Is it getting warm in here?
Check out that picture. Makes you sort of hungry, doesn’t it? That is an egg florentine breakfast sandwich. In addition to softly scrambled eggs, there’s an herb spread in there, that is married with melted Havarti cheese and gently wilted baby spinach. It is crisp on the outside and thoroughly heated on the interior and in just a minute and ten seconds was ready to eat. This is not something I made in my own kitchen. Starting tomorrow, it’s something that you can have whenever you want it, at just about any Starbucks in town.
A couple of weeks ago, I got an email inviting me to attend a tasting of the new warm breakfast sandwiches at Starbucks. I had heard a while back that they were planning on offering a greater selection of foods than the cold scones and sandwiches that they’ve had available in their refrigerated cases, but this was the first notice I had had that it was finally coming to Philly. I don’t get invited to much these days that includes offers of free food (most often I’m the one offering the food as opposed to the other way around), so I decided to take them up on the offer.
The tasting was held at the Starbucks at 4th and South. They seated the six of us (me and five guys from the editorial staff of the Philadelphia Gay News) around a nicely set table in the upstairs seating area and started us out with a coffee tasting. It was a citrus-y Kenyan blend that was really fantastic and went amazingly well with the creamsicle-like coffee cake that they warmed and served it with.
Next came the breakfast sandwiches (which are all a fairly reasonable $2.95. It’s not street food cheap, but if there’s not a cart on your corner, it’s a pretty doable option). There are five to choose from, and we tasted them all. My favorite was the floretine sandwich you see above, but I also loved their reduced fat offering, that is served on a multi-grain english muffin with low-fat cheese and turkey bacon. I think my only complaint is that I wish that the other sandwiches also came with the multi-grain muffin option (I’m sort of a bread snob and have a hard time justifying eating white flour anything).
In addition to the florentine and low-fat muffins, you can get a egg and cheese with your choice of peppered bacon, Black Forest ham or sausage. In the tasting they hinted at the fact that it was name-brand sausage, but since I don’t really pay attention to logoed breakfast meats, I’m at a loss to tell you which brand. Maybe Jimmy Dean? Who knows. The english muffins are from Thomas’, which just seems sort of silly to me. Do people really care that their muffins aren’t off-brand?
In addition to the breakfast sandwiches, they are also willing to heat just about any other food item up for you (someone at your local Starbucks may have already offered you this option). The croissant and the chocolate chip cookie were particularly wonderful warm (but who doesn’t love a warm chocolate chip cookie).
The oven sounds pretty cool, it’s a combination of microwave and convection technology that makes me long for one for my own kitchen. I asked a couple of questions about where the sandwiches are prepared and assembled, but didn’t get a straight answer on that one. They’ve taken all this care and concern to imply that the components of the sandwiches are reputable name-brands, but what I’d really like to see would be them using organic or local ingredients instead. It’s probably a pipe dream, but I do like to dream big.
*I got an email earlier today from the woman who organized the tasting, letting me know that Starbucks representatives will be out on the streets of Center City tomorrow, giving out $5 Starbucks gift cards to passersby, so that they can go and taste a warm breakfast sandwich for themselves. So if you see someone wearing that familiar mermaid logo holding their hand out with something for you to grab, I recommend reaching back out. After all, receiving five free Starbucks dollars is kind of nice.
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I’m wondering if they will be (pun intended) biting off more than they can chew by expanding into an area that could slow down service, and increase crowding at the counter?
I know I don’t find their bagels up to the “real” thing, but the sandwich does sound pretty good, the way Marisa describes them.
PS- any chance of a Scrapple sandwich for the SE PA market?!