The Veggie, Egg & Cheese at Loaf Lounge

we're pivoting to breakfast sandwiches and love letters

Lately I’ve realized a couple of things: I want to keep this newsletter going and I don’t write for fun. There’s always a plan, a purpose, a pitch. Combining these desires seems natural so I’m going to write about breakfast sandwiches and some other loves too.

I love breakfast sandwiches and eat them often; at one point I thought about doing a blog called BKFST (it was the 2010s) and reviewing them. I also used to argue about their nutritional benefits, aka that they weren’t unhealthy (it was the 2010s, I was in my 20s and early 30s and had more of an appetite for expressing bursts of anger) before I started thinking about health in a more holistic way and focusing my anger versus lashing out at every single thing that bothered me.

Breakfast sandwiches are pretty close to a perfect food for me, a marriage of two big food loves: breakfast and sandwiches. And they make me think about other things too.

The Veggie, Egg & Cheese at Loaf Lounge (with hashbrown patty)

(I like how you can see the corner of my credit card and the word PREMIER peeking out, like I’m a baller. Hit me up if you ever need a mid-priced domestic flight I earned over several years via thousands of dollars of purchases, I got you.)

The Veggie, Egg & Cheese at Loaf Lounge is a really good breakfast sandwich. It’s not overly photogenic and it’s messy; the egg is fried, with a runny yolk. This is not a sandwich you can eat furtively on the bus, though I probably would. Beyond egg, we’ve got braised kale, mushroom, American cheese and herby mayo on an English muffin. The English muffin is chewy but crisp on the outside, with a slightly fermented and sour vibe that made me wonder why I ever thought English muffins were boring (Thomas, I’m looking at you). You don’t have to have an amazing bread component to make a great breakfast sandwich sing but it helps. The flavors are just harmonious, it all really works even if it’s a little sloppy. I was leery of the American cheese, not because I’m snobby but it felt off. It’s not. The kale is bitter and acidic, the mushroom packs an earthy punch, and the mayo is rich and bright: it all needs a cheese that mellows it all out and brings it down to earth. I’ve only had the veggie sandwich because I’m terrified of climate catastrophe and want to make it .00000000000001% less horrifying, but I’ll try the sausage at some point.

The hashbrown is the most perfect version of a McDonald’s hashbrown. This is a huge compliment. Tuck it into the sandwich for a welcome layer of crunch and starch.

Loaf Lounge is in Avondale, a traditionally working-class neighborhood that has become gentrified; the average home value is $400,000 to $500,000. I’ve lived in Chicago for 20 years this August and it’s wild to watch money creep northwest and west and south, to see places you’ve known for a long time shift and change. More and more, I keep thinking about what it means to stay somewhere. In 2021, we bought a house a few miles northwest of Loaf Lounge in Portage Park, which my tattoo artist described as “poor hipsters, Mexican families, and Polish men”. I jokingly call our neighborhood the Home for Aging Creatives, or So You Want to Live in the City But Don’t Have Lots of Generational Wealth, and it’s a joke born from anxiety (like most good jokes are) about class, race, and all the ingredients that go into thinking about who you are and what you bring to a a street, a neighborhood, a city. What does it mean to grow older and not leave, to age in place? What does commitment look like? For me it means investing, which isn’t just political awareness and mowing our lawn regularly (we’re doing okay at one of these); it’s loving the people and places around you and reminding yourself that’s why you’re here. It’s messy and it’s work. But it can be very good.

Okay! I hope this was fun. Give me a recommendation for a breakfast sandwich or let me know whatever’s on your mind.