I have been enjoying scrambled egg sandwiches since the late 1950’s.
No, hard-boiled eggs don’t count. That’s why I specified “grilled egg.”
I make the bodega style of these for dinner sometimes. They’ve been around since way before the McMuffin.
Similar with my dad, who was mistaken for my grandfather at times. Fried egg and ketchup on white toast and a mug of hot tea.
In my house, those are called elephant eyes, not toad-in-the-hole.
I grew up with my folks cooking them for us on camping trips: fried egg on an English muffin with some bacon and cheddar on top.
But when I first experienced them as ubiquitously available and standard fare? New York City, 1984. Long lines of people at deli counters ordering them and receiving them in short order. On rolls, not English muffins, by the way.
I’m pretty sure that McDonald’s was the first fast food chain to offer breakfast foods, starting in 1972 with the Egg McMuffin (and Big Breakfast and Pancakes & Sausage). Totally revolutionized the concepts of “fast food.” and “breakfast food.”
That’s what it was in my experience. The idea of a fried or scrambled egg in a sandwich for breakfast started with McDonald’s and didn’t become ubiquitous until the 1990s.
But it seems that a lot of folks were eating these kinds of breakfast sandwiches at home, long before then.
Yes, at home and in delis. But McDonald’s started the fast food breakfast concept. Especially good for vegetarians, who can tell them to “hold the meat.” (Say it with a straight face and watch the counter person try not to react.)
Maybe they started it in the US, but I promise you cafes had been selling fried egg sandwiches (sometimes for takeaway) for a very long time before that in the UK.
The point I’m trying to make is Mickey D’s started the fast food breakfast concept. Before the Egg McMuffin, fast food places were only opened for lunch and dinner. No breakfast food.
Yes, there were food places that offered breakfast, but no fast food places.
I’m not sure how delis and cafes selling fried egg sandwiches at breakfast doesn’t count as fast food.
SIGH Fast Food franchise breakfast concept.
Sure, if you want to get that specific. But you said they revolutionised the idea of breakfast food.
I just wanted to say “thanks.”
I made myself two grilled egg sandwiches for breakfast this morning, because of this thread.
See the first scene in Withnail and I (1986). Will put you off fried egg sandwiches FOREVER.
I bought an egg ring and steam cooked eggs for homemade egg muffins for years. Added cheese, bacon, ham or sausage.
Have given then up for egg quesadillas. A stirred egg, fried in a 9 inch pan, the slid onto a large corn or flour tortilla, covered in shredded cheese in an oiled pan. Add a strip of bacon, sliced jalapeños or both and fold. Cook and flip until each side is crisp.
Don’t know why but this thread has given me a stronger food craving than any other Cafe thread before.
For me, never; in Spain we do get the occasional sandwich which has a fried egg or some chopped-up hard-boiled egg as one of its ingredients but they’re multi-ingredient and not stuff you’d make at home. It’s either some sort of “burger with fried egg in case you didn’t have enough cholesterol” (often called Obelix; this bar offers it as “to share between four people”, link in Spanish) or some variation on a club sandwich.
My “host mother” in Ireland (1983) couldn’t cook worth shite; the lunches she could provide were hard-boiled egg sandwiches. That’s white bread, cut-up boiled egg, white bread. Most of my classmates had host mothers with better cooking skills; the majority also got sandwiches but at least there was more than one thing in between the two slices of white bread and the contents varied from day to day.