Smoked Sturgeon, anyone?

After a hard day of carrying suitcases back and forth between temporary apartment and new condo (about 7 blocks each way), I woke up and decided it was a good day to enjoy a hearty breakfast. After considering options both nearby and far away, I decided to give Barney Greengrass a try. It's all the way on the other side of the island, but I didn't have a lot of structured activities planned for today and this would give me a chance to hone my subway navigation skills.

Barney Greengrass is a well-known NYC establishment (open since 1908), and has been profiled in many places including a number of food and travel shows I have seen. Most notably, if I recall correctly Anthony Bourdain did a segment there for one of his shows. The restaurant subtitle is "The Sturgeon King," and indeed their specialty is smoked fish of various kinds. I can't say that my upbringing and life experience to this point has included much variety in the way of smoked seafood, so this is definitely a chance to broaden my horizons.

I ate in the small sit-down restaurant area, and given that I arrived just after opening there weren't many other patrons (see picture at right with coffee cup).

I decided quickly that there wasn't really any reason not to just go with a key house specialty, sturgeon scrambled with eggs and onions, which comes with a choice of bagel or bialy. I opted for a toasted poppy-seed bagel with mine. I overheard someon else getting a pumpernickel bagel later and realized I should have thought of that, but I'll just have to remember for next time.

The food came remarkably fast; they are obviously used to moving people in and out quickly. I expect that if I had gotten there a bit later it would have been much more crowded, as people started coming in rapidly after nine. In fact before I left I witnessed an argument a pair of elderly women had with the waiter about whether they could sit at a table for four since they were expecting to be joined by a third friend. The waiter was very polite, but insistent that their policy was not to seat parties at larger tables until all are present. Sounds reasonable, and in my experience this is not unusual at this kind of place, and the women grudgingly agreed to sit at a table for two instead.

In any case, the blurry image at left shows the food I got, clockwise from top left:
cup of coffee, slab of cream cheese and pat of butter, toasted bagel, and finally the scramble. Perhaps it doesn't look like much, but it was excellent. Definitely the best scrambled eggs I have had. I'm sure it's not good for you, and I could practically feel the cholesterol pumping through my veins as I ate it, but it was definitely great comfort food. Just not something to eat every day. I will definitely plan to return with the whole family. I saw a number of other families eating there and they seemed to handle the kids quite well.