Coffee Breakfast

It started with a simple question asked via Twitter: “Who’s got the best breakfast in Memphis?”

But first, let’s meet the Breakfast Bracket Championship contestants. Scoring in the championship round works like this: the food, service, atmosphere and price scores from all past rounds will be totaled. A new category, “Diversity”, was introduced for this round – it focuses on the diversity of the menu and clientele. Also, I’ll take into consideration the results of the reader poll I conducted a few days ago.

Let’s get it on!

In this corner:

Bryant’s

3965 Summer Avenue

Memphis, TN 38122

(901) 324-7494

Food: My advice to you is to make sure that whatever you order comes with a biscuit. They’re consistently amazing. They walk a delicious line between crispy and soft and are at once dense and fluffy. Seriously hungry people should get the breakfast sampler – the sheer quantity and variety of pork products on one plate was amazing.

Most of the menu items are Southern standards. Bryant’s is best in the wee hours of the morning (they open at 5 a.m.) after a night of partying.

Final food score: 43.5

Service: The lines at Bryant’s may be long, but they move insanely quickly. What the service lacks in overt friendliness it makes up for in precision. The line at Bryant’s was clearly designed by the Swiss and implemented by the Germans. While it’s possible to get in and out of a 10-deep line at Bryant’s in 10 minutes or less, it can be a stressful for first-time visitors trying to figure out what they want among a crowd of regulars that’s got little patience for indecision.

Final service score: 21.5

Atmosphere: Though the crowd at Bryant’s changes throughout the morning, it’s still got a very blue collar, male vibe. Early in the morning, the shop is packed with construction workers. Between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., there’s a blend of blue and white collar workers, picking up sausage biscuits to go. After that, the people lingering in the plastic booths are mostly the retired or the people who had too much fun the night before.

It’s always a little quiet, the sort of place where eating comes first and conversation is secondary.

Final atmosphere score: 21

Price: You can get a ton of food for very little money at Bryant’s. A breakfast sampler, which feeds two normal people or one competitive eater, runs about $9. It’s cheap, it’s good, and you’ll get full. It’s hard to beat that.