Sixty Days

Once upon a time I used to write a lot about Chipotle. It got to the point where Mrs. Fussy suggested it might be time to find other examples of good food in the region. I feel like I may be getting close to that point with All Good Bakers.

But I’ve got a story to tell and dammit I’m going to tell it.

Because it involves all sorts of things that I love, like eggs and cheese and sandwiches and bialys. There’s also a little bit of challah thrown in there for good measure. Oh, and patience. Lots and lots of patience.

Maybe I have too much patience. I’m happy to wait for things. If it takes me five years to chronicle the region’s best cider donuts, so be it. There is a thirty minute line for my favorite espresso joint? Given that they make coffee like nobody else, it’s totally worth it.

As long as I’m sharing, I also order my pizza slices one at a time. Yes, it takes longer, but each one is piping hot and perfectly crisp when it arrives. Which is the whole point of slices in the first place. But I digress.

I found out about All Good Bakers putting egg and cheese sandwiches on their menu just over two months ago. We even celebrated the news with a little giveaway on these pages. This was very exciting for me because I love egg and cheese sandwiches but I don’t like the sad cruel eggs served at most places, nor am I thrilled with their cheeses. So to have an option that’s made with some of the finest local ingredients available was an amazing discovery.

Plus I was totally intrigued to find out how one makes an egg and cheese sandwich with a bialy. But now after two months of intending to eat this breakfast sandwich, I finally got into the restaurant to eat one for myself.

That’s good stuff.

I’m going to make an even bolder claim. All Good Bakers’ egg and cheese sandwich is the best thing to do with one of Nick’s bialys. It’s no secret that I’ve never been a big fan of his version of these Eastern European onion rounds. However, their one crowning glory is the divot. This is where Nick makes the indentation for the onions, and it goes all the way down to the bottom crust, creating one small and gloriously crispy bite in the center of the bialy.

The other major difference in the All Good Baker bialy is the inclusion of sauteed onions in the impression. Usually, this makes the snack a sweeter version of what has traditionally been a savory experience. But for an egg and cheese sandwich it works wonders.

To make the sandwich, the top of the bialy is sliced off horizontally. Because of the depth of the divot and the few onions it holds, the resulting O-shaped top resembles a bagel in appearance. The onions are left on the bottom half and get buried by beautifully fried eggs and some tasty melted cheese. Naturally, the bialy is toasted too, so instead of being hard and dry it more closely resembles its fresh baked self.

While I got mine with the standard Palatine cheddar, any of the cheeses on the menu could be used in the service of this sandwich. Next time, I’m totally getting R&G’s Truffle Falls. Eggs and truffles are a killer combination.

The hardest decision I had to make when I was there was whether to get this sandwich I’ve been pining over for months or to take advantage of their new extended breakfast menu which is now available all day Wednesday through Sunday.

I want to try it all. Seriously, take a look. I lifted these from their website:

$6.50 Biscuit & Seitan Sausage Gravy
$5 Whole Wheat Pancakes with Warm Maple Syrup & our Butter
$6 Cinnamon Vanilla Bean French Toast with Warm Maple Syrup and Butter
$7 Potato Latke with Saffron Aioli and Fried Onions with Braised Greens garnish
$6 Maple Chipotle Butternut Squash Potato Hash w/Red Cabbage & Lime ($7 w/Fried Egg)
$7 Cheddar Grits Croquettes with Cream Cheese and Seitan Stuffed Smoked Jalapenos with Mole and Greens

My sincere hope is that it will not take me another sixty days to get back there. And I suspect that it won’t because soon The Cheese Traveler will be open, and I’ll have even more incentive to make my way to DelSo. That, and I also need to have a serious conversation with Jose at Mingle about the market for authentic Korean food in the Capital Region.

And if that wasn’t enough, All Good Bakers is in the process of honing their challah baking. Right now it’s a work in progress, but the loaf I tried had really good flavor. I’m hoping they will be amenable to special orders even while their recipe is in development. Let me know if you are interested, and even if I can’t engage in any kind of collective bargaining, at least I can inform you when they feel good enough about the product to put their name on it.