Chef Alvin Cailan's Favorite Simple Bread For Breakfast Sandwiches
Chef Alvin Cailan is known for many things, from writing the cookbook, "Amboy: Recipes from the Filipino-American Dream," to hosting the First We Feast series "The Burger Show," to, most recently, becoming the head chef of the gourmet burger chain Umami Burger. He also founded Eggslut, a food truck turned restaurant specializing in egg breakfast sandwiches that can be found on the West Coast, London, and across East Asia.
Seeing as Cailan managed to make a very successful business with the breakfast sandwich, who else would we turn to with our questions about how to craft one? In an interview with Tasting Table, Cailan gave us a breakdown of how to craft the perfect breakfast sandwich — including his favorite bread to use. He said, "First thing ... is you've got to consider texture and flavor. Nowadays, I like to pick square toast bread or a really good grain bread because it has more texture to it than a brioche. I'm over that."
Cailan tips for building a better breakfast sandwich
After you've picked out your bread — whether you go with his suggestions of a square toast or grain bread, or something else entirely — next comes the egg. Specifically, you need to figure out how you want your egg cooked. The breakfast sammy "eggspert" told us, "A lot of people love the idea of having a yolky egg until you get it splattered all over your t-shirt and then you have to change in the morning. I'm into a quick scramble nowadays."
Beyond these two tried-and-true components, Cailan thinks one of the most important aspects of a perfect breakfast sandwich is to add in some kind of unexpected flavor, such as a kick of spiciness. Cailan continued, "I've been using Maggi seasoning on my eggs a lot lately. Why shouldn't an egg or a breakfast sandwich wake you up as much as a coffee can? That's my motivation when I eat in the morning."