Where to find the best breakfast sandwich in Miami

Downtown’s all-day breakfast spot serves more than one type of egg sandwich, though it’s tough to look beyond the Son of the Butcher for your eggs-and-bun fix. This one hits the spot on particularly ravenous mornings as it combines the Butcher Shop’s smoked brisket (the Egg Spot’s sister restaurant is known for its slow-cooked meat) with eggs made to order, pickled onions and chimichurri aioli. It all comes together between a pillowy brioche bun.

Not every sammie needs meat to be filling, and the folks behind LAID agree. Its tomato mozzarella is a satisfying sandwich featuring a potato-brioche bun stuffed with fried cage-free eggs, locally sourced Mimmo’s Mozzarella, tomatoes, fresh basil and chilies. It’s a breakfast beauty that vegetarian and meat-lovers can both get behind.

Eggs Benedict fall under the fork-and-knife sandwich category at most places, but All Day offers an iteration you can scoop up and bite into. It’s called the one-handed, but we suggest two and all ten digits to properly hold this bad boy stuffed with sage sausage, brie and an herb aioli. The drippy egg and requisite English muffin make this a must-order for Benny lovers.

Many Miami mornings begin with fresh Cuban bread, and Chug’s has managed to both tap into this nostalgic AM favorite and modernize it with help from a few key ingredients. At the Cuban-inspired diner, chef Michael Beltran tops his Cuban bread with Taylor ham (for the uninitiated, it’s essentially a pork roll—processed mystery-meat of the most wonderful variety) with a fried egg and papitas. It’s rich and satisfying, combining the best of Cuban and American cuisine.

Before you scoff at the idea of a vegan breakfast sandwich, hear us out. Love Life Cafe’s plant-based variety is not just good for “being vegan a dish,” it’s just plain good. Its egg and cheese croissandwich flaunts a L’artisan croissant with a JUST egg patty topped with cheddar “cheese”, all served with a side of baked potato herb fries. Trust us, you won’t miss the animal protein nor the dairy, and your taste buds will be nothing but pleased.

This charming Design District café makes Instagrammable food that’s also delicious. Its egg and cheese sandwich is no different, thanks to the pop of cherry red provided by a juicy poached tomato. There’s also a perfectly folded, two-egg cheddar omelette, crisp arugula for freshness and a toasted brioche bun to hold all the gooey goodness together.

Considered an O.G. in the local breakfast food landscape, Toasted brought the ways of the north to the south with its freshly baked, house-made bagels. Pick your flavor (onion, everything, whole-wheat everything, egg, etc.) and pick your combo, all of which are named after local landmarks, streets or neighborhoods. Keeping it healthy? Try the namesake Toasted, a bagel sandwich made of egg whites, asparagus, mushrooms and Swiss cheese. Cut the carbs and order your bagel scooped out.

Dirt’s basic breakfast sandwich is anything but. Two slices of poppy-seed brioche buns from Zak the Baker get slathered in your choice of sriracha or house-made horseradish hot sauce before being stuffed with a simple—but perfectly executed—scramble of cage-free eggs, provolone cheese and sauteed onions. If you’re the type who dunks their sandwich in ketchup, the spicy sriracha might change your mind, especially when you pair it with the optional chicken apple sausage ($4) for an extra kick.

All it took for us to believe Miami-made bagels were, in fact, better than New York’s was one bagel-loving guy slinging sandos from a souped-up truck in Wynwood. Enter Matteson Koche and the fury that became his RV restaurant, El Bagel. Currently on summer hiatus while he builds his first brick-and-mortar, Koche introduced us to the very Miami King Guava: fruit marmalade from the Redland, potato sticks, cream cheese and a cage-free fried egg. Sure, the sweet-and-savory combo is weird, but to taste the sandwich is to love it, and we can’t wait to eat it all over again this fall when El Bagel (finally!) opens its shop.

We saved the last spot for the outlier, the rule-bending sandwich too delicious to leave off the list. The wildcard in question: the Mac N Cheese Waffle Sandwich at the Big Pink. You get the sweet from the crispy brioche waffle and balance it with the salty from a heap of crumbled, apple-smoked bacon and gooey macaroni and cheese. It’s served with a side of honey, though we suggest adding a dab of hot sauce to the mix.