Anthony Bourdain Said This NYC Restaurant Has 'The Best Breakfast In The Universe'

While Anthony Bourdain was notoriously not a fan of brunch, he did have a great appreciation for breakfast and expressed it quite frequently throughout his career. The chef would spend plenty of time on each of his several travel shows over the years enjoying breakfast dishes. During the first season of Bourdain's first TV show, entitled "A Cook's Tour," he got the chance to visit Barney Greengrass — one of his favorite breakfast spots in the entire world — during an episode that featured him visiting restaurants across New York City.

Barney Greengrass is a Jewish deli on the Upper West Side that Bourdain considered the best of the best. As he set the scene for the restaurant during his visit on "A Cook's Tour," he explained, "Whenever I want to treat myself to the best breakfast in New York — in fact, the best breakfast in the universe — I go to a little place in my neighborhood that's famed for just that." Beyond just Bourdain himself, Barney Greengrass was (and still is) widely considered an institution of New York food culture; the restaurant went on to receive the James Beard Foundation Award for Excellence in 2006 and be named one of the 50 Greatest Food Stores in the World by the Financial Times in 2021.

Despite Bourdain being quick to admit that it can easily take a newcomer quite a long time to order from Barney Greengrass, due to its wide variety of incredible food, the chef himself knew as soon as he walked in that he was going to get a platter of smoked sturgeon from the world-renowned deli. Sturgeon — the fish that produces the expensive eggs we know as caviar — is Barney Greengrass's specialty dish, with the restaurant garnering the nickname "The Sturgeon King" to prove it. "Sturgeon is the absolute king of smoked fish," Bourdain praised. "It's flaky but firm with a delicate, almost buttery flavor." Alongside that, Bourdain ordered the Nova Scotia lox with scrambled eggs and onions, a toasted bagel, and coffee. Then, to top it off, the chef ordered chopped liver to go, as he believed Barney Greengrass' rendition of the polarizing dish is the very best in the world.

In the years that followed his visit to Barney Greengrass, Bourdain continued to be a regular at the deli, with the staff considering him a beloved patron until the chef unfortunately passed away in 2018. To honor him following his death, Barney Greengrass set a table of Bourdain's favorite order to commemorate his patronage. Though the chef has passed on, the sturgeon platter, bagel, coffee, and Nova Scotia lox with scrambled eggs and onions have all remained.