Best Sandwiches in America 2016: Breakfast

Winner: Bright Eyes Breakfast Sandwich

Restaurant: Blue Smoke, New York City

Sandwich Creator: Chef Jean-Paul Bourgeois

Inspiration: “Last year I created a new kind of donut made with Blue Smoke biscuit dough. Our fried chicken is seasoned with homemade hot sauce powder, and the donut is fully glazed with honey and sprinkled with Aleppo pepper. When you when you press down on the sandwich, the sunny side up egg yolk pop up through the doughnut hole, hence the name Bright Eyed Breakfast Sandwich.”

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See all of the 2016 winners

See selected 2016 runners up

Key Ingredients: Biscuit Doughnut, fried egg, pimento cheese, spicy fried chicken.

Price: $16

What the Judges Said: One of the hottest food trends in the last few years has been the rise of Southern cuisine. It’s interesting that a Manhattan restaurant came up with this sandwich, which combines a holy trinity of Southern ingredients—biscuits, fried chicken and pimento cheese. But what put this sandwich over the top for us was the inventive biscuit doughnut. Gimmicky? Yes. Delicious? Absolutely.

Honorable Mentions:
• Mortadella Egg & Cheese: Carluccio’s, Bethesda, MD
• The Wagon Wheel: Homestead Restaurant, Tacoma, WA
• Waffle Cristo: Uptown Grill: Bay City, MI
• The Artisan: Shoreline Sandwich Company, Corpus Christi, TX
• Croque Senõr: Meso Maya, Dallas

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