Ocean Avenue Bagels: Bacon, Egg & Cheese On A Bagel – The Bite

Welcome back to The Bite, Sheepshead Bites’ weekly column where we explore the foodstuffs of Sheepshead Bay. Each week we check out a different offering from one of the many restaurants, delis, food carts, bakeries, butchers, fish mongers, or grocers in our neighborhood. If it’s edible, we’ll take a bite.

Well, boys and girls, it’s come to this. The quintessential Brooklyn food stuff: bacon, egg and cheese on a roll. This is arguably the most perfect food ever created. It represents almost all the major food groups. Add some vegetables by ordering an onion roll and viola, every food group is covered. Oh, your mother would be so proud.

Like pizza, the bacon, egg and cheese has only been mastered within the city of New York. Everywhere else, and I’ll include Staten Island in this, gets it wrong. We’re not talking Egg McMuffin here. No light and fluffy, almost omelet like eggs. Please don’t call this a “breakfast sandwich.” A bacon, egg and cheese is so much more.

This is the perfect breakfast. This is the perfect late night snack. This is the ultimate comfort food. Who among us hasn’t woken up hung over, reached for a cigarette and trudged out to the deli or bodega un-bathed and un-shaved for the perfect hangover cure – a bacon, egg and cheese with coffee?

One or two eggs, lightly fried and half scrambled using the egg shell as the stirrer, cooked on a griddle, topped with two slices of cheese, usually American, finished off with two slices of crispy bacon and served on a buttered Kaiser roll.

In Los Angeles, the BE&C has been corrupted to include mayonnaise and is served on a lowly hamburger bun. In the rest of the country, they have to make do with McDonalds or Burger King’s poor substitutes. Hell, even out on Long Island, they don’t get it right. Pity the fools.

“But, wait a minute,” you say. “That picture. That’s not a bacon, egg and cheese on a roll. That’s a bagel!” Yes – Yes, you are right. A true Brooklyn bagel is the only acceptable substitute for a Kaiser roll, IMHO. If you’re in a bagel shop, where the bagels are hand made every day, it is perfectly acceptable to use a bagel. And that’s Swiss Cheese not American. C’mon folks – this is Brooklyn; embrace the diversity!

Bacon, egg and cheese on a roll or bagel – $2.75 at Ocean Avenue Bagels.

Ocean Avenue Bagels, 2965 Ocean Avenue, (718) 332-7604.

Do you have a suggestion for a particular dish from a particular eatery for an upcoming Bite? Let us know by e-mail!