The best breakfast sandwiches in Philadelphia

You could stuff pretty much anything inside one of Artisan Boulanger Patissier’s buttery, flaky croissants and you’d end up with a great sandwich. But get their sausage, egg, and cheese ($8.50) or perhaps ham, brie, and strawberry jam ($7.50), and you’d have a breakfast that’s nothing short of miraculous. The former is everything you’d want in a McDonald’s-style breakfast sandwich, down to the American cheese and pork sausage patties, but the technically perfect croissant elevates the combination to a realm that will never be attained by fast food. The ham, brie, and strawberry jam version is the perfect balance of savory and sweet. Don’t leave without grabbing another pastry for when your sandwich is gone. — Kiki Aranita

A generous rich auntie can be a good thing, indeed. And at this stylish modern Filipino cafe in Brewerytown, ordering the Rich Tita Sando means you’re about to wrap your jaws around one of the most indulgent breakfast sandwiches imaginable. A pillowy house-baked pandesal roll comes stuffed with a garlicky pork patty of fresh longanisa sausage, peppery arugula and a fried egg whose drippy yolk mingles with the citrus-pepper zing of a chili-mansi aioli. — Craig LaBan

Often served in a brown paper bag with the occasional bag of chips thrown in for takeout, the breakfast sandwiches from Cafe Walnut are reminiscent of a grade school sack lunch. That’s the point, according to co-owner Christopher Lee, who took over the two-story cafe across from Washington Square Park with his younger brother and sister in 2021. When the trio moved from the U.S. to South Korea briefly for elementary school, Lee said, their mom would pack them American-ized lunches of bulgogi and sliced cheese sandwiches. “It was like a cheesesteak on a roll,” Lee said. The breakfast versions incorporate bulgogi — ultra thin slices of marinated beef — or spicy pork mixed with housemade sriracha mayo with American cheese and a fried egg on your choice of a bagel or croissant. Clocking in at $8.50 each, the sandwiches punch well about their weight in terms of both heft and flavor, almost as if a BEC, a cheesesteak, and perfectly-seared K-BBQ combined. — B.F.

There are two spots that West Philly goes to for bagels: Bart’s and Cleo, both makers of reliable breakfast sandwiches. But what Cleo has going for it is inventiveness—far beyond the usual egg and cheese or lox and cream cheese, Cleo offers up sandwiches like herby egg salad, the Beans, ‘Deens, and Greens (where “‘deens” means sardines), and a chickpea salad. Their most popular sandwiches—and my personal favorite–is the Ramen Thing, a combination of soy-marinated hard-boiled eggs, braised bamboo, pickled ginger, and togarashi mayo. It sounds like it might not work, but as a sandwich it’s spectacular, transporting the warmth of a great bowl of ramen to a bagel filling. Try it on the sesame bagel or garlic za’atar bialy, and grab a few extra napkins. As with many great breakfast sandwiches, it’s almost impossible to eat delicately. — Margaret Eby

Wondering what to feed a hoard of hungry kids? Eggcellent Café is an excellent choice, with their almost improbably large and fluffy brioche sandwiches, all held miraculously together with bamboo picks. The cheerful, yellow-tiled, farmhouse-themed Old City café from the owners of Café Square One makes a wide variety of egg and sausage-based sandwiches with some variations on toppings. Their brekkie banh mi ($12) features spicy maple pork sausage brightened with cucumbers, pickled daikon and carrot shreds plus a delightfully runny egg. My favorite is their Eggiesaurus ($12),: fluffy scrambled eggs, that same pork sausage, and a truly spectacular layer of a crunchy hash brown. They also make wonderful smoothies that balance out the richness of their buttery brioche towers. — K.A.

The crisp, buttered English muffin of Enswell’s weekday-only breakfast sandwich ($12) belies chef Andrew Farley’s past experience working at High Street on Market, famous for their bread program. The muffin’s halves barely contain large, generous folds of egg omelet, melted Cooper Sharp, and, if you wish, a choice of bacon, sausage, or mushroom scrapple (each $4). The move is to go with the showstopping mushroom scrapple, made from the trimmings of Local Bound mushrooms mixed in with the odd porcini. It’s made with Rival Bros’ star chef-turned-entrepreneur Jonathan Adams’ recipe, a leftover from his pandemic-era project of making vegan scrapple. It’s delightfully brown and crusty from cornmeal, deeply savory, but lighter and miles better than your average pork scrapple. Not only is this combination one of the best breakfast sandwiches in Philly, it’s easily one of the best sandwiches period. — K.A.

The Saltie — a pile of fluffy eggs and dense ricotta heaped on focaccia — has been a fixture at Fiore since before the Italian cafe moved from Queen Village to East Kensington in 2023, but its true origin is a now-shuttered Brooklyn sandwich shop co-owner Ed Crochet used to be obsessed with. The spot: Saltie, a Williamsburg bakery that used to serve what Crochet called “consistent yet delicious sandwiches” on focaccia. His favorite was something called The Scuttlebutt, which was literally just scrambled eggs and ricotta. Fiore’s is an homage with some slight tweaks, Crochet said: The eggs are scrambled with butter instead of oil for a creamier texture, and Fiore opts for un-whipped Calabro ricotta, making for slightly sweet curds that contrast with the eggs. It’s easy to get distracted by the bomboloni and maritozzi behind the counter or a saucy tomato pie, but the $12.00 Saltie might just be the best item on Fiore’s dayside menu. — B.F.

Gilda (pronounced Jill-dah, with a soft G) is known for a lot of things: flaky pasties de natas that sell out most weekend mornings; trendy merch; and the Antonio, a destination breakfast sandwich that combines traditional linguiça sausage, white American cheese, an over-easy egg, and “breakfast sauce” on an airy Portuguese roll. The café’s bread is delivered fresh daily from Newark, N.J.’s historic Teixeira Bakery, but the sausage is made in-house, said Gilda owner Brian Mattera. The key to getting it sandwich-patty perfect, he said, is to use a tortilla press, rendering the sausage into something thin and almost smashburger-esque. “It’s very important that the sausage patty is the same exact size as the roll itself,” Mattera said. It’s that level of specificity that makes the Antonio great, even if all the ingredients end up fusing together on the roll to create a delicious slop. The linguiça’s smokiness is cut by the creaminess of the American cheese and the tang of Gilda’s dijon-forward sauce. No ingredient overpowers another. — B.F.

Breakfast sandwiches stuffed with scrambled eggs are how Middle Child first hypnotized Philadelphians. Indeed, their sandwiches have consistently gone viral, splayed open to show piled-high stuffings. Perhaps most notable is their pastrami, egg, and Cooper Sharp sandwich ($14.50) on rye bread, which garnered Middle Child a well-deserved “Best Breakfast in America” award from Good Morning America. The eggs are, of course, so very fluffy but the pastrami is the star, house-smoked, thick-slice, and succulent. It’s a rich sandwich, but never unwieldy. — K.A.

Should you not be able to tell by Porco's name, these are pork-forward breakfast sandwiches masquerading as long Sunday naps between bread. They mean business. Bring a friend to split a Supper Sammie ($12) – I recommend ordering it on the ciabatta – with layers of roasted porchetta, sage sausage, and crunchy pork cracklings that feel like an Italian dinner crammed inside bread with eggs. But my favorite is the sausage and biscuit wit ($12), presented on an everything biscuit. It’s the most structurally sound biscuit sandwich I have encountered. It sparkles with long hot relish, has excellent sage sausage, and is melded together with provolone whiz, plus a sprinkle of crackling dust. In the face of all the pork and other ingredients, the eggs on Porco’s sandwiches feel like garnishes, but they are consistently cooked beautifully with jammy yolks.

It’s called the Gavone – Italian for “pig” – and that’s the selling point of this massive sandwich that’s a bestseller at Rocco’s, the sandwich stands found outside of many area Home Depot stores. Twenty-five years ago, Richard “Rocco” Guardino started with a stand in Queens. Five years later, his manager Dan Winter brought the idea to the Philadelphia area, where it has become a cult favorite. (There are nine locations now, and more are on the way to Washington Township, Conshohocken, and Bensalem.) The Gavone is a whole meal on a crusty, foot-long Italian roll: two eggs and your choice of melted cheese, plus bacon, potatoes, grilled onions, peppers, and hot sauce. It’s the breakfast equivalent of a weekend project: bigger, messier, and more ambitious than you had planned. – M.K.

Rowhome’s pretzel-egg-and-cheese breakfast sandwiches are so Philadelphian that they’d feel like pandering if it weren’t for the earnestness of co-owners Hugh Moretta and Eli Shaika. When the duo opened their Fitler Square location in 2021, the default bread was a classic kaiser roll. That all changed just before Moretta and Shaika opened Rowhome Coffee’s Frankford Ave. location in 2022, when they saw the majority of customers ordering sandwiches on a Federal pretzel, which the coffee shop offers in salt, cinnamon sugar, and everything seasoning varieties. On a good week, Moretta said, the flagship Fitler location goes through between 1,000 and 1,200 pretzels. Both Temple University grads, Moretta and Shaika got the pretzels-as-bread idea from their pre-class breakfast of choice: a soft pretzel dunked in cream cheese. The sandwiches come with omelette-style eggs and Cooper Sharp cheese to start, and customers can add either Martin’s sage sausage, Beyond meat sausage, bacon, or Taylor Pork Roll. — B.F.

Some of the most creative baked goods in Philly flow out of Second Daughter’s fourth-floor perch in the Bok Building, but chef-owner Rhonda Saltzman is unrivaled in her ability to dream big. You’ll see that in her mile-wide cookies, her plate-sized brownies and scones, and especially in her Friday and Saturday-only breakfast sandwiches. Each holds 6 ounces of tender, bacon-studded egg, laced with a blend of sharp provolone, Asiago, Monterey jack, cheddar, and mozzarella. It’s gently cooked to order — often by Saltzman herself — and stuffed into either a flaky salt-topped slab of rosemary focaccia or a fluffy maple-glazed doughnut split in two. It’s more than ample enough for two, but you may not want to share. — Jenn Ladd

Some of the restaurants on this list build beautifully composed testaments to breakfast-sandwich architecture. Don’t expect that from Sunshine Sandwich Shop — run out of a dual-purpose Wissahickon storefront from the owners of Lucky’s Last Chance, serving sandwiches and salads by day and pizza by night. The shop’s most epic offerings are gooey, double-meat takes on your basic bodega breakfast sammy. Take the I Am the Walrus, a long roll loaded with pork roll, crumbled bacon, scrambled eggs, fried onion, tater tots, and cheese sauce. For a neater situation, try the Here Comes the Sun, with sausage, bacon, American cheese, fried eggs, and a maple drizzle on a round roll; your fingers will be only slightly sticky once you’ve polished it off. Not all the Beatles-themed sandwiches require wet naps. Sunshine makes basics like the Starr, Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison — variations of egg and cheese with either sausage, pork roll, or bacon on a poppy seed kaiser or a long roll. — J.L.

There are so many tempting options at this Drexel Hill brunch destination that its breakfast sandwich entries could be easily overlooked. But chef-owners Alex “Tank” Reid and Joe “Libby” Libertore know the value of a well-composed egg sammy. There are build-your-own options anchored by the best breakfast meats in our region (Martin’s sausage, Habbersett scrapple, Taylor pork roll) but my vote goes to the Bacon Bee: a toasted everything bagel encasing thick-cut bacon strips, a hash brown patty, and a generous tuft of sharp cheddar-topped scrambled egg. It’s accented with a smear of scallion cream cheese and a faint dose of hot honey for a crunchy-creamy-chewy bite that satisfies on every level. — J.L.

Tara Torrence’s big, buttery, borderline unwieldy breakfast sandwiches — in Plymouth Meeting and now in downtown West Chester — are built on oversized house-made buttermilk biscuits, with over-medium eggs and fillings that veer from Southern comfort to outright excess. The basics — sausage or bacon, egg, and melted cheese — are rich and classic, but let Torrence go off-script for the Uptown Girl, which layers bacon, egg, and cheese with peanut butter and jelly for a salty-sweet, gloriously messy bite. These are not dainty breakfast sandwiches. They’re biscuit bombs: fluffy, rich, drippy, and fully committed to the napkin economy. – Michael Klein

At this utterly charming Graduate Hospital cafe, there is an almost dizzying array of breakfast sandwiches, most with scrambled eggs as fluffy as clouds spread on pillowy brioche buns. But each of The Breakfast Den’s offerings has a distinct personality: the sausage, egg, and cheese ($13) combines a thin pork patty with those eggs, cheddar cheese, and spicy aioli. You can get versions of this sandwich with bacon bits folded into the egg, like on the sweet bacon jam sandwich ($14), or with a generous hit of Sunny’s hot chili oil. The P.E.C. ($15) features thin-sliced beef in an homage to the cheesesteak, but it’s painted with ginger miso aioli and tucked into an everything bagel with cheese and, again, those fabulous eggs. But the crown jewel and bestseller of all of TBD’s breakfast sandwiches is the Banh Mi Op La. A crisp roll that deflates with each bite then bounces back into shape is stuffed with jammy eggs, pork bacon, sausage, crunchy pickled carrots, and fresh, fragrant herbs like mint and cilantro. Eggplant pâté and apricot aioli balance out all the flavors and richness of the eggs and pork. It’s heaven. — K.A.