6 great Los Angeles breakfast sandwiches to try now

Dec. 23, 2024 3 AM PT

If there isn’t an egg on it, can you call it a breakfast sandwich?
It’s debatable, but sometimes, lettuce belongs on a breakfast sandwich.
Also, a breakfast sandwich tastes just as good at 10 p.m. as it does at 10 a.m.

The breakfast sandwich is as vast a category as the breakfast burrito, its components endlessly customizable and fiercely debated. If there isn’t an egg involved, can you still call it breakfast? If you add an egg, is anything breakfast?

You could technically re-categorize this as a list of excellent egg sandwiches that one typically eats in the morning but could consume at any time of day. Some of the sandwiches featured are available through the afternoon, while some you’ll need to trek to while you sip your morning coffee.

While these sandwiches may differ in style and overall philosophy, I’m confident they will satisfy, even if you’re half asleep.

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The breakfast croissant from Seed Bakery in Pasadena.

Breakfast croissant at Seed Bakery

Pasadena Bakery $

I can already hear the grumbling. Yes, there is a pile of mixed greens on this sandwich. Hear me out. The base of the sandwich is one of Seed’s flaky, buttery croissants, toasted so that both the butter flavor and crunch factor are amplified. The bacon is cut thick and cooked until crisp along with soft scrambled eggs. Then come the greens, wild, leafy and spilling out of all ends of the sandwich. It’s a nice bit of freshness that helps lighten things up. And if you’re really opposed, you can take them out and make a side salad.

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Egg sandwich from Bánh Mì Mỹ Tho

Alhambra Vietnamese $

I suspect that you could put just about anything on a baguette from this sandwich shop and I’d enjoy it. The crust offers a satisfying crack that dissolves into a soft, airy bread that cushions any filling. You could order any of the banh mi for breakfast, but the egg sandwich is the obvious choice for maximum morning vibes. The bread is smeared with mayonnaise and there’s a splash of sweet soy sauce. The eggs are fried until the yolks are just firm and the edges are crisp. It’s dressed like the other banh mi on the menu, with lots of fresh cilantro, slivers of jalapeño, tiles of cucumber and a mix of pickled daikon and carrot. It hits all the high notes of a banh mi, hot and cold, sweet, spicy and tangy from the pickles. I like to buy a deli cup of the fried shallots that they sell in the small market area of the shop and sprinkle them on each bite of my sandwich for a little extra crunch and toasty onion flavor.

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The M&E Brekkie Banger from Meat and Essentials in San Marino.

Brekkie Banger from Meat & Essentials

San Marino Butcher Shop $$

Eagle Yu and Mel Cain run this San Marino butchery, coffee shop and market. There’s a short list of sandwiches built on Bub & Grandma’s bread with fillings butchered and prepared in house. The Brekkie Banger, like the coffee menu, is inspired by Cain’s Australian background. Brekkie is Aussie slang for breakfast, while banger refers to a sausage. It’s a sausage, egg and cheddar sandwich made with a ground pork patty that Yu seasons with sage, garlic, a touch of nutmeg and dried Thai chiles for a mild, roasted chile flavor. He cooks the sausage like a smash burger patty so that the middle stays juicy and a lacy crust forms around the edges. It’s layered on a potato roll smeared with what Yu likes to call “G sauce,” or his version of a Peruvian aji verde. The vibrant green sauce contains a mix of Anaheim, Fresno and serrano chiles for a slow burn, plenty of cilantro, a touch of honey and some Pecorino cheese. And though it’s a butcher shop, the veggie delight breakfast sandwich is just as satisfying. Yu swaps the sausage for whipped feta cheese, spinach and tomato.

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The avocado and egg sandwich from Egg Tuck.

Avo Egg sandwich from Egg Tuck

Westwood Breakfast $

This is more of a breakfast pocket than a sandwich, served in a paper sleeve. The thick slab of buttered and grilled brioche is split three-quarters of the way down the middle so that the bottom is still attached. The scrambled eggs that overflow from the top of the sandwich are so soft and velvety they’re nearly custard. Slices of avocado are fanned out and nestled onto the exposed eggs. Over the top and dripping from the eggs is the restaurant’s “signature egg sauce,” which tastes like a thin, herbaceous mayonnaise. Inside the bread, there’s a smear of Sriracha aioli. It’s difficult to eat and messier than you’re imagining, but the soiled fingers and egg on your face are always worth it. And with locations all over L.A., there’s likely an Egg Tuck near you.

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The breakfast sandwich at Calabama with bacon and avocado.

OG breakfast and biscuit sandwiches from Calabama

Hollywood Breakfast $$

I used to make myself grilled cheese sandwiches after soccer practice using whatever white bread was in the freezer, slices of American cheese and lots of butter. I devoured them straight from the pan, bread glistening and fingers burning. Cara Haltiwanger’s breakfast sandwiches are those grilled cheese sandwiches, only much, much better. She cracked the breakfast sandwich code when she decided to start with a really good grilled cheese. There’s a slice of American cheese glued to one side of the white bread and a slice of cheddar fused to the other, a fluffy pillow of egg in the middle, crispy bacon, just enough grilled onion to know it’s there and some avocado. She spreads some of her aioli onto the bread before grilling, ensuring that every inch of surface is toasted. The diagonal cut is meant for dipping, and each sandwich is accompanied by a cup of Haltiwanger’s dipping sauce. It’s the love child of pancake syrup and your favorite vinegar hot sauce.

Her biscuit sandwich is made using her Southern grandmother’s buttermilk biscuit recipe. They’re tall and flaky, with a tender crumb that just barely holds together under the weight of the scrambled egg. For a few dollars more, you can add bacon and pimento cheese. Haltiwanger butters both the outside and inside of the biscuit before adding a scoop of pimento cheese. The warm egg, bacon and biscuit melt the cheese into a mess of smoky, spicy orange goo that cascades over the bottom layer. I can’t imagine ordering it any other way.

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Breakfast sandwich from Altadena Bakery

Burbank Bakery $

David Grigoryan and his family have been making Armenian pastries at the Altadena Bakery in Burbank since 2014. In 2016, Grigoryan’s father asked whether David would like to start making pizzas. They started Pizza Prima on one side of the bakery, adding pies and sandwiches to the menu. After years of customers requesting breakfast, Grigoryan recently started using the bakery’s three-day fermented pizza dough to make breakfast sandwiches. He cooks the 4-ounce balls in the pizza oven until they’re puffed up and blanketed in tiny bubbles, like a giant round of really good pizza crust. He splits the roll and adds some Tillamook cheese then returns the bread to the oven. While the cheese is melting, he cooks the bacon and soft scrambles eggs with a drizzle of hot honey he makes at the restaurants. The pizza dough is what makes the sandwich, crusty with a slight tang and a nice chew. And that touch of hot honey in the eggs adds a whisper of sweet heat to every bite. The breakfast sandwich is available from 8 to 11 a.m.

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