My love for the BEC (Bacon, Egg & Cheese)

Celebrating New York’s greatest sandwich + insider tips on where and how to order it

I love a breakfast sandwich. I grew up eating them at my aunt’s diner in Upstate New York, where it was served on toast with a specific brand of white American cheese called Cooper. It’s slightly denser and more cheddary than those plastic-wrapped singles, and has a very creamy melting point (my mom still buys it sliced and keeps it in the fridge for my visits!).

I did not have a proper “BEC”—bacon, egg and cheese—until I moved to NYC some 30 years ago. While its building blocks were the same, these differed from the breakfast sandwiches I’d grown up with. Namely, BECs came on a hard roll, a new choice of bread for me, and were made with yellow cheese not white like I was used to.

I’ve since eaten thousands of these sandwiches from near-anonymous delis, bodegas and coffee carts, and have really solidified my ordering style (a key component to any successful BEC). I do not like my eggs scrambled, the roll needs to be fresh and I avoid bagels altogether, which in my opinion are for a different kind of breakfast sandwich (I will use an English muffin on occasion when I make them at home, a nod to my youthful love of the Egg McMuffin).

With my latest return to NYC, I have been indulging in BECs in my new neighborhood on the Upper East Side and a few others around town on hotel stays. I’ll be listing a few recent discoveries from that corner of Manhattan below, plus some standing Downtown favorites and even a strong contender Upstate.

But first—and more importantly—here’s my order: