No Name Breakfast Sandwich

After a long hiatus, I tried the penultimate and 12th breakfast sandwich from a Truck with No Name on Montgomery Ave. between Broad and 13th streets. The Winner will be announced tomorrow after I try the last and 13th sandwich.  I am on pins & needles!

The sandwich looked great except for the not-toasted-enough bread. It was cut in half, with the egg all nicely tucked and I couldn’t wait to dig in. The sandwich was very sturdy despite the white-bread-that-was-hardly toast. Maybe it was the massive amount of bacon in there! With the lack of sogginess, loads of bacon, and excellent egg tuckage, I really really wanted to fall in love this sandwich but I just couldn’t.  It’s like I loved this sandwich, but I wasn’t in love with the sandwich.

The egg was cooked well, there was lots of it (and bacon–did I mention the bacon?), and the cheese was nice and melty, but the taste just wasn’t doing it for me. I tasted ketchup, I tasted bacon (a bit too greasy), and I tasted egg, but the flavors seemed distant–like they all wanted to be in different sandwiches. They weren’t working together as a team. Maybe it’s because the ingredients really were just put on the sandwich as separate entities: first the cheese, then the egg, then the bacon. There was no mingling. Maybe this all ties in together with the truck itself having no name as I really couldn’t distinguish a name among all of the signage.  Maybe the truck, and in connection, the poor breakfast sandwich, are having an identity crisis.

But enough of my breakfast sandwich philosophies, which, on second read sound as random and displaced as the sandwich.  On to the scoring:

Overall appearance: 9
Meat: 8
Egg (quality, quantity, and tuckage): 8
Greasiness: 6
Cheese (quality and quantity): 7
Condiments (quality and quantity.): 7
Carbohydrate Delivery System (credit: Matt Palmer): 4
Price: 7 ($2.50 for lots of stuff)
Accuracy of order: 10
Overall taste: 7
Total score: 73

Breakfast Sandwich Recap: The End is Near

Well boys and girls, my search for the best breakfast sandwich in North Philadelphia took a small hiatus, and now I am almost at the end. Aren’t you excited? Tense with anticipation to see who will take home the crown? I have one more truck on tap to taste and score before the finale, so until then, here are the latest standings:

Bagel Shop: 89
Ali’s: 84
Sexy Green Truck: 81
Ernie’s: 69
Richie’s: 67
Adriatic Grill: 61
Suzi’s: 61
Ray’s: 60
Eppy’s: 56
McDonald’s: 54
Tommy’s: 53

For you new readers, click here for the grading rubric I developed, along with the help of many foodies, to score the breakfast sandwiches. The winner will be revealed next week so stay tuned.

Suzi’s breakfast sandwich

I think I am officially all breakfast sandwiched out. They’ve lost their charm. They’ve all started running together.

I met a little girl recently named Skye whose mother owned a small market. This little girl was friendly and talkative and I learned that when her aunt comes to visit her every year for a week, she gets to eat those cereals that come in small boxes (you know–the sugary chocolatey ones). But, she said, “I only get to eat that cereal when I am being spoiled by my aunt.” I said to her, “Well if you got to eat them every day they wouldn’t be as special, right?” She took a good 10 seconds to think about that until she answered, “Yes they would!” Cheeky Cutie.

Well, because I have eaten a breakfast sandwich every week for the past 11 weeks, they definitely aren’t as special to me as they were when I started working where food trucks lined every street. (And I highly doubt that Skye would have kept the same feelings towards the special cereal if she got to eat it year-round. Sorry, Skye.)

I went to Suzi’s this morning and decided that this sandwich was all about ratios being wrong. It tasted OK, but the egg to bacon, cheese, and bread ratio was not. I opened the foil and was scared of the egginess. I did not want to eat this sandwich.

The egg was overwhelming before I even tried it.  And how could you get proper tuckage with that much egg?  The attempt to tuck was a valiant one and even successful on one side.  Despite the overwhelming quantity, the egg was cooked fine and I liked the consistency: soft and even a bit flaky.  It was not salty enough for me, though, but I would probably eat a salt lick if it was put in front of me.

The white bread was toasted completely differently on each side.  I preferred the crunchy dark brown side as the lighter side was too mushy.  And I don’t think it was buttered at all, which made it a bit dry. I know I just said that it was mushy and dry.  But it was.

(As you can see in the photo below, I actually pulled out some of the egg.)

 The bacon was nice and chewy with a smoky flavor, but I wanted more!   The bacon and ketchup were cooked into the egg just the way I like it.

Scoring:

Overall appearance: 5

Meat: 6

Egg (quality, quantity, and tuckage): 6

Greasiness: 5

Cheese (quality and quantity): 5

Condiments (quality and quantity.): 5

Carbohydrate Delivery System (credit: Matt Palmer): 5

Price: 7 ($2.75)

Accuracy of order: 10

Overall taste: 7

Total score: 61 (tied with Adriatic Grill

Suzi’s is across from the Anderson Hall vendor strip on N. 12th St.