cheese for grownups.

I used to think that the ceiling on breakfast sandwiches wasn’t very high. Then M. Wells shattered that notion. I am a card-carrying M. Wells loyalist and can’t wait for them to reopen. Lately though another breakfast sandwich has been rocking my world. Not only is the Egg & Cheese at The Queens Kickshaw delicious, it answers the eternal question of hungry six-year-olds everywhere. Why can’t we have grilled cheese for breakfast? 

Kickshaw's Egg & Cheese is spicy, sweet, and savory. 

A fried egg seasoned with thyme, a dollop of ricotta, and a lashing of maple hot sauce are sandwiched between slices of well-buttered burnished bread. A “gruyere crisp” perched atop the Balthazar brioche ups the texture and flavor ante. Sweet heat and butter merge with the eggs and ricotta, while that crunchy sheet of gruyere packs an umami punch. With its lacy fractal-like edges the crisp is fun to look at too.

All in all,it’s a decidedly grown-up breakfast grilled cheese. It's also a deal at $5, half the price of the infamous Gouda with guava jam, black bean hummus, and pickled jalapeños. Best of all you can score it any time after 11 a.m. 

The Queens Kickshaw, 40-17 Broadway, Astoria, 718.777.0913

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Chicharron con camote, it's what's for breakfast in Lima—and in Elmhurst.

Broadway Bakery in Elmhurst has become something of a fascination for me lately. The Peruvian mom-and-pop-up run by Marlene and Rocio, two ladies who hail from Lima is utterly charming. It's the type of place where a box of Aunt Jemima pancake mix shares a shelf with Peruvian boldo leaf tea, where one can get a ceviche and a glass of chicha morada or a coffee and a Danish. Like any good coffee shop there's plenty of breakfast options. Amid a pictorial gallery of more conventional breakfast offerings find chicharron con camote. I never considered fatty pork and sweet potato part of a balanced breakfast. Apparently it is in Peru.

Sweet potatoes and pork make for a
fine South of the Border breakfast sandwich.

Marlene told me that back home in Lima it's a typical breakfast. At Broadway Bakery it's served on a hero with coffee, and will set you back all of $6. Sweet potatoes on a sandwich was a first for me. The combination of the orange camote and crunchy salty pork with pickled onions and Peruvian rocoto chili pepper paste was quite satisfying. It put me in the mood for Thanksgiving. I foresee turkey confit and sweet potato sandwiches with hot pepper jelly.In the meantime I'll be making chicharron con camote at Broadway Bakery part of my breakfast rotation.

Broadway Bakery, 81-15 41st Ave., Jackson Heights, 718-457-6523

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It all started with a not so humble egg sandwich.

Over the past year M. Wells, the gastrodiner hard by the mouth of the Midtown Tunnel in Long Island City, has become a bit of an obsession among a certain subset of New York City eaters who are enamored of Hugue Dufour's ways with offal and his eclectic palate. For some of us it's even more of an obsession now that M. Wells is going to shut its doors at the end of the month due to a dispute with its landlord.

“A diner, of course, calls for diner food,” Dufour told me when I first met him last summer. And sandwiches are a diner staple. Over the past year I have eaten some truly excellent—and often outlandish—sandwiches at M. Wells. This edition of Sandwich Wednesday pays tribute to those creations.

“The egg sandwich? We don’t have such a thing in Québéc,” Dufour said on his second day of business last summer as he griddled half-inch thick pork patties over the flat-top. At the time I wrote that it was the Platonic ideal of the breakfast sandwich. It remains so, the pork patty blanketed with cheese, topped with fluffy eggs, tomato, and pickled jalapeño, all sandwiched between a homemade English muffin.About a month ago I ate what is surely Queens most decadent and most expensive breakfast sandwich by adding some foie gras for $10. At $19 it was not cheap, but worth the bragging (and artery-clogging) rights.

Sweetbreads sandwich, General Tso style, exquisite and eccentric.

One day I had a craving for M. Wells' lobster roll. It was nowhere to be found on the menu. In its stead was a sweetbreads sandwich General Tso style ($15). Crunchy on the outside and creamy within, slicked with a sweet orange sauce that would do any corner takeout proud; it was simply amazing. Sadly it has not reappeared on the menu. As I would later learn Dufour's culinary creativity is of the restless variety.

Spaghetti bolognese re-envisioned as a sandwich.

"Spaghetti sandwich? Really? I wanna try that," World's Fare Girl exclaimed when I told her of the wonders of Dufour's $10 reinterpretation of spaghetti Bolognese. It is gloriously messy and delicious. “I wanted to serve pasta like the Italian places around here, but in a different form,” Dufour said. He has succeeded. As of last weekend it was still on the menu. I hope it will be there tomorrow as I am now craving one.

An open-faced cucumber and marmite sandwich.

It wasn't listed on the menu as a sandwich, but I think Dufour's cucumber, Marmite, pickle and butter on toast qualifies as an open-faced sandwich. The salty yeast extract Marmite ain't for everyone, but it works quite well with the butter, pickles and cukes.This is one I'll be trying at home.

There is one sandwich I have yet to try at M. Wells, the Cubano. That and the lobster roll. And then there's something I like to call the ShawarMwells. It's an over-the-top sandwich that never made it onto the menu. Dufour and I had been discussing gyro spits when he began to describe his new creation thusly: "All sorts of meats stacked up, even with foie gras on top leaking all over the meat . . . leaner meats like rabbit stacked up, but with foie gras and a big chunk of bacon in between basting the whole thing. And then you carve it and you make a nice sandwich with nice hummus." That would be some sandwich!

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

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Satisfied customers stream out of Curry Leaves.

Flushing’s Chinatown boasts a staggering array of regional Chinese food ranging from Muslim lamb chops to Henanese lamb noodle soup, yet it falls short in one area. Surely such a vibrant community should be able to support a night market like those found in Taiwan and Malaysia. Sadly such a venue does not exist. So when a fellow fresser recently told me Curry Leaves serves a late-night hawker menu from 4 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. my interest was piqued.

At other times of day Curry Leaves is a sit-down establishment with waiter service. For the graveyard-breakfast shift, it’s strictly self-service. Various savory snacks and desserts line the counter. There are oodles of stir-fried noodles in the steam table, but soup is the star. Ask for a bowl and the gal behind the counter offers a choice of three broths: chicken, curry laksa, or seafood—and three noodles rice, flat, or yellow. Combined with various fish cakes, vegetables, shrimp, wontons and other add-ins the possibilities seem endless.

Fish cake, wonton, pork skin, and eggplant
are just some of the items that can be added.

I had intended to show up in the wee small hours of the morning to experience the spectacle of club kids lining up for a late-night snack. Instead I got there at around 7 a.m. On my first visit I had curry laksa with yellow noodles. To that my new friend added fish cake, wonton, pork skin, and eggplant. The broth was rich with coconut and had a nice heat level. Ribbons of slightly chewy pork skin were surprisingly good, functioning as a second noodle of sorts. The wontons, fish cake, and a huge piece of eggplant stuffed with fish paste made for one hearty bowl of soup. As the sweat beaded up on my brow, I began to understand why some folks eat at Curry Leaves to ward off or cure a hangover. The cost for this feast in a bowl was a mere $6.

Crunchy ikan bilis tops a bowl of seafood noodle soup.

I returned for a second visit 20 hours later. At four in the morning there was a table of club kids looking to end their night with meal. There was also a crew of tough-looking dudes who were afforded the privilege of having the man working the cash register serve them their soup. This time around I had the murky seafood broth with shrimp, two types of fish cake, water spinach and yellow noodles. Topping it off was a generous heap of crunchy fried shallots and ikan bilis, or tiny dried anchovies. It was good if a tad too heavy on the fish. Still, not a bad deal for $7.

Pandan gelatin: soothing and sweet.

On both visits I had dessert and iced coffee ($2). Pandan gelatin ($4) is bright green, sweet and soothing, just the thing after a bowl of fiery curry laksa.

Apam balik, a sweet and savory Malaysian flapjack.

On my second visit I had pancakes for dessert. Filled with sweet corn and ground peanuts apam balik ($1.50) is a popular hawker snack in Malaysia. I may have had them for dessert, but apam balik would make a fine breakfast along with a strong cup of coffee.

Flushing may not have a night market, but the late night hawker counter at Curry is the next best thing. I’m planning my next visit already.

Curry Leaves, 135-31 40th Road, Flushing, 718-762-9313

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