12 of Atlanta’s Best Breakfast Sandwiches
How do you define a breakfast sandwich?
Anything on a biscuit?
A sandwich with an egg on top?
Or just anything on bread that’s eaten in the morning hours?
I don’t know the answer, but I do know that breakfast sandwiches are fantastic, and Atlanta has no shortage of amazing options for you to start your day off with a boom.
Editor’s Note – this blog was first published on March 3, 2022 and last updated on August 30, 2023.
Pastrami and Egg Sandwich from The General Muir
Atlanta has a desolate dearth of proper Jewish delis, but Chef Todd Ginsberg has helped make that right with The General Muir. They’ve got everything you could possibly want in a delicatessen: matzo ball soup, bagels, chopped liver, pastrami, and much more.
The Pastrami and Egg Sandwich takes many of the most beloved parts of the deli menu and combines them into a delicious breakfast sandwich. It contains pastrami (cured and smoked in-house), fried egg, homemade Russian dressing, and American cheese on their proprietary TGM Bread rye griddled to crunchy perfection.
View this post on Instagram
THC Biscuit from Torched Hop Brewing Company
Torched Hop is one of the most underrated restaurants in Atlanta (at least in my opinion). This Midtown gastropub prepares classic bar food in an impeccable fashion; they also brew their own beer and have a huge three-story building with plenty of games and TVs. The weekend brunch is fittingly strong.
Look no further than the THC (Torched Hop Chicken) Biscuit. You get a buffalo-coated fried chicken breast and American cheese on a fresh homemade biscuit; it’s hot, it’s crunchy, it’s fluffy…but wait, there’s more! For just $9 more, you can make it a THC Biscuit Combo™, which throws in an entire bottle of champagne and orange juice to bring mimosas into the mix. It’s hard to imagine a better weekend treat.
Egg + Cheddar from The Best Sandwich Shop
With a name like “The Best Sandwich Shop”, the bar is set quite high (it also happens to be one of the few great puns, going alongside their sister concept “The Wurst Beer Hall”). Fortunately, this Poncey-Highland joint doesn’t disappoint. They’re well known for their long list of lunch and dinner subs, but they start their day off in style as well.
For their breakfast sandwich, available from 8:00 – 10:30 AM, you can get yours with just egg or egg and cheddar (to which you can add city ham, bacon, or avocado) on a sesame sub roll. I opted for egg, cheddar, and city ham, which brought a bold contrast between the salty ham and light cheesy egg, not to mention the texture of the fluffy sub roll. I also recommend getting your sandwich with a side of crispy hash browns. You deserve it! If you’re feeling extra frisky, get them loaded with cheddar and ham or bacon. I believe the kids call that smothered, covered, and chunked.
View this post on Instagram
Any bagel sandwich from Brooklyn Bagel and Deli
Like in the deli category, Atlanta is also severely lacking in good bagels. Luckily, Brooklyn Bagel and Deli has arrived to offer the finest bagels in town. Create a sandwich on those bad boys and your taste buds will thank you.
You can either build your own, or trust the experts because they have plenty of classic or signature sandwich options to choose from. Some of their best include the Rio Grande, with jalapeno cream cheese, egg, and your choice of meat; the Central Park, with grilled peppers, tomatoes, onions, and an egg; or go for the classic Sliced Nova, topped with cream cheese, tomato, onion, and capers.
Egg Sammie from Little Tart
Little Tart, with locations in Grant Park, Summerhill, and Krog Street Market, is well known for their homemade pastries and other baked goods, but their Egg Sammie deserves plenty of credit too. You can get yours with or without bacon, which I highly recommend including.
The sandwich has a souffled egg, Thomasville tomme (an artisan cheese that’s like a very sharp cheddar), and bacon on a homemade buttered English muffin. The egg is incredibly airy and the bacon has a nice subtle flavor with a slightly chewy texture that works best on a sandwich. The English muffin is buttery and tastes even fresher than you’d expect; it even leaves traces of the semolina flour it’s dusted with all over your hands (don’t @ me if I’m wrong about this, bakers). Plus, the cheese has that nice crispiness you get when you’re making grilled cheese and some cheese oozes out and cooks right on the pan (is this comparison too specific?)
View this post on Instagram
Country Ham, Egg, & Gruyere Sandwich from THE CHASTAIN
THE CHASTAIN (spelled in all caps because it’s so good you should be shouting about it) has quickly become one of the hottest restaurants in Buckhead, right near…you guessed it…Chastain Park. Their New American cuisine excels at lunch and dinner, but we’re obviously here to talk about their breakfast sandwich (see the title…and everything in this article up to this point).
The Ham, Egg, and Cheese Sandwich has been described by my team as “strong” and “perfect,” and we eat for a living! They use thinly shaved Edwards Virginia Smokehouse Ham (almost like prosciutto), a crispy fried egg, and beautifully melty Gruyere cheese on a toasted English muffin.
BBB from Bagelicious
East Cobb is home to one of the most bona fide delis in Atlanta. While they’ve got all your deli favorites, one of the most satisfying orders is the BBB.
The BBB is a bagel sandwich with egg, cheese, and your choice of corned beef, pastrami, or salami. Each meat option adds a salty and savory dimension to the mix and the cheese and egg complement it fantastically. A bagel sandwich is only as good as its bagel, and Bagelicious, as the name might suggest, makes one of the best bagels in the South. Enjoy the sandwich with a side of crispy and hearty potato latkes and you can go ahead and call it a day, because how could life get any better than this?
Vietnamese Hot Honey Chicken Biscuit from Juniper Cafe
This dreamy sandwich from the brunch menu of one of ATL’s hottest new restaurants is a crispy and spicy chicken breast drizzled with honey and chili crisp and served on a fresh buttery biscuit.
The biscuits, like those at Redbird, are laminated, meaning their dough is rolled out, folded, and repeated over and over again to create countless layers and bring you the fluffiest biscuit you can imagine. The exterior is still so crunchy to the point that it might as well have been fried rather than baked. The sandwich is the perfect blend of spicy and sweet and the chicken’s flavor is matched only by its crispy and juicy texture. The honey on top runneth over, so as you’re eating your sandwich, make sure to dunk your biscuit in the extra honey pooling up on your plate. Lick your fingers. Repeat.
NOTE: Juniper Cafe is temporarily closed for dine-in.
Dirty Rascal Egg Sandwich from Dirty Rascal
Dirty Rascal is Todd Ginsberg’s latest restaurant, an Italian concept located in the Thompson Buckhead hotel. While their red sauce dishes are extravagant and hit all the right notes, their breakfast is surprisingly stellar.
The pancakes are sweet and fluffy, the pastries are fresh and flavorful, but the breakfast sandwich might be the star of the menu. The sandwich consists of fontina, scrambled eggs, chicken sausage, pepper jam, Calabrian aioli, and red onion. It’s filling but not overly heavy, almost like a power breakfast. You get the protein of the egg and light chicken sausage, the soft and chewy bun, with the roller coaster of tastes thanks to the fontina, pepper jam, and Calabrian aioli. It should be a crime to start your morning off this well.
Build Your Own Breakfast Sandwich from The Buttery
Lemon Pepper Chicken Biscuit from Bomb Biscuit Co.
How can a breakfast sandwich possibly get more Atlanta than fried lemon pepper chicken on a homemade biscuit?
Bomb Biscuit Co. is one of the hottest new spots in Inman Park, serving up all kinds of biscuit sandwiches and other breakfast staples. They’re well known for their Hot Honey Fried Chicken Biscuit, OG Cinnamon Roll, and The Classic (bacon, egg, and cheese), but the real star of the menu is the Lemon Pepper Chicken Biscuit.
It stacks a buttermilk fried chicken thigh, drenched in housemade lemon pepper sauce, and pickles on a fresh and crispy biscuit. Sometimes lemon pepper is mostly just salt and pepper with a hint of lemon, but this is an extremely lemon-forward bite. The tart flavor beautifully contrasts the richness of the chicken and the biscuit.
Birdy Biscuits from Redbird
You may have had hundreds of biscuits in your life, but you’ve never had anything quite like the laminated ones at Redbird. Redbird is one of the hottest restaurants in West Midtown, brought to life by Chef Zeb Stevenson’s “free-spirited cuisine” and the spacious dining room, drowning in natural light. Their regular menu boasts plenty of delicious options, but on the weekend, their Birdy Biscuit menu is the star of the show.
You can order online then walk right up to the window to collect your bounty. Every biscuit option is a winner, but some of the best are the Little Birdy (crunchy, sweet, and spicy with fried chicken, cheddar cheese, and chili maple syrup), the Old Man Thunder (the tried and true combo of bacon, egg, and American cheese), and the Pure Guava (a wild gastronomical sensation with whipped cream cheese, sweet guava paste, and salted cashew butter).
NOTE: As of February 19, 2023, Redbird closed. While we are devastated about losing such an amazing Atlanta restaurant, we’re choosing to leave this blurb up in the hopes that Chef Zeb continues to serve his Birdy Biscuits somewhere in the near future.
