Food52's 39 Essential Breakfast Spots in NYC

Breakfast—by some accounts, the most important part of the day—is a deeply personal affair. My dad, for example, likes exactly three-quarters of a cup of cooked old-fashioned oats, with a pat of cold butter and a pinch of brown sugar. My friend Jaquen doesn't eat breakfast at all. I've had colleagues who swear by the same bakery-bought croissant each day for months. And I'm all over the place: some days, a bagel sandwich; others, cheong fun with the works.

According to Ken Albala in Breakfast: A History, breakfast in the Middle Ages was one of just two eating occasions in a day, comprising "a heavy meal with meat and wine at 11:00 a.m." (Confusingly, he notes, the contemporary term "dinner" is actually from the Latin word disjejeunare, for breaking fast, which was used to refer to the morning meal.)

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