Your mother, your doctor, your trainer, and your weight-loss adviser were all right: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. What they maybe didn’t say is how much fun it is, too. Breakfast in Boston during the coldest months will warm you and thrill you, and you might just be surprised at how many things can be done with eggs, toast, butter, and other essentials. In many cases, the challenge to come up with something nourishing but memorable is what makes chefs so inventive. One cook might take a fried egg and tuck it into a sandwich with honey-whipped ricotta and pancetta, another plop it onto fried rice with sausages, and a third set it on a spinach salad with bacon and balsamic. In this town, you can go traditional with feathery blueberry pancakes, eggs Benedict, corned beef hash, or the Mexican favorite, huevos rancheros. Or try something you’ve never ordered, like North African Shakshuka, which is an egg baked in tomato sauce, or French-inspired tartine — crusty bread with avocado, arugula, and eggs. Breakfast isn’t just a weekend luxury. Bask in the pleasure any day.
MUL’S DINER
Advertisement
Breakfast served: Weekdays 5 a.m.-2 p.m., weekends 5 a.m.-3 p.m.
In this venerable South Boston diner, the corned beef hash is irresistible, with big chunks of the salty meat mixed with potatoes and onions, topped with two eggs. It’s a beetless red-flannel hash, cured but still beefy. Coffee is free and bottomless, which makes sense when you see construction workers come in with their empty Dunkin’ cups and leave with a stack of takeout containers. If you eavesdrop while the waitresses chat, a conversation goes like this: “Gotta call my husband and see if he’s alive.”
75 West Broadway, South Boston, 617-268-5748
WHEELHOUSE
Breakfast served: Weekdays 7 a.m.-3 p.m.
Wheelhouse is a beacon of warmth in the Financial District. The year-and-a-half-old spot, owned by former bartenders and business partners Abby O’Donnell and Jon Chase, features an array of stools along barn-board wall counters. Breakfast can be hearty. The Asian-style fried rice, tossed with breakfast sausage, soy sauce, hoisin, scallion, and egg, comes topped with a fried egg. It makes the first meal of the day quite possibly the best thing you’ll eat all day.
Advertisement
63 Broad Street, Boston, 617-422-0082, wheelhouseboston.com
MIKE & PATTY’S
Breakfast served: Mondays-Tuesdays 8 a.m.-2 p.m., Wednesdays-Fridays 7:30 a.m.-2 p.m., weekends 7:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.
Someone here has a keen sense of what goes together. The Goldmine at Mike & Patty’s is just that: a toasted brioche sandwich with honey-whipped locally made ricotta, crispy pancetta, and a fried egg. At this closet-sized spot in Bay Village, you can watch the sandwich being assembled and then cut in half as the yolk streams out of the bread. Belly up to the window counter and wolf it down: It’s creamy, salty, smoky, toasty, and rich. You might not notice, but the last four digits of the telephone number spell “eggs.” They should spell “love.”
12 Church Street, Boston, 617-423-3447, mikeandpattys.com
RIFRULLO CAFE
Breakfast served: Weekdays 8-11 a.m., Saturdays 8-11 a.m., Sundays 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Maybe it’s the large pink faux-leather couch with its curved seating, or the big center table filled with earnest moms and their notebooks, or the beat cop who seems to know everyone. Brookline’s Rifrullo Cafe and owner Colleen Marnell-Suhanosky’s breakfast menu are more than enough to draw you in. A standout is the breakfast salad, a plate of baby spinach tossed with bacon and balsamic, topped with two eggs. Poached is the order of the day: It turns this splendid dish into an Americanized salade frisee aux lardons.
Advertisement
147 Cypress Street, Brookline, 617-505-6727, rifrullocafe.com
TATTE BAKERY & CAFE
Breakfast served: Weekdays 7-11:30 a.m., Saturdays 8 a.m.-8 p.m., Sundays 9 a.m.-6 p.m. (Charles Street only, Sundays 8 a.m.-7 p.m.)
Israeli-born Tzurit Or was a film producer in Tel Aviv and her bakeries — cases filled with large luscious pastries, elaborate chandeliers overhead — look like sets. Crowd into one of the communal tables scattered with laptops and order the hearty avocado tartine, sourdough spread with the creamy ripe fruit, sharp baby arugula, spicy sliced radishes, and fresh dill to balance the rich avocado. You decide how the eggs are cooked; crisp over-easy are divine here. Add a chocolate rose, with swirls of golden yeast dough, for a taste of decadence.
70 Charles Street, Boston, 617-723-5555
318 Third Street, Cambridge, 617-354-4200
205 Broadway, Cambridge, 617-494-8700
101 Main Street, Cambridge, 617-577-1111
1003 Beacon Street, Brookline, 617-232-2200 (closed for renovation)
TRIDENT BOOKSELLERS & CAFE
Breakfast served: Daily 8 a.m.-midnight
The un-chic end of Newbury Street houses one of Back Bay’s funkiest cafes. Opened in 1984, Trident Booksellers is a throwback to the ’60s, and proudly ungentrified. A bright way to begin your day is with their blueberry-filled buttermilk pancakes, large, feathery rounds that come with a wedge of orange. Ask for the real maple syrup, which costs a few dollars more, and you’ll be fortified to handle whatever happens during the day.
Advertisement
338 Newbury Street, Boston, 617-267-8688, tridentbookscafe.com
SOFRA BAKERY AND CAFE
Breakfast served: Weekdays 8-11 a.m., weekends 8 a.m.-3 p.m.
Ana Sortun and business partner Maura Kilpatrick have a Midas touch. Their jammed little bakery will have you weaving your way around backpacks and puffy jackets while you wait for your order and hope no one took your spot. When finally your Shakshuka arrives, all is forgiven. This North African specialty, now so popular in Israel, begins with a smooth tomato sauce heated in a metal bowl, which is then baked with an egg that floats in the middle, and topped with a spoonful of zhoug, a spicy cilantro sauce. A small, puffy pita helps you mop up every last drop.
1 Belmont Street, Cambridge, 617-661-3161, sofrabakery.com
BLUNCH
Breakfast served: Weekdays 8 a.m.-3 p.m., Saturdays 9 a.m.-3 p.m.
In its tiny spot across from the Boston Medical Center, the South End’s Blunch has a stream of customers all day. You might hear conversations like “When I was studying for my NP [nurse practitioner], she and her wife were so good to me.” Nikki Leo (then Nikki Christo) achieved some fame two years ago when Guy Fieri stopped by and put Blunch on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. (To prove it, he spray painted “Guy ate here” on the wall.) A dozen stools, all facing the street, are coveted places to plop down with an eggwich, a pressed sandwich that begins with a soft bulkie roll filled with a thick layer of frittata, to which you can add Black Forest ham, Vermont cheddar, and house-roasted tomatoes to make it your own.
Advertisement
59 East Springfield Street, Boston, 617-247-8100, eatblunch.com
LONE STAR TACO BAR
Breakfast served: Weekdays 11 a.m.-4 p.m., weekends 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Huevos rancheros is served here all day, so the spicy dried-and-fresh-chili ranchero sauce spooned over fried eggs with refried beans, soft tacos, queso fresco, and ripe avocado can get you going in the morning or refueled after a long evening out. The busy nightspots in Allston and Cambridge feel surprisingly serene in the morning.
479 Cambridge Street, Allston, 617-782-8226
635 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, 857-285-6179
OAK LONG BAR + KITCHEN
Breakfast served: Weekdays 7-11 a.m., weekends 7 a.m.-10 a.m.
If you like breakfast classics, you can’t get more traditional than eggs Benedict at the Oak Long Bar + Kitchen in the 103-year-old Fairmont Copley Plaza in Back Bay. With its gleaming copper bar, tall arched windows, and round marble tables, the dining room feels luxurious, but in a relaxed way. Napkins are really just pressed tea towels, and while the staff are highly trained, they won’t make you feel like you’re out of your element. This version of Benedict is splendid: With the tip of a fork, the poached egg yolks spill onto the nicely smoked ham under them, and you have a split, toasted Wolferman’s English muffin to offset the hollandaise, which, mercifully, isn’t very rich. The setting is, however. Ask for a table along the Dartmouth Street windows overlooking the Boston Public Library. It’s one of the best seats in the house. Make that the city.
Fairmont Copley Plaza, 138 St. James Avenue, Boston, 617-267-5300
Sheryl Julian, the Globe’s former food editor, can be reached at sheryl.julian@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @sheryljulian.