- Yo, Alex Delaney here.
We are in SoHo on the
corner of Spring and Crosby
at one of my favorite rooms in New York.
Balthazar.
[upbeat music]
One of New York's restaurants
and classic French brasserie.
Balthazar's open all day
but this morning we're here
for my favorite meal at
Balthazar, breakfast.
I'm here to eat everything on the menu.
I'm talking eggs, I'm talking tartines,
I'm talking maybe some breakfast oysters,
but I'm not doing this alone.
I brought a friend.
You know who she is.
My friend, YouTube
sensation, Claire Saffitz.
[upbeat band music]
Claire.
We're at Balthazar.
- Delaney.
Oh my God, this is my dream.
[hands rubbing]
[light peppy music]
- You have your bowl
of cafe au lait, yeah?
- My bowl, my vat.
- Before we get going.
[bubbles popping]
- Cheers.
And there are few things I would get up
that early in the morning for,
but breakfast at Balthazar
is truly one of them.
- Yes, this is an institution.
Like when you think of
New York restaurants.
- Totally.
- Balthazar.
- Iconic.
Everything from the decor to the service
to all the super classic
French menu items.
You get to drink coffee out of a bowl.
[laughing]
It's my favorite thing in the world.
I love it so much.
- There you go.
- Thanks for having me.
- I take it you've seen the show before,
maybe once?
- Yeah, sometimes.
- You know how it works though.
- Yeah, I came hungry.
- We order one of everything on the menu.
We take one perfect bite of each thing.
We get to decide how we order
and then at the end, we figure out
what the best things on the menu are.
- Okay, now, really only one bite?
- For everyone else that's
been on the show, yes,
one bite, except for Brad who broke
the rules a million times.
I feel like we should just do one bite.
Where should we start?
There's like a lot of egg stuff going on.
We got a full English breakfast.
We've got some oysters.
- Maybe we start a little lighter.
- Okay, so do you wanna start up top,
do oatmeal, maybe granola,
and grapefruit?
- Yeah, maybe the grapefruit.
- Yeah.
- Okay, I love grapefruit.
- [Alex] Let's start with steel cut oats.
- Okay, I tend to prefer
raisins in savory,
but I'm into the bananas,
so I'm gonna go for banana.
- I did like.
I don't know, if you don't
eat a raisin the--
- I'm gonna put one raisin on.
I'm gonna put one raisin on.
Ooh, it's warm.
[laughing]
The raisins are warm.
Mm.
I'm glad I got the raisin.
Mm, delightful.
I would eat that whole bowl.
- Would eat the whole bowl.
[bell dinging]
- But.
- But we can't.
- We can't.
[bell dinging]
I love a granola plate.
What's not to like?
- Strawberry, cantaloupe, grapes.
Oh no, that's pineapple not cantaloupe.
- [Claire] And looks like,
I'm gonna go with dried
cherries and the granola.
- All right, so compose your bite.
- One dried cherry, a little granola,
a piece of fruit, and some yogurt.
You probably don't need me
to explain every single bite.
[laughing]
Mm.
- Balanced granola.
[bell dinging]
- Delicious.
- Nice.
- I think a fruit thing is hard in winter,
but they did a good job.
- I mean, we're not
in berry season right now.
- No, but you know what season
we are in, grapefruit.
[bell dinging]
It is the most luxurious
thing in the world to me
to have already segmented grapefruit.
- Yes, not to have to savagely
just like [mimics stabbing].
- Yeah yeah yeah.
Mm.
- That's perfect.
[bell dinging]
We got three menu items down.
- All right.
- We're moving.
- How many, what was the final count?
- [Director] Over 40.
- What?
[laughing]
- [Both] Over 40?
- We were talking about breakfast,
well, I guess more brunch drinks,
but I always have to, I never
want alcohol in the morning.
It's like, I have to
drink the bowl of coffee,
instead of, in a bowl.
- I don't want a reasonable
amount of alcohol--
- No, no.
- I want a ridiculous amount--
[Both] Of coffee, yes.
- I think next we have egg dishes.
- Great, eggs at my preferred food at--
- In the morning?
- In the morning, yes.
- I am right there with you.
- I've never been so
overwhelmed and excited
in my life.
- And happy.
- Yeah.
I am also excited that
I think I get to use
my knowledge of classic French egg dishes.
- So, I'm not gonna tell
you what any of this is.
- Okay.
Is this not a vol-au-vent?
[bubbles popping]
Do you know what vol-au-vent means?
- I actually don't.
- It's like a cup made of
puff pastry that's filled.
- That's looks exactly like
what that is.
- That's what it is.
[laughing]
Is that what it's called?
- [Director] They just call it scrambled
eggs and puff pastry.
- Okay, fine [laughs].
- Vol-au-vent.
- Where should we start?
[bell dinging]
- If we're going simplest,
I feel like that's where we start.
- Oeufs en cocotte?
[bubbles popping]
[crunching]
[crunching]
This is so good.
[bell dinging]
The next time I'm here, I'm ordering that.
- Get it out of there.
- I'm sad that we're not
gonna eat more of it.
- I know.
- Let's do scrambled eggs and
puff pasty, AKA, vol-au-vent.
- [Alex] Mushrooms,
asparagus, herbs up top.
- [Both] Ooh.
- Everything is just so precise.
- So precise.
[bell dinging]
- Exactly what I wanna eat all the time
and the buttery puff
pastry plus the cheese
and the eggs, plus the
vegetables, plus the herbs,
an ideal breakfast that I'm
now going to put over here.
- But don't worry, the crew,
everyone gets to eat on.
This is not being thrown out.
- We're [laughs] gonna
be over there at the end.
I'll be like, opening up my purse.
[laughing]
- I know we were maybe talking
a little bit of [bleep]
about alcoholic beverages at breakfast--
- Oh.
- But maybe for the sake of the show.
- Right, right.
- We should order a drink.
Bloody mary, oyster mary,
mimosa, bellini, kir rose
- I'm gonna go with mimosa.
- All right, I'm gonna do a kir rose.
You're gonna do a mimosa?
All right, cool.
- Yeah.
- This is not anything I normally order,
but I'm excited to eat it.
[bell dinging]
I wanna point out
that the salmon would
be resonators approved
in terms of the slicing.
- Oh, so nice
and thin.
- Cause you can read
the New York Times through it, oh yeah!
- [Alex] That's thinly sliced.
- All right, this is--
- Get into it.
- This is like a classic brunch moment
of the yolk spilling out.
That's a very well poached egg.
- That is a perfectly poached egg.
All right.
- Okay.
That makes me feel like
I should be ordering
more eggs benedict at breakfast.
It is delicious.
- Oh.
- Ooh, thank you.
- [Waiter] You're very welcome.
Ah, ooh.
- [Both] Cheers!
- This is also the second course.
[laughing]
- Yeah.
- We have more.
I think maybe we do back
to back benedicts.
- Oh my God,
I didn't even see that one over there.
What do we got here?
I'm already short circuiting.
[bell dinging]
- We have entirely the same thing.
[laughing]
With ham.
All right.
- This is a lot, this is a big bite.
- Mm.
- Mm, mm,
I love the ham.
[bell dinging]
- The ham is nice.
I think I prefer the salmon though.
- It's so good, my God.
- All right, onto the next.
- Okay.
- Let's do it.
[bell dinging]
- I know that avocado
toast gets a bad rap.
I still wanna eat avocado
toast, I don't care.
And I'm interested in this sort of like--
- Tomato pepper situation.
- Tomato
concasse?
[bubbles popping]
I think I'm just saying French words now
and I don't know.
[laughing]
- [Alex] You ready?
- Yeah, ooh.
Ugh.
That's so satisfying.
Okay.
Mm.
- Little sweet, little acidic.
- Mm-hmm, mm, super tasty.
- That's nice.
[bell dinging]
Poached eggs, baked green.
- [Claire] It's eggs florentine!
- [Alex] Eggs florentine.
- So it looks like it's broiled,
but the egg is obviously still,
it has the wobble.
- But it is a little more cooked through
because you're broiled--
- A little more done, right.
Although this one
is nice and runny
- Oh wow, oh.
- So it might be topped with,
I'm gonna go with a bechamel.
- Oh, you think?
- Yeah.
And then what do have here?
What are these?
- That's what I was just
trying to figure out.
- I feel like, I wanna say turnips.
- Like sliced across and then quartered.
- [Director] Artichoke hearts.
[gasps]
- I love that.
Artichoke, one of the
most underrated vegetables
in the world, I think.
- When I was a kid, my
mom used to make steamed
artichokes and serve them with butter
and we would fight over the heart
cause it's so delicious.
[laughing]
So I'm gonna get a little bit of that.
A little bit of the spinach.
- All right.
- Mm.
- I like some greens for breakfast,
I will say that.
[bell dinging]
- Me too.
That's the part that makes
you feel really good,
plus it's delicious,
and then you get to eat
bechamel with it too and you're like,
who doesn't love a quiche?
[bell dinging]
- [Alex] A fool.
- This time I'm gonna
eat it with some salad.
Mm.
- That is lovely.
[bell dinging]
- Also makes me feel like
I don't eat enough quiche.
So I'll be eating more quiche.
- Very good.
[bell dinging]
- [Claire] We're gonna
do omelets together.
- [Alex] We're onto the omelets, yeah.
- I love an omelet.
I'm going center cut again.
It's a cheesy center.
[bell dinging]
Without the richness from the yolk,
it's hard to get them to not
have kind of like a bounciness.
Oh.
[bubbles popping]
- Oh, coffee incoming.
- [Both] Thank you.
- [Claire] This side that
went down toward you.
- [Alex] All right, do a cross section.
- [Claire] Okay.
- You're not messing around.
[bell dinging]
- It's very good.
- I mean, I prefer this guy
over that guy.
- Yeah, yeah.
I think egg white omelets
get kind of a bad rap
and I think mostly it's deserved,
but this is an extremely
delicious version.
- No, it was great.
[bell dinging]
Okay, so this, just eggs
whatever way you want them
with some potatoes and some toast.
- This is like American-style breakfast.
- This is American-style, yeah.
That's a bite.
[bell dinging]
- Even at breakfast,
one thing that's great
about Balthazar is like
the den on the room.
It's like not, I mean,
we're sitting right next
to each other, I don't have to shout,
I can hear you, but there is like a nice,
lively atmosphere.
- Perfect.
I am obsessed with restaurant lighting
and this is prefect.
Like, it's bright, it's not too bright,
and then you have these Mondrian-esque
lighting on the pillars.
It's very romantic, it's very pristine,
it's awesome.
- Yeah, who's gonna
break the egg?
- [Alex] You are.
- Okay, I kinda wanna try it.
Okay, ready?
[air whooshing]
Oh my God.
[laughing]
[smacking]
And then.
- Then it's like the--
- [Both] Lift off.
- Excavate.
- And then scoop.
- I'm facing it this way so you can't see.
- Yeah yeah.
- [Both] Don't look.
- Don't look.
- [Claire] All right.
- That was pretty good actually.
- Thank you.
Oh yeah.
Ooh.
[crunching]
Mm, what's not to like?
[bell dinging]
- Claire, we just ran
through all the egg dishes.
- That was like 10 things.
- Of the egg dishes,
what was your favorite?
- Ooh, I was very into the florentine.
I mean, the artichoke hearts,
that really, that gets me.
- No that was amazing.
I'm right there with you.
Florentine, but also,
you just wouldn't expect
salmon to be that perfectly sliced
at a French restaurant.
I was impressed with that.
[heavy breathing]
- How you feeling?
- I'm feeling good.
- Bring on the carbs.
- Let's get the carbs going.
- Okay.
- Did you get a?
- Yeah, I got a refill.
[bubbles popping]
It's so much milk, like volume wise.
[laughing]
- That's a lot of milk.
- And I already drank a whole one.
- Okay, we've got waffles,
French toast, crepes.
I think we start here though.
[bell dinging]
- I'm guessing it's a brioche.
Oh, pain perdu?
[bubbles popping]
I'm being so annoying, I know.
I just [laughs].
Oh my God, it's so light.
- Super light.
- Wow.
[bell dinging]
- No bacon?
- Delaney, I really have
to play the long game here.
I don't even think we're halfway through.
- Mm.
Let's move onto waffles.
[bell dinging]
- [Claire] I'm really losing it, Delaney.
- You're not allowed to lose it.
You can't lose it.
- I know, I know.
Okay, all right, I'll get a second wind.
Sour cream hazelnut, wow, delish.
- And then we have strawberries,
blueberries, blackberries.
- A berry coulis.
[bubbles popping]
[laughs] It just means sauce.
Mm.
I like that more than I want to.
- I [laughs] actually really like that.
- That is super
delicious.
- That is so good.
[bell dinging]
So this crepe looks a
little darker, maybe,
than most crepes.
It's a buckwheat crepe.
- Do you know what they
call a buckwheat crepe?
- Please enlighten me.
- A galette.
[bubbles popping]
- So what we call a galette at BA.
- Would be confusing to.
- To the French, yes.
- A French person, yeah yeah yeah.
I think.
- [Alex] Ham and gruyere in the middle.
- Yum.
Ooh, that makes it a galette complete.
[bubbles popping]
Ham and cheese.
Mm.
Super delicious.
[bell dinging]
- [snaps] We're good.
All right, we're gonna do sandwiches now.
- [heavy breathing] Okay.
- Let's bring them out.
- All right.
- Okay Claire, we have
some bread in front of us.
What do you wanna lead with?
- Let's just start by
cheers-ing we graduated
to green juice from coffee.
- Oh yeah, wait a minute.
[bell dinging]
- That was appropriate.
- [laughs] For some added health benefit.
- [Claire] Yes.
- So we said we were
also gonna do the sides.
Looking back at the menu,
we've already [laughs]
eaten most of the sides
in tandem with other dishes.
This is the only one we haven't.
- Okay, should we start there?
- I think we should start with it.
- Okay.
[bell dinging]
- [Claire] Oh, it does
have a lovely sort of.
- That's quite good.
Perfect amount of salt.
- I feel like.
- I want that on eggs.
- They're cooked in animal fat.
- No, there's a lot of
flavor happening there.
- Savory, delicious, rich.
If all grilled--
- Strong co-sign.
- Tomatoes tasted like
that, I would eat more.
[bell dinging]
- So, plain bagel.
We've got some cured salmon,
we've got some watercress.
- The French call this the bagel complete.
[bubbles popping]
[laughing]
- Do you wanna do the honors or should I?
- Yeah, go for it.
I think you can learn a lot about someone
watching how they build a bagel.
[laughing]
Interesting technique.
- What is an interesting technique?
- I'd go with the smaller
pieces of onion and then...
- Well, you.
- I should just look away.
- Claire's never been more disappointed
with me, I feel like than--
- I'm just gonna drink
my green juice.
- Yeah, drink the green juice.
- Okay.
- That's a lot on onion.
[laughing]
- Okay.
- Well, excellent job.
- Little.
Here you go, Kev.
- All right, back to work.
- All right.
- There's only one way to eat this.
- Pick it up and then bite it.
- I take a bite, you take a bite.
Okay.
- Yes.
[crunching]
- My God.
Is there a better food in the whole world?
[bell dinging]
Than a bagel with cream
cheese and the works?
It makes me so proud of my people
that we came up with this.
- That is a good food.
[sighs]
- Yeah, so good.
- [Both] Mm.
[bell dinging]
- It's the French version
of a bagel and cream cheese.
Some pickled red onion--
- [Alex] Pickled onion.
- Cucumber, salmon,
little dressed greenery.
- Dressed greens.
[crunching]
- Mm, I'm also appreciating
this green juice.
- That is really good.
[bell dinging]
- Super tasty.
- Like, that's a competitor
for me right now.
Okay, next up.
- First of all, I love
a Balthazar croissant.
[bell dinging]
- [Alex] On sight alone,
what are the indicators
of a good croissant?
- I think you wanna see visible separation
of the layers, deep deep brown.
- And it should be an audible experience.
- [Claire] Yes.
- Do you wanna cut it in half?
- Sure.
[crunching]
So you want this kind of flake-age.
- That's what we're looking at.
- Ready?
- Yup.
[crunching]
Claire bite, me bite.
- Let me see.
And mine was a huge bite.
Wow, that really is so good.
[bell dinging]
- Yeah, all right Claire, we
finished with our sandwiches.
When I think of Balthazar,
the thing that I come here to eat the most
is a selection from the raw bar.
So we're gonna do some breakfast oysters.
- Breakfast oysters.
- They're on the menu.
- Never heard of it.
- Let's get some oysters.
- Okay.
- The traditional breakfast oyster course.
- With--
- With the traditional [laughs]
breakfast glass of bubbly.
So we have Island Creek here, Fanny Bay,
and then Widow's Hole.
[bell dinging]
- And these are beautiful oysters,
no cloudiness, no sign of shell.
Where do we start?
Let's just shoot them.
All right, so,
okay.
- Do it.
- [Claire] Incredibly clean, briny flavor.
- [Alex] Yes, yes.
- Super cold, no murkiness.
I'm not mad about having
that oyster for breakfast.
- No.
You wanna go lemon on this?
- I think so.
Mm.
This to me is like a
platonic ideal of an oyster.
A little bit of acidity
and a little finish
that's sweet, just like so good.
[laughing]
Okay, ready?
- [Alex] Mm-hmm.
That is incredibly creamy.
[bell dinging]
- Yes, I was just gonna say.
- I really love that.
That's not your speed?
- It's maybe not my favorite oyster.
I'm gonna go with these guys--
- [Alex] Fanny Bay.
- [Claire] Being the winners.
- [Alex] The old FB.
- Yeah, would eat oysters
at breakfast again.
- Right?
- But not right now.
- We have a lot [laughs]
more, we have more
to eat here.
- [laughs] Yeah yeah, yeah.
Feeling hungry?
- [laughs] Are you?
- No.
- Oh good, cause we're
at a French restaurant
eating a full English breakfast.
- I'm still excited to eat it.
- They have like their herby mushrooms,
breakfast beans, two types
of meat, bacon, sausage.
Those tomatoes are back
and then underneath, fried bread.
And up top, we've kind of checked off
a lot of the different
ways to cook an egg boxes.
We have not have a sunny side up--
- Sunny side.
- Fried-ish situation.
- [Claire] Look at that egg wobble.
- That's perfection.
Actually you know what?
I'm gonna try and get
everything in one bite.
- Okay.
All right.
- So build up the beans, tomato,
oh man, I'm butchering this.
All right, full English single bite.
- [Claire] That's not even
that big of a bite for you.
- It's not.
[laughs]
It's like kind of messed up
how good that is.
- Really?
- There's not a lot of wildly
umami forward breakfasts, right?
The sausage is very well seasoned.
Lots of herbs going on in there.
- Yeah, I'm excited
about the herbs.
- The tomato, a little bit
of acid, the bread, fat.
That makes me really happy.
[bell dinging]
- I just think on this one,
it's all of the above
cause you get like 90%
of the breakfast menu
on this plate.
- Exactly, exactly!
All right, but we have more.
- But wait, there's more.
- But wait, there's more.
[laughing]
- This is what heaven looks like.
- I just want for y'all to know
that it was offered to have
an explainer and a walkthrough
of what everything was,
Claire swiftly declined.
- Nope, don't need it.
- She says, I don't need it,
this is my life.
[laughing]
- Cheers, we're having hot chocolate.
- [Alex] Oh, we're having hot chocolate.
- Although, yours is
an adult hot chocolate.
- There might be a little
bit of cognac in here.
- Mine is the kids version.
[laughing]
- Oh yeah.
- Ooh.
- Oh, but try a sip.
- Fine.
- On camera peer pressure.
- I don't like that.
[laughing]
That's not for me.
- All right, where the hell do we start?
- All right, down to business.
I think we start with the tartine.
So this is a Balthazar baguette, toasted.
[bell dinging]
What kind of jam
do you want?
Strawberry and wild blueberry?
- [Alex] I'll go for blueberry.
- Yeah, me too.
That is a jar that I can get the lid off.
- I think we should do this
every morning [laughs].
- I was just gonna say,
do you wanna do this again?
- This is really nice!
[crunching]
- It's so good.
[speaks in foreign language]
[bell dinging]
- It has everything.
It's airy, it's chewy,
it's crispy, it's crunchy.
All right, where are we going next?
- I think we should get
the scones out of the way.
- Let's get the scones out of the way.
- [laughs] Okay.
[bell dinging]
Plain scone-ish, maybe
there's something in there,
we can't see.
Of all of the pastries, scones
are at the bottom of my list.
It is a tasty scone.
[bell dinging]
- It's a good scone.
- But I'm like--
- Let's keep it moving.
- There's no room for that.
Thank you.
[bell dinging]
- Oh, multiple types of dried fruit.
- Just like a dried fruit scone.
- Pure, unadulterated
scone is kind of boring.
[bell dinging]
- I agree.
- A scone needs something.
[bell dinging]
- This one definitely appears to have some
kind of whole wheat.
- Also smells a little brown sugary.
- I'm getting so full.
[laughing]
We should try the brioche a tete.
This guy which is the same as this guy.
[bell dinging]
So these are brioche buns.
It's called brioche a tete
because it has a little
tete, meaning head.
It has like a little handle on the top.
- Yeah.
- So like, cottony, but
also like a lot of moisture.
I'm really trying to plow through these
so I can get to the, I'm saving
the best for last sort of.
- All right.
I say we get out butter back
and we do this guy real quick.
- Do I have to?
I guess that's kind of the
whole point of the show.
- Yeah, the whole point
is that you do.
- I'm getting so full.
It's tasty.
- Tasty.
- Make excellent toast.
[bell dinging]
So this, to me, is like
a monkey bread style
pastry that's made with croissant dough
because it's so flakey.
Mm, delicious.
[bell dinging]
These look like different doughs.
I'm guessing this is more of a brioche
and this is obviously a laminated
cause it has that layers.
- For sure, visible layers.
- Flakiness.
[bell dinging]
[crunching]
- [Alex] Oh wow.
- All right, I'm taking this piece.
- Do it.
It's sweet, but if you're
craving something sweet,
that is a delicious bun.
[bell dinging]
[bell dinging]
So this is a very light,
flakey, that's nice.
- That's actually fantastic.
- So buttery.
[bell dinging]
- All right, rolls out.
- I think we should
have a donut interlude.
- Read my mind.
[bell dinging]
The texture of that looks fantastic.
- Yeah, it looks delicious.
- That's lovely.
[bell dinging]
Go for the pepitas?
- Yeah.
[bell dinging]
Ooh, pumpkin.
- Oh, it's a pumpkin donut.
- But really, the
interior's not sweet, mm.
- [Alex] No.
- That is good with a
little bit of hot chocolate.
- With a little bit of cognac.
[bell dinging]
One donut left.
[bell dinging]
- [Claire] Ooh, look at
the glaze application.
[bell dinging]
- [Alex] It's nice.
[heavy breathing]
- Oh, but you know what?
[bell dinging]
This is the move, cause
these are not sweetened
and so I want, you gotta give it the--
- Give it the little bit of love
that it deserves.
- It needs the dunk.
I actually think it's better in coffee,
but this is delicious.
- [Alex] Oh, that's still very good.
- Mm, all right, now.
- [Both] Pain au chocolate.
- I will say one thing.
Two thin strips.
That's what you want.
There, there, that way
if you have a bite here,
get chocolate, and have a
bite here, get chocolate.
You have a bite here, get twice
the amount of chocolate.
[laughing]
You control your own destiny.
- I don't eat these enough.
- That's a really good one.
- That is really good.
[bell dinging]
- We're in the home stretch.
- We are literally two bites away.
[bell dinging]
- I love an almond croissant.
It's almost too good.
[bell dinging]
- Claire.
- All right, the apple tart.
[bell dinging]
- Let's talk about
an apple tart.
- Possibly the king
of all desserts.
Oh my God, just like,
and it's a lot of apples too.
- [Alex] Oh, wow.
- Okay.
- Those apples are awesome.
[bell dinging]
- Super delicious.
Well balanced, not too sweet.
Like everything I want in apple dessert.
I can't believe we did it.
- We're gonna clear these all out.
- Okay.
- We're gonna come back with our top three
menu items at Balthazar.
We're basically there.
We're on the doorstep.
- I'm proud of us.
- I'm proud too.
[laughing]
Great job, Claire.
- Thank you.
We powwowed a little
bit behind the scenes,
we have our picks.
- So the first category is the grail.
This is the one, this is
the thing that we are still
thinking about right now,
hands down our favorite.
What is it?
- Full English breakfast.
- The full English!
- [Claire] It's everything you could want.
It's like so many flavors and textures.
- You can get the eggs
any way you want them.
Those tomatoes that we
loved by themselves,
you get them on the plate.
You get the herby mushrooms.
You get the beans.
Why would you go for anything else?
Second category is the next time around.
This is the second time you're in.
You've had the full
English, what's it gonna be?
- Our pick for this
one is eggs florentine.
We loved it because you
have a lot of richness
from the bechamel, you get
two beautifully poached eggs,
and then all these greens,
so it feels hearty and rich
but also kind of nourishing
at the same time.
- And then that little
piece of artichoke heart.
- The artichoke heart,
that puts it over the edge into something
extremely special and--
- Perfect.
- You would never make this
for yourself and it's so well
executed here.
- No, that's a dish
that if you want that dish,
come to Balthazar.
- Yeah, I would order that
again in a heart beat.
- The third category,
this is the hidden gem.
This is the dark horse.
This is the menu item that
only the regular would know.
And this is like, we both kinda,
when you said it, you were like,
and I was like, yup.
This is the tartine with bread and jam.
- Which I think visually, sort of,
most people would look at
it and be like, it's toast,
but it is such a well made baguette
and there's such purity of flavor
with just butter and good quality jam.
It's so delicious.
I think it's really emblematic
of what French cooking
and baking is, which is super
simple, great ingredients,
just like completely delicious
when you put it all together.
- And also, very indicative
of what Balthazar
is about too, right?
- I wanna announce the
special fourth category
that I had to include because it was such
an improbably delicious
part of this morning,
which was breakfast [laughs] oysters.
- [Alex] The breakfast oysters!
- So this is like the thing,
when you're coming with a group,
order for the table.
- Breakfast oysters and pancakes
exist in the same family.
[laughing]
You order them at
breakfast, for the table.
Claire, I feel like you
were the only person
that deserved to be on this episode,
that felt right to be on this episode.
So thank you for joining me.
- God, thank you for having me.
This was the greatest breakfast invitation
I will ever have in my life.
- Yes!
- Thank you so much.
- Thanks for watching.
Thanks to Balthazar for serving us
and letting us crash their
very busy breakfast service.
I'm Alex Delaney, that's Claire Saffitz.
Bon appetit.
- [Claire] We're gonna go home and nap.
- Big nap.
[laughing]
