What is Atlanta’s Favorite Breakfast Sandwich?
Let’s talk breakfast sandwiches.
Along with breakfast burritos, there’s no better way to start your day. They’re hearty but not heavy, layered but not fluffy, and they taste so very good.
Breakfast sandwiches are a broad category, however, including a myriad of concoctions from fried chicken biscuits to BEC on a bagel, so no two are quite the same. It can be exceedingly hard to decide which specific sandwich you might be craving, but luckily you are not alone.
We polled our 200,000+ Instagram followers, asking their breakfast sandwich preferences, then compiled these findings into a tidy manifesto of the exact types that ATLiens like you love. We’ve previously done studies like this for burgers, chicken wings, and pizza, so check those out if you’re equally passionate about those killer foods (and how could you not be?)
Here’s what you had to say about breakfast sandwiches…
Best Bread
A sandwich is only as good as its bread, which is especially true for breakfast sandwiches. Whether your creation is snuggled in a brioche bun or stacked high on an English muffin can completely change its identity.
Our audience clearly has Southern roots because the most common response, with over 42% of the total votes was a biscuit.
The two runners-up, each with 22.5% of the vote, were croissants and bagels.
There was a huge gap between the top three and the remaining options, which included:
- English muffins
- Kaiser rolls
- Sourdough
- Syrup-infused pancakes (I think you’re just describing a McGriddle)
- Brioche
What Kind of Eggs?
Eggs are the key component that turns a sandwich into a breakfast sandwich (ignoring those sickos who put fried egg on their burgers). But a fried egg compared to an omelet might as well be two different foods. So how do you like your eggs prepared on a breakfast sandwich?
The runaway winner was a fried or sunny-side-up egg (the former is flipped while cooking while the latter is not), with an overwhelming ⅔ of the votes. A very distant second place was scrambled (23% of the vote) followed by folded/omelet (10%).
What can we say, you influencers love taking videos of your runny yolks!
Best Breakfast Meat
Eggs are important to a breakfast sandwich, but they shouldn’t stand alone. Various meats can make a sandwich transcendent, adding bite, color, and flavor.
There are several strong contenders for Atlanta’s favorite breakfast meat, but which one won the day?
Bacon might be the people pleaser, but it only came in second place, with 34% of the vote. The winner of the day was sausage, edging out bacon with 39% of the total vote. The healthy eaters came in troves, propelling turkey sausage to a surprise third-place finish with 11%, followed by fried chicken (8%) and ham (5%).
Atlanta’s Best Breakfast Sandwich
So who serves Atlanta’s finest breakfast sandwich?
The answer, unfulfilling though satisfying, is that there is no consensus.
Of the countless responses we received (and that’s why our followers rock, and we appreciate you!), there wasn’t a single common answer. Certain places were mentioned twice (shout-out Kinship in Virginia Highland!) and some types of sandwiches got multiple mentions (all kinds of bagel variations), but ultimately our city’s breakfast sandwich preferences are as varied as its hungry customers.
Here are just a few of the submissions:
- Folded Egg & Cheese Bun from Hero Doughnuts & Buns
- Double Breakfast Sandwich with sausage from Kinship Butcher & Sundry
- Chicken Biscuit from Buttermilk Kitchen
- “You tell me, food boy” (rude!)
- Build Your Own from Gracious Plenty
- Sausage, Egg, and Cheese Texas Melt from Waffle House
- Rio Grande from Brooklyn Bagel & Deli
The Perfect Breakfast Sandwich is…
So when Atlanta has a hankering for a breakfast sandwich, what’s the order?
That would be a fried egg and sausage sandwich on a biscuit.
It’s warm, flaky, buttery, oozy, and as comforting as it gets.
And isn’t that exactly what you’re looking for in a breakfast sandwich?
