One of my favorite things about living in an off-campus apartment is that I have the option to cook and eat whenever I want. My roommates would probably make fun of me for saying this, given that I have cooked exactly one meal this year. However, if you count pouring my bottled iced coffee into a cup and sprinkling granola into my individual yogurt containers, then I have made many more meals than my roommates would give me credit for. I enjoy being able to walk to the kitchen in my pajamas in the morning and grab a cup of coffee and a yogurt to eat and drink leisurely as I get ready for the day. This routine emulates the sense of separation between home and school that I lost when I moved away for college.
It is now week 2 of spring term, and I have yet to go to the grocery store to pick up breakfast food to keep in my apartment’s fridge. As a result, I have been building in an extra ten minutes in the morning to stop at Collis for coffee and breakfast on my way to class. While I would love to wait for a freshly-made two-egg Hugh with bacon, I usually resort to the grab-and-go pre-packaged breakfast sandwiches in order to make it to class on time. For Dartmouth Dining’s standards, these sandwiches taste pretty good. However, after having sampled every breakfast sandwich in Hanover over the past four years, there are several that top Collis’s rendition. To put Hanover’s breakfast sandwich scene to the test, a friend and I ordered one from every joint in town that featured them on the menu and did a taste test. Our criteria were texture, look, taste and a homemade quality. The results are as follows:
The Works ($6.99) - 7/10
We started our taste test with a scrambled egg sandwich with cheese and bacon on a toasted plain bagel from The Works. This was the only chain restaurant — they have 13 locations in New England — among our test, and the breakfast sandwich definitely tasted like it. The bagel was visibly greasy on the outside, and the egg looked like it came from a sheetpan. However, the cheese was sufficiently melted and the sandwich didn’t fall apart when I took a bite. Despite its somewhat generic appearance and taste, there was something about The Works’s breakfast sandwich that made me want to go in for another bite.
Still North Books and Bar ($7.50) - 9/10
Next, we tried the bacon, sunnyside-up egg and cheese sandwich from Still North. I was really excited about this one. The secret ingredient is maple syrup on the inside, which might seem like an odd addition to an egg sandwich, but, actually adds just the right amount of sweetness. When I picked up this sandwich, my first impression was that it was noticeably heavier than The Works’s version. It was also served on a toasted Portuguese muffin instead of a bagel, which, coupled with its apparent density, made it seem higher quality. When I took a bite, the taste was just as delicious as I had anticipated. The bacon was thick and flavorful, and the egg yolk was runny and clearly not cooked on a sheetpan. Overall, the sandwich appeared and tasted more gourmet than The Works.
Umpleby’s ($9.00) - 5/10
Before I even tasted the Umpleby’s sandwich, I was slightly disappointed for two reasons: (i) they were out of The Professor Moriarty (my favorite of their breakfast sandwiches because of the chipotle mayo), forcing me to order The Miss Marple, and (ii) they were also out of white sourdough bread, so I had to settle for regular white bread. The Miss Marple consists of two fried eggs, tomato, cheddar cheese and avocado. I like the unique element these extra ingredients add to the basic breakfast sandwich, but when I took a bite, I was slightly disappointed. The sandwich didn’t stay together, the filling fell out of the bread and the cheese ran down my hands and wrists. It was also not as flavorful as I would have liked. Perhaps I was biased by the maple syrup-infused taste of the Still North sandwich, but if it were up to me, I would add salt or some other seasoning or sauce to Miss Marple to enhance its flavor.
Lou’s ($8.98) - 6/10
Right off the bat, this breakfast sandwich stood out from the others in that it was wrapped in tin foil, presumably to keep it warm. Strong start. When we pulled back the tin foil, the sandwich was incredibly smushed and the English muffin was ripped apart in a couple of places. The weak appearance was cancelled out by the delicious smell that wafted out of the tin foil, though. As soon as I picked up the sandwich, it started to fall apart: The egg yolk dripped everywhere, and the sogginess of the bread made it fall apart even more. Still, the sandwich was clearly more gourmet and authentic than some of the other ones we had tasted already. The taste was pretty much exactly what I expected: warm and noticeably fresher than the seemingly packaged ingredients of The Works sandwich. However, English muffins have a very distinct flavor that I have always been turned off by. I can’t really describe it, but I would much prefer a bagel or Portuguese muffin.
Final Thoughts
As expected, Still North was my favorite — the touch of maple syrup really does it for me. Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I put The Works at number two. There is certainly a time and place for a generic, greasy, chain-restaurant breakfast sandwich. Lou’s is an iconic Hanover establishment, but there is a fairly widespread sentiment that it is over-hyped, or at least overpriced. I would say the same about its breakfast sandwich — it was nothing to write home about. While Umpleby’s came in last place in this taste test, I attribute some of my disappointment to the Miss Marple and the regular white bread. In future reviews I plan to further explore the Umpleby’s breakfast sandwich selection.
