Get a jump start on curing your New Year’s Day hangover — with a free breakfast sandwich giveaway as 2017 gives way to 2018.
The nightlife impresarios at the TAO Group (you know them for late-night destinations like Beauty & Essex and the Magic Hour Rooftop Bar & Lounge) are dramatically unveiling their egg-centric sandwich shop Egghead inside the Moxy Times Square Hotel at midnight on Jan. 1, and they’ll be handing out complimentary BECs to the first 1,000 customers.
The free sandwiches will be the all-day breakfast spot’s signature dish, the Classic. Served on a potato brioche, it comes loaded with fried egg, melty American cheese, fried shallots, spicy aioli, tomato (a minor concession to nutrition) and smoky-sweet, thick-cut Nueske’s bacon.
The Classic isn’t the only BEC on Egghead’s full menu, which is set to feature a healthier variation with baked egg whites and sautéed kale called the Green & White and the Mexican-inflected Ranchero, embellished with chorizo and cilantro. Among comfort food sides, you’ll find potato hash browns stuffed with pecorino cheese. Egghead is sourcing its cheese and namesake ingredient from upstate farms, according to a news release. It’s pricing the Classic at $7.50, a spokeswoman said.
The TAO Group’s inaugural fast-casual operation isn’t the first in the city to build its concept around what most New York City natives consider a bodega and deli staple. High-end egg sandwich purveyor BEC positioned itself to test locals’ loyalty and ruffle some feathers when it opened in Chelsea in 2015. At the time, New York Times reviewer Pete Wells wrote that “trying to improve the breakfast sandwich by spending more on the bacon is like telling a fireman who just dragged four children out of a burning house to change his shirt before going on the evening news.”
Egghead’s play to win New Yorkers’ hearts with free food will inevitably draw tourists watching the ball drop in nearby Times Square, so we recommend lining up outside 485 Seventh Ave. with your noisemakers and confetti cannons long before midnight.
Egghead will be open Sundays through Wednesdays from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Thursdays through Saturdays from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. and then from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m.
